The Nigerian equity market continued to bleed for the second consecutive day this week as it lost N730bn on Tuesday.
Dangote Cement, MTN Nigeria had dragged the market to a N1.82tn loss on Monday.
The bleeding continued on Tuesday as the benchmark index, the All-Share Index and the market cap declined by 1.30 per cent to 101,060.67 points and N55.298tn, respectively.
The market’s year-to-date return also slipped further to 35.16 per cent from 36.94 per cent in the previous day.
The bearish trend was a result of sell-offs recorded in medium to penny stocks.
At the close of trading, eight equities recorded gains while 43 suffered losses.
The gainers were led by stocks of Juli Plc, Eterna Plc, and VeritasKap, which gained 9.94 per cent, 6.17 per cent and 5.97 per cent to close at N1.77, N17.20 and N0.71, respectively.
The losers’ chart was topped by Honeywell Flour Mills, which lost 10 per cent to close at N3.60; BUA Cement shed 9.98 per cent to close at N142.95 and PZ Cussons, which posted a negative asset value in its half-year report, dipped by 9.75 per cent to N27.30.
Trading activity further dipped, as the total deals, volume and value recorded significant declines.
The total deals fell by 9.34 per cent, totalling 8,783 trades, while the total volume and value were down by 6.46 per cent and 10.90 per cent to 256.16 million units and N6.63bn, respectively.
The number of stocks traded on Tuesday closed at 118.
Keeping to the trend of the market, four out of the five sectoral sub-indexes closed in the red zone. The sole gainer for the day was the Oil&Gas sector driven by Eterna Plc.
The volume and value drivers of the day’s market trend were led by stocks of United Bank for Africa, Geregu Power and Transcorp Plc.
While Transcorp was the most traded security in terms of volume with 39.75 million units, changing hands in 640 trades, Geregu Power was the most traded in terms of value, amounting to N1.11bn.
