Nigeria’s equities market closed negative on Tuesday February 25 as investors continued to sell stocks.
Trading session on the 9th floor of the Exchange was dominated by relatively calm mood as dealers priced in fragile macroeconomic environment as well as fears of slowing global economy.
Only 8 stocks gained as against 21 losers. As a result, the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) All Share Index (ASI) decreased by 0.03percent.
The stock market’s year-to-date (ytd) return stood lower at +0.71percent.
At the sound of the closing gong, the All Share Index (ASI) stood at 27,033.10 points, lower than the preceding day’s 27,041.03 points. Also, the Market Capitalisation decreased to N14.083 trillion as against preceding day’s close of N14.087 trillion, indicating N4billion loss.
Having lost significantly in the last few weeks, (-6.28percent month-to-date) market watchers anticipate some level of cherry picking among fundamentally sound stocks.
Zenith Bank, GTBank, UBA, Transcorp, and UPDC REIT were actively traded stocks. The volume of stock traded decreased by 43.7percent from 429million to 241.71million, while the total value of stocks traded decreased by 51.30percent, from N7.298 billion to N3.554 billion in 4,456 deals.
The Financial Services sector led the activity chart with 172.19 million shares exchanged for N2.33billion; followed by Conglomerates with 29.327 million shares traded for N41 million.
