Banking sector drags Nigerian equity market down further

Sell pressure on banking stocks spurred the Nigerian equity market to decline further on Tuesday.
The All-Share Index (ASI) dipped by 86.01 absolute points, representing a dip of 0.36 per cent to close at 24,114.59 points, driven by losses suffered by bellwether stocks such as MTNN, Zenith Bank, Access Bank and 14 others.
Consequently, investors lost ₦44.9 billion as market capitalisation declined to ₦12.6 trillion while the bourse has lost 10.2 per cent this year.
Unilever gained 9.64 per cent to emerge top gainer while ARBICO emerged as the top loser, having lost 9.94 per cent.
The volume and value of equities traded declined 10.0 per cent and 50.9 per cent to 208.2 million units and ₦1.1 billion respectively.
Sterling Bank (78.9m units), UBA (15.8m units) and Japaul Oil (12.8m units) were the most active stocks in terms of volume, while GTBank (₦222.9m), Zenith Bank (₦167.1m) and Sterling Bank (₦98.6m) led by value.
The Banking index was the lone laggard, shedding 2.8 per cent due to sell pressures in Zenith Bank (-3.7 per cent), GTBank (-3.2 per cent) and Access Bank (-3.2 per cent).
Meanwhile, buying interest in UNILEVER (+9.6 per cent) and Bua Cement (+0.6 per cent) buoyed gains in the Consumer (+0.4 per cent) and Industrial (+0.3 per cent) Goods indices respectively, while the Insurance index rose marginally by 0.1 per cent due to price appreciation in REGALINS (+4.6 per cent) and NEM (+0.5 per cent).