Nigeria Equity Watch | 31 July 2015 : Nigerian Equities Market slipped into eight consecutive days of losses

Lagos, Nigeria (Capital Markets in Africa) — The Nigerian Equities Market slipped into eight consecutive days of losses as the All Share Index (ASI) lost 84bps to close at 30,180.27points. Market capitalization declined N87.7bn to berth at N10.3tn. The poor performance of the market today was driven by sell downs in GUINNESS (-5.0%), FBN HOLDINGS (-4.4%) and GUARANTY (-3.4%). Activity level within the market was however mixed as volume traded appreciated 73.8% to 268.2m units while value traded declined 49.0%to close at N2.1bn.

Performance across sectors was also mixed as the Insurance and the Industrial Goods Indices appreciated 1.1% and 0.3% on gains in MANSARD (+5.0) for the former and DANGCEM (+0.3%) for the latter. On the flipside, the Banking Index declined the most (-2.4%) due to price depreciation in GUARANTY (-3.4%) and ZENITH (-1.8%). Similarly, the Oil & Gas and the Consumer Goods Indices depreciated 1.2% and 0.7% respectively.

Investor sentiments as measured by Market Breadth settled at 0.4x for the day as 14 stocks advanced while 34 stocks declined. The top gaining stocks were NAHCO (+7.8%), AIR SERVICE (+5.0%) and UNITY BANK (+5.0%) while UAC PROP (-9.6%), UACN (-5.0%) and GUINNESS (-5.0%) declined the most. Given the lingering weak sentiment for equities that has haunted the market, we suggests short term investors should minimize exposure to equities in the interim to preserve value; whilst medium to long-term investors can take advantage of the current low market valuation of value counters.