Nigeria Market Watch | June 24th 2015: Bears on the prowl …NSE ASI down 34bps

Lagos, Nigeria (Capital Markets in Africa) — At the sound of the closing bell today, the Nigerian Stock Exchange All Share Index (ASI) dipped 0.3%. This was on the back of decline in highly capitalized stocks especially in the banking sector such as ETI (-2.2%), STANBIC (-2.1%) and FBN HOLDINGS (-1.7%). Market capitalization shed N33.1bn to settle at N11.4tn. On the contrary, market activity improved as volume and value traded advanced 49.1% and 173.4% to 310.3m and N6.1bn respectively.

The Oil & Gas index sustained gains to the second trading day as it improved 0.1% on the back of appreciation in MOBIL (+3.6%) and OANDO (+0.1%). Other sectors however bore losses at the close of market. Leading the losers by 1.6% was the Insurance index majorly on account of bearish investor sentiment on MANSARD (-4.4%) and CONTINSURE (-1.0%). The Banking index declined 0.5% on the back of price depreciation in ETI (-2.2%), STANBIC (-2.1%) and FBN HOLDINGS (-1.7%). The Consumer Goods and Industrial Goods index also eased 0.3% and 0.1% respectively.

Market breadth took an unexpected dip to 0.2x as only 9 stocks advanced against 42 laggards. NEIMETH (+8.2%), SKYEBANK (+4.9%) and MOBIL (+3.6%) led the few market gainers while UPL (-9.2%), NPFMCRFBK (-6.5%) and CAVERTON (-5.0%) led the market losers. We anticipate that the losses today will moderate in sessions ahead as investors bet on relatively cheap stocks before the market rebounds.

Source: Afrinvest (West Africa) Limited Research Team