Nigerian Equity Markets | 23 May 2016: Market trends Southwards as MPC Meeting begins …NSE ASI down 42bps

LAGOS, Nigeria, Capital Markets in Africa: The Nigerian Equities market opened in the red, for the first time in 5 weeks as profit taking thrived, following the impressive gains that were recorded in the previous week. As a result, the All Share Index slid 0.4% to settle at 27,015.97 points. In the same vein, market capitalisation reduced by N34.7bn to N9.3tn. The major drags to market performance today were ZENITH (-4.9%), ACCESS (-4.7%) and NIGERIAN BREWERIES (-0.6%). Activity level also waned as volume and value traded fell 43.4% and 46.8% to 316.5m units and N1.9bn respectively.

All Sector Indices Decline
Bearish sentiments persisted across sectors as all indices trended southwards. The Banking sector index depreciated the most, down 2.1% on account of losses in ZENITH (-4.9%) and ACCESS (-4.7%). The Insurance index also lost 1.0% followed by the Oil & Gas index which depreciated 0.8% due to losses in FORTE (-0.3%). In the same vein, the Consumer Goods index slid 0.4% against the backdrop of losses in PZ (-5.0%) and NIGERIAN BREWERIES (-0.6%) while the Industrial goods index closed flat.

Investor Sentiments turn Negative
Sentiments in the market were negative today, as market breadth declined to 0.5x (from 1.2x on Friday) following 14 stocks that advanced while 28 declined. The top gaining stock for the week were STANBIC (+10.2%), DNMEYER (+8.2%) and FIDSON (+5.0%) while PZ (-5.0%), UNIONDICON (-4.9%) and ZENITH (-4.9%) were the worst performing stocks. The market performance today was broadly driven by profit taking by investors and this trend is expected to persist as investors await the outcome from deliberations at the ongoing MPC meeting.