BY BAMIDELE FAMOOFO
Equities trading at the Nigerian Exchange Limited closed bearish on Tuesday, mainly due to weak investors’ appetite for banking stocks.
Hence, the year-to-date gain of the index fell to 10.78 percent even as the Exchange printed a higher number of losers (14) than gainers (13). CHAMS topped the gainers’ chart, advancing by 9.09 percent, while NEIMETH led the laggards’ chart to decline by 7.97 percent.
Specifically, big lenders ETI (-5.16%), STANBIC (-4.23), ACCESSCORP (-3.53), ZENITHBANK (-1.36%), UBA (-0.69%), and GTCO (-0.25%) led the downturn among banking stocks.
Performance across sub-sector gauges was a mixed bag as the NGX Insurance Index and the NGX Industrial Index rose by 0.16 percent and 0.12 percent, respectively, while the NGX Banking Index and the NGX Consumer Goods Index declined by 2.14 percent and 0.99 percent, respectively. The NGX Oil/Gas index remained unchanged from the previous day. Meanwhile, activity in the market was downbeat as total deals and volume decreased by 20.07 percent and 56.69 percent, respectively, to 3,022 trades and 120.95 million units.
In terms of volume, TRANSCORP was the most active stock, with 34.59 million shares worth N40.48 million changing hands in 111 deals.
