Nigerian equity market reacts to higher inflation rate

Investors in the Nigerian equity market reacted negatively to the news of the country’s inflation rate accelerating to an eight-month high, as the bourse dipped 0.29% on Monday. 

The latest Consumer Price Indes report released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Monday showed that Nigeria’s inflation rate rose at a faster pace in April to 16. 82%, the highest since August 2021.
Meanwhile, the All-Share Index of NGX declined by 0.29% to 52,944.09 points due to price depreciation in WAPCO, MTNN and INTBREW.

The year-to-date return moderated to 23.94% while market capitalization declined by ₦83.22bn to ₦28.54tn.

The volume and value of the stocks traded increased by 23.30% and 38.85% to 375.2mn units and ₦4.9 6bn respectively. T

The most active stocks by volume were TRANSCORP (88.59m units),
JAIZBANK (87.4 2m units) and ACCESSCORP (28.7 5m units) while SEPLAT (₦1.4 1bn), MTNN (₦715.6 5mn) and ACCESSCORP (₦278.5 6mn) led by value.

On a sectoral basis, performance was bearish with a bullish tilt. Specifically, one sector closed higher while four sectors trailed. The Oil & Gas index was the only gainer, up by 0.4% due to gains in SEPLAT (+0.0 1%) and OANDO (+4.3 3%).

On the flip side, the Healthcare and ICT indices declined by 309bps and 31bps respectively due to losses in GLAXOSMITH (-9.49%), NEIMETH (-8.33%) and MTNN (-0.61%). In the same vein, the Services and Consumer Goods indices lost 0.3% and 0.16% respectively, on the back of losses in RTBRISCOE (-7.2 5%) and CHAMPION (-9.8 4%).

Meanwhile, the Agriculture, Banking and IndustrialGoods indices closed flat.