Market capitalisation drops further by N51 billion

Specifically, the almost two week’s recovery was halted with the decline of total equities capitalisation to N5.15 trillion from N5.19 trillion, which the market closed last week.

The trend continued yesterday at the close of transactions with another loss of N51 billion in the market capitalisation to close at N5.11 trillion, while the All-Share Index dropped by 221.13 basis points to close at 21,969.74 points from the previous 22,190.87 points. It had closed trading on Friday at 22,332.15 points.

Thirty-four companies emerged losers during the day as against 34 gainers to further depress the performance indicators.

Breweries giant, Nigeria Breweries led on the flip side with N2.32 decrease to close at N55.68 per share, followed by four banking stocks- Ecobank, Guaranty Trust, First Bank and United Bank for Africa (UBA) with N1.14, N0.68, N0.59 and N0.57 loss to close at N21.66, N13.52, N14.30 and N14.12 per share respectively.

On the contrary, Total Oil led the gainers’ chart, rising by N7.16 to close at N150.48 per share, followed by Mobil Oil with N3.19 increase to close at N105.0 per share. Julius Berger, Zenith Bank and African Petroleum that were the last on the top five gainers table appreciated N0.82, N0.63 and N0.60 to close at N28.10, N13.34 and N31.00 per share respectively.

The banking sub-sector retained its position on the sectoral chart with traded volume of 389.03 million shares valued at N3.2 billion done in 4,665 deals. The insurance sub-sector closed as the second most traded sub-sector, accounting for 72.6 million units of shares worth N68.98 million exchanged by investors in N573 deals.