Nigeria Market Watch | June 17th 2015: Biding Time to Make Quick wins …NSE ASI sheds 37bps

Lagos, Nigeria (Capital Markets in Africa) —The Nigerian Bourse slipped further at the close of market today as the NSE All Share Index (ASI) shed 0.4% to close at 33,478.42 points. The decline in the benchmark index today was on the back of price depreciation in bellwethers such as DANGOTECEMENT (-1.1%) and ZENITHBANK (-2.0%). Today’s market activity was marked by 13.0% decline in volume traded to 194.0m units and 13.0% increase in value traded to N4.1bn.

Against the backdrop of 1.3% price appreciation in NIGERIANBREWERIES, Consumer Goods index added 0.2%, a rebound from yesterday’s 0.6% loss. Other sectors witnessed price depreciation in key counters as the Oil & Gas sector led with 0.8% decline. This was followed by the Industrial Goods and Banking indices which dropped 0.6% and 0.5% respectively. The Insurance index also shed 4 basis points.

Market breadth improved from 0.8x the previous day, albeit still negative at 0.9x today as 22 stocks advanced against 24 stocks. BERGER (+10.2%), PHARMADECKO (+4.9%) and ETERNA (+4.7%) led the top gainers while GUINNESS (-5.3%), BETAGLAS (-5.0%) and MAYBAKER (-4.9%) led the market laggards. The market has so far been driven by macroeconomic uncertaintiesas investors continue foot-draggingahead of policy pronouncement. We advise investors to stay cautious as they bide time to make quick wins.