Nigerian equity market starts February bearish

Nigerian equity market commenced the new month on a bearish note on the back of sell-offs in Nestle, Access Bank and Flour Mills.

The All-Share Index dipped 0.13% to 42,357.90 points as market capitalisation fell by ₦28.6bn to ₦22.2 trillion, while weakened to 5.2%.

The volume and value of stock investors traded declined 12.4% and 8.6% respectively to 586.8million units and ₦6.0billion.

The most traded stocks by volume were UBN (79.6m units), TRANSCORP (61.8m units) and UBA (44.3m units) while ZENITH (₦859.0m), NESTLE (₦791.6m) and GUARANTY (₦779.0m) led by value.

The Insurance and Oil & Gas indices gained 0.4% and 0.2% respectively due to price appreciation in NEM (+6.6%), WAPIC (+9.3%) and SEPLAT (+1.0%).

Meanwhile, the Consumer Goods and Banking indices lost 1.0% and 0.1% respectively following sell-offs  in NESTLE (-3.7%), FLOURMILL (-3.2%) and ACCESS (-1.6%).

The AFR-ICT & Industrial Goods indices closed flat.

HONYFLOUR (+10.0%), CHAMPION (+10.0%) and MCNICHOLS (+9.8%) were the top gainers while ROYALEX (-10.0%), GUINEAINS (-9.1%) and AFRINSURE (-8.0%) were the top losers.