Nigeria’s equities market witnessed a sharp drop as bearish sentiments persisted in Wednesday’s trading, resulting in across-the-board price declines.
Basically, the Nigerian Stock Exchange All-Share Index moderated by 1.96 per cent to close at 40,696.01 points.
Also, the market capitalisation fell by 1.96 per cent to close at N21.29tn, as investors lost N425.92bn, the highest drop in two weeks.
Hence, the Year-to-Date gain of the ASI fell to 1.05 per cent.
At the end of the day’s trading, the market tracked 37 losers against 13 gainers.
Specifically, large capitalised stocks such as Zenith Bank, Dangote Cement, Lafarge Africa and United Bank for Africa suffered major setbacks as their share prices dropped.
Of the five indices tracked, four closed in red, save the NSE oil and gas index, which closed flat.
The banking, insurance, consumer goods and industrial indices declined by 3.36 per cent, 1.15 per cent, 0.38 per cent and 3.70 per cent respectively.
Activity was upbeat as total volume of trades moderated by 19.92 per cent to 366.85 million units, valued at N5.48bn, and exchanged in 5,718 deals.
