Profit-taking drags Nigerian equity market down further

The Nigerian Exchange continued its downtrend on Friday, dipping by 0.2 per cent due to profit-taking in financial stocks such as GTCO, Access Bank and FBNH.

The All-Share Index lost 86.70 points or 0.20 per cent to close at 43,199.27 against 43,285.97 recorded on Thursday, while the market capitalization, which opened at N22.589 trillion lost N45 billion or 0.20% to close at N22.544 billion.

Eterna topped the laggards in percentage terms, losing 9.03 per cent to close at N 6.65 per share.

NGX Group was behind with 8.86 per cent to close at N15.95, while Lasaco Assurance was down 7.08 per cent to close at N1.05 per share.

UPDC REIT lost 6.67 per cent to close at 5.60 N, while Wema Bank lost 4.71 per cent to close at 81,000 per share.

However, Unity Bank led the winning rankings in terms of percentage, gaining 10% to close at 55,000 per share.

Regence Insurance followed with 5.41 per cent to close at 39,000, while Vitafoam raised 4.78 per cent to close at N21.90 per share.

Chams rose 4.76% to close at 22,000, while FTN Cocoa added 4.76% to close at 44,000 per share.

A breakdown of the activity chart shows that GTCO was the most active stock at N499.27 million shares valued at N1.26 billion.

FBN Holdings followed with 18.41 million shares worth N208.68 million, while Access Bank traded 17.48 million shares worth 155.99 million Naira.

Nigerian Breweries traded 7.63 million shares worth N390.55 million, while Fidelity Bank sold 7.55 million shares worth N19.56 million.

In total, the volume of shares traded fell 5.24 per cent with an exchange of 199.52 million shares worth N3.26 billion in 3,917 deals.

That was against 210.55 million shares valued at N2.61 billion traded in 3,423 transactions on Thursday.