Nigerian equity market slips to 26 months low

The bearish sentiment that has pervaded the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) pulled it down to 26 months low on Thursday.

Sell pressure arising from the slow economic growth in the country caused the All Share Index (ASI) to shed 178.31 absolute points, representing a decline of 0.64 per cent to close at 27,864.49 points, the lowest it has attained in 26 months.

The Market Capitalization lost N86.90 billion, representing 0.64 per cent drop to close at N13.58 trillion.

Conoil increased 9.76 per cent to emerge top gainer amongst 11 other advances, while International Breweries shed -11 per cent to top 18 other losers.

FBN Holdings was the most active equity with 33,327,186 of its shares worth N189.90 million traded as investors exchanged 175,360,515 shares valued at N3.89 billion in 2,653 deals.

The Nigerian equity market has so far lost -11.35 per cent this year as foreign portfolio investors continue take a flight.

The downtrend was impacted by losses recorded in large and medium capitalized stocks, amongst which are; INTBREW (-10.00%) SEPLAT (-9.43%), ACCESS (-3.23%), NB (-1.69%), UACN (-1.69%), STANBIC (-1.28%), UBA (-0.89%) FO (-0.81%), MTNN (-0.78%), UBN (-0.76%), and ZENITHBANK (-0.54%).