The Nigerian stock market faced selling pressure and recorded a 0.14% loss on Monday, primarily due to a further increase in the inflation rate in Nigeria. In September, the inflation rate rose to 26.72%, exceeding the previous month’s rate of 25.80%. This economic data, released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), had a significant impact on investor sentiment.
As a result of this news, investors withdrew N52 billion from the market in a state of panic. This caused the market capitalization to decrease from N36.883 trillion in the preceding session to N36.831 trillion.
The All-Share Index (ASI) also suffered a decline, dropping by 95.26 points to close at 67,037.93 points compared to the previous Friday’s level of 67,133.19 points. Different sectors of the market had mixed performances. The insurance, energy, and industrial goods sectors all experienced losses of 0.44%, 0.27%, and 0.06%, respectively. However, the banking and consumer goods sectors managed to gain 0.94% and 0.39%, although these gains couldn’t prevent the overall market decline.
Trading on the first session of the week was cautious, with a 30.13% decrease in trading volume, a 21.74% decrease in trading value, and a 6.75% increase in the number of deals. A total of 216.1 million stocks valued at N3.6 billion were traded in 5,965 deals on Monday, in contrast to the 309.3 million stocks worth N4.6 billion traded in 5,588 deals on the previous Friday.
UBA was the most actively traded stock, with 32.6 million shares sold for N579.4 million, followed by Fidelity Bank, with 29.0 million shares traded at N238.1 million. AIICO Insurance traded 15.6 million shares worth N10.6 million, Dangote Sugar exchanged 10.6 million shares valued at N658.0 million, and Transcorp traded 10.5 million shares valued at N65.4 million.
Investor sentiment was weak, reflecting a negative market breadth index, with 19 price gainers and 22 price losers. Sovereign Trust Insurance and Stanbic IBTC were the biggest losers, each falling by 10.00% to 36 Kobo and N72.00 apiece. Okomu Oil dropped 9.96% to N236.80, Oando depreciated by 9.24% to N8.35, and Omatek went down by 8.70% to 42 Kobo. On the positive side, Royal Exchange gained 8.51% to finish at 51 Kobo, Consolidated Hallmark Insurance increased by 6.96% to N1.23, NASCON grew by 5.45% to N58.00, Flour Mills improved by 4.20% to N31.00, and Dangote Sugar chalked up 3.13% to N62.60.
