The Nigerian stock market contracted on Thursday amid renewed bearish activity, as heavyweight stocks such as Zenith Bank, United Bank for Africa and Dangote Cement closed in the red territory.
As a result, the All-Share Index of the Nigerian Stock Exchange fell by 0.60 per cent to 38,697.17 points.
Investors lost N122.46bn as the market capitalisation further dropped by 0.60 to close at N20.25trn.
Despite renewed profit-taking activity, the stock market recorded 25 gainers and 11 losers, while the year-to-date loss of the ASI further rose to -3.90 per cent.
The share prices of DANGCEM, ZENITHBANK and UBA fell by 3.51 per cent, 1.38 per cent and 0.71 per cent respectively.
Smurfit Kappa Group led the gainers’ table by 10 per cent, while African Alliance Insurance topped the losers table with a price depreciation of -8.33 per cent.
Sectoral performance was positive as four of the five indices tracked closed in the green territory.
The banking, insurance and consumer goods indices rose by 0.01 per cent, 0.69 per cent and 0.42 per cent respectively, as the oil and gas index closed flat.
In contrast, the industrial index dip by 1.70 per cent.
Meanwhile, trading activity was weak as total deals, volume and value of stocks fell.
Thus, the total volume of trade declined by 54.01 per cent to 169.35 million units valued at N2.12bn in 3,568 deals.
