Bearish sentiments were sustained on the Nigerian Exchange Limited as the market reacted to the Supreme Court’s judgment regarding the 2023 general elections cases leading to a loss of N67bn off its market capitalisation.
This marked a second consecutive day of negative trading on the local bourse.
Dragging the market cap was depreciation recorded in the share values of MTN Nigeria (-0.40 per cent), Flour Mills (-3.23 per cent), Stanbic IBTC (3.21), Computer Warehouse Group (-9.94 per cent, Fidelity Bank (-1.82 per cent) and 24 others.
The Supreme Court affirmed the decision of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal which upheld the victory of President Bola Tinubu in the February 2023 election.
The All-Share index dipped by -0.18 per cent compared to its previous day’s -0.02 per cent decline. The index closed the day at 67,084.95 points while the market cap settled at N36.856tn.
Market Breadth which is the measure of investors’ sentiments was negative at 0.41x compared to its previous market breadth of 1.28x as 29 stocks depreciated against 12 gainers.
Transaction volume declined from 329.66 million to 267.65 million units of shares valued at N5.1bn which were traded 5,205 deals. The number of stocks that traded during the day’s session stood at 117.
Across monitored sectoral boards, the negative sentiment prevailed, with two out of five sectors closing in the red, two remaining muted, and only one sector experiencing gains. The Banking and Insurance indexes suffered the most setback, declining by 0.33 per cent and 1.82 per cent, respectively, driven by sell-offs in Stanbic, Prestige, Cornerstone Insurance, GTCO and Zenith Bank. However, the Consumer Goods sector grew by 0.12 per cent thanks to Nestle and Transcorp while the Industrial Goods and Oil & Gas indexes exhibited lull performances.
Some of the top gainers at the close of Thursday trading include McNichols whose shares appreciated by 8.93 per cent to close at N0.61, Oando gained 4.07 per cent to close at N8.95, UAC Nigeria’s shares by 6.09 per cent in value to close at N12.20, Chams gained3.65 per cent to close at N1.99, Nestle gained 2.94 per cent to close at N1,050 and Transcorp gained 2.75 per cent to close at N6.35 per unit.
The volume and value drivers of the day’s trading were led majorly by stocks of Fidelity, Chams, Nestle, AccessCorp, UBA and Stanbic.
