Nigerian bourse continues on the red zone Thursday as Index sheds 156bps

Nigerian Equities market maintained its position in the red zone on Thursday as a loss of 100bps at the close of the previous trading session worsened to 156bps points today.

The NSE All-Share Index closed at 37,933.70 points and market capitalization similarly dropped to 13.19 trillion naira from 13.40 trillion naira.

Market breadth closed in favour of the bear, as it has throughout this week, with a count of 32 gainers as against 10 losers.

With the exception of NSE OILGAS which gained on its previous close and NSE ASEM which maintained its previous close, all other sector performance indices closed in the red zone.

SEPLAT gained 7.73 per cent on its previous closing price to close at 501 naira today to top the gainers chart, tracked closely by CAVERTON at 3.79 per cent, JBERGER at 3.70 per cent, FCMB 3.13 per cent and CILEASING at 2.96 per cent.

On the other hand, FLOURMILL, UBN, CUSTODIAN, NEM and LIVESTOCK topped the losers chart.

FBNH, FCMB, ZENITHBANK, FIDELITYBK and DIAMONDBNK were the top traded stocks in terms of volume while NB, ZENITHBANK, GUARANTY, FBNH and DANGCEM occupied the top five slots on the value-based charts.

Despite the negative ASI change, trade value increased by 41.43 per cent to close at 6.22billion naira while trade volume dropped by 10.69 per cent to close at 289 million naira.

Analysts at APT Securities and Funds Limited said given market activities for the week thus far, week-on-week, index is expected to close southward and this is not unconnected to investors taking profit from 7-day consecutive gain last week.