The Nigerian equities market returned bearish on Friday after the domestic bourse traded up on Thursday to record the only gain in two weeks.
At the close of Friday’s trading, the Nigerian Stock Exchange All-Share Index moderated by 1.4 per cent to 40,439.85 points amid profit taking on industrial stocks.
The market capitalisation also dropped by 1.4 per cent, as investors lost N300.52bn to close at N21.16.
Hence, the Year-to-Date gain of the ASI fell to 0.42 per cent.
However, the market recorded 36 gainers against seven losers as investors hunted for bargains, given the lower re-entry prices for most stocks.
Of the five indices tracked, the banking, insurance, consumer goods and oil and gas sectors closed in the green zone to increase their share prices by 0.52 per cent 0.04 per cent, 0.28 per cent and 0.14 per cent respectively.
Conversely, the NSE industrial index plunged by 4.55 per cent.
Profit taking on heavyweight stocks such as MTN Nigeria Communications, Dangote Cement and BUA Cement muted the bullish activity in the market and their respective share prices contracted by 0.49 per cent, 3.51 per cent and 7.22 per cent.
Meanwhile, trading activity was weak as total deals, volume and value of stocks traded fell.
Total volume of trades fell by 68.96 per cent to 395.62 million units valued at N5.19bn in 5,321 deals.
