August 02, (THEWILL) – Nigeria’s equities market opened the eight month of the year Tuesday on a negative note, losing N79 billion as the capital market closed N34.9 trillion against N35.1 trillion it ended July activities on Monday.
This resulted in a 0.23 percent decline of the NGX-All Share Index which closed at 64,192.20 points contrary to 64,337.52 point on Monday.
The market’s weak performance was driven primarily by selloffs in tier-1 banking names, Zenith Bank (-1.18% against N33.50 price), GTCO (-3.14% from N35.50 price), and ACCESSCORP (-2.35% against N16.60 price per share). The negative performance offset gains in MTNN (+0.38% against price of 263), WAPCO (+0.19% from N26.65 price), and NB (+1.37% from share price of N37).
Consequently, the year-to-date (YTD) return fell to 25.25%..
Analysis of today’s market activities showed trade turnover settled higher relative to the previous session, with the value of transactions up by 19.09%. A total of 762.10m shares valued at ₦7.71bn were exchanged in 7,935 deals. AIICO (+6.06%) led the volume chart with 314.64m units traded while MTNN (+0.38%) led the value chart in deals worth ₦947.30m.
Market breadth closed negative at a 1.87-to-1 ratio with declining issues outnumbering advancing ones. Fidelity Bank (-9.88%) topped twenty-seven (27) others on the laggard’s log, while Dangote Sugar (+10.00%) led fourteen (14) others on the loser’s league.
At the I&E exchange window, the Naira tumbled 4.3 percent to settle at N789.08/$ against N756.94/$ on Monday. Total daily turnover was flat at $67.33 million against Monday’s deal-close of $76.21 million.
Sam Diala is a Bloomberg Certified Financial Journalist with over a decade of experience in reporting Business and Economy. He is Business Editor at THEWILL Newspaper, and believes that work, not wishes, creates wealth.
