Market capitalization depreciates by N16bn as trading ends February in red

Trading activities on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange ended on sour note in the month of February as the All Share Index depreciated by 0.17% at 25,329.08 points while Market Capitalisation also posted a loss of N16bn to close at N8.765 trillion, National Daily has gathered.

Month to Date and Year to date losses of the all share index surged to 2.7 percent and 5.8 percent respectively, according to performance review for the final trading day of the month.

The consumer goods index posted the day’s largest loss of 1.37 percent as profit taking in Honeywell, Guinness and Nigerian Breweries dampened previous session’s growth of 0.72 percent.

However, price increases in Total, Oando lifted the Oil and Gas Index by 0.21 percent while the banking index grew 0.22 percent on account of growth in Stanbic, UBA amongst others.

Forte Oil topped the losers chart, crashing by 5 percent to close at N47.69, Honeywell Flour dropped 4.76 percent to close at N1, Transcorp fell 4.17 percent to close at 69 kobo per share, Guinness closed 3.90 percent lower at N65.35 while FCMB declined 3.90 percent, settling at N1.23 per share.

The day’s price movement chart also showed that gainers were led by UACN that grew 5 percent to close at N13.65, Okomu Oil followed closely with a growth of 4.98 percent to close at N46.38, Vitafoam was next with an appreciation of 4.88 percent to close at N1.72, Air service grew 4.73 percent to close at N2.88 and Total added 3.66 percent to close at N283

Top traded equities were Continsure with 203.2 million shares valued at N203.2 million, Zenith Bank retained buying momentum to record the sale of 107.3 million shares at N1.6 billion, investors bought and sold 23.9 million units of UBA’s shares with total value at N117.8 million, Etranzact was the day’s fourth most traded stock with 16.9 million shares at N84.4 million while United Capital traded 15.7 million shares worth N55.6 million.

At the end of the day’s trade on February 28, investors traded 444.5 million units valued at N3.6 billion in 3336 deals as against 254.75 million shares valued at N2.54 billion traded in 3,373 deals on Monday.