Stock market: Bears deflate investors’ worth by N266bn – After weeks of dominating the Nigerian stock market by the bulls, bears made a strong comeback last week, sucking N266 billion from investors wealth. Traders attributed the new trend to sell-offs in the market.
Following two consecutive weeks of gains, the bullish run on the domestic bourse was halted as sell-offs in market bellwethers dragged performance.
Consequently, the benchmark index slid 1.3 per cent week-on-week (w/w) to settle at 38,648.91 points.
Year-to-Date (YTD) loss worsened to -4.0 per cent, while market capitalisation declined N266.0 billion to N20.1 trillion. The bearish performance was largely due to losses in AIRTELAF (-10.0 per cent), STANBIC (-4.9 per cent), and GUARANTY (-1.2 per cent).
Activity level strengthened as average volume and value traded rose 15.9 per cent and 1.2 per cent w/w respectively to 220.6m units and N2.5 billion. The top traded stocks by volume were ZENITH (96.9 million units), STERLING (86.9 million), and ACCESS (82.7 million) while ZENITH (N2.3 billion), GUARANTY (N954.6 million) and SEPLAT (N809.5 million) were the top traded stocks by value.