Profit-taking drags Nigerian equity market further down by 0.2%

The Nigerian equities market sustained losses for the second consecutive day on Wednesday due to profit-taking in WAPCO, UBA and Zenith Bank.

 The All-Share Index declined 0.19 per cent to close at 25,550.31 points, while market capitalisation lost ₦1.2 billion to close at ₦13.4 trillion, worsening performance the bourse to -4.8 per cent.

Investors’ appetite was lower as volume and value traded decreased 13.6 per cent and 19.8 per cent respectively to 211.8 million units and ₦2.4 billion.

The most traded equities by volume were FCMB (30.3m units), Access Bank (21.0m units) and UBA (18.6m units), while MTNN (₦1.1bn), Access Bank (₦306.3m) and Zenith Bank (₦139.4m) led by value.

The Insurance and Banking sectors led laggards, down 1.5 per cent and 0.6 per cent respectively following sell pressures in NEM (-9.8 per cent), AIICO (-3.4 per cent), UBA (-3.3. per cent) and Zenith Bank (-1.2 per cent).

Also, the Industrial Goods index fell 0.2 per cent due to a sell-off in WAPCO (-3.7 per cent). On the other hand, the Oil & Gas and Consumer Goods indices were the gainers, up 0.4 per cent and 0.1 per cent respectively as investors took position in OANDO (+4.4 per cent), ARDOVA (+0.4 per cent) and VITAFOAM (+1.8 per cent).

The top gainers were LEARNAFRCA (+9.6 per cent), BERGER (+7.4 per cent) and UBN (+7.0 per cent) while ROYALEX (-10.0 per cent), NEM (-9.8 per cent) and CADBURY (-8.4 per cent) lost the most.