The Nigerian equities market snapped its 12-day rally as local investors rotate into profit-taking mood today. Consequently, the benchmark index, NSE ASI lost 0.98% to close at 28,909.37 points as year-to-date return settled at 6.68%. The bearish performance in the market was on profit-taking on bellwether ticks ZENITH BA NL (-6.01% to N19.55), MTNN (-1.54% to N140.50), DANGCEM NL (-0.20% to N158.00), and WAPCO NL (-4.27% to N16.80).
Volume and value traded were 11.21% and 14.28% higher to 883.45 million units and N10.85 billion, respectively. The most traded stocks by volume were FBNH NL (128.79 million units), ZENITHBA NL (120.62 million units) and UBA NL (83.97 million units) while ZENITHBA NL (N2.44 billion), GUARANTY NL (N2.41 billion) and NEWGOLD NL (N1.3 billion) topped the value chart.
The sectorial performance was bearish as the Banking, Industrial, and Insurance sub-indices lost 232bps, 34bps and 199bps respectively save for the Consumer goods and the Oil & Gas sector which returned 31bps to 34bps, respectively.
Market sentiment was negative as market breadth came in at 0.7x as there were 21 advancers and 31 decliners.
