As the downward trend continues at the equities market, NEM Insurance Plc led 18 other stocks, declining by 5.53 percent to close at N2.23 per share on Wednesday.
The decline recorded among laggards as well as some banking sector heavy weights such as Guaranty Trust Bank that dropped 3.7 percent, Stanbic IBTC that fell 5.2 percent and FBN Holdings that dropped 2.4 percent, further dragged the benchmark index 0.67 percent lower to settle at 30,829.45 points.
This worsened the year-to-date losses to -1.9 percent while investors lost N78.7 billion in value as market capitalisation fell to N11.6 trillion.
According to Analysts at Afrinvest, the current market situation albeit bearish, presents opportunities to position in fundamentally sound stocks. “Nonetheless, we expect a bearish close tomorrow as investor sentiment remains weak,” they noted in an equities market report on Wednesday.
Activity chart showed volume and value traded dipped 8.5 percent and 16.6 percent to 131.4 million units and N1.4 billion respectively.
The top traded stocks by volume were Zenith (27.9m units), Sterling (25.0m units) and Access (16.2m units) while Zenith (N606.6m), Nigerian Breweries (N151.3m) and Access (N104.1m) led the top trades by value.
Performance across sectors was largely bearish as 4 of 5 major indices closed in the red.
The Industrial Goods index emerged the lone gainer, up 3 basis points due to buying interest in Cutix (+9.7%).
Conversely, the Insurance index shed the most, down 1.3 percent on the back of sell pressures in Custodian (-3.2%), NEM Insurance(-5.5%) and Wapic Insurance (-2.5%). This was trailed by the Banking index which declined 1.0 percent as Guaranty (-3.7%), Stanbic (-5.2%) and Access (-0.8%) closed in the red.
Sell offs in Seplat (-1.8%) dragged the Oil & Gas index down by 0.8 percent while the Consumer Goods index declined 0.4 percent as a result of losses in Guinness (-2.4%), Flourmill (-5.0%) and Dangote Flour (-3.9%).
The trading day recorded 11 gainers led by Union DAC that appreciated by 10 percent, Cutix that grew 9.7 percent and Medview Air that increased 5.9 percent.