Intense profit-taking and heavy sell-offs across major heavyweight equities brought a sudden halt to the Nigerian stock market’s recent rally on Wednesday, October 28, 2026.
The aggressive offloading of shares dragged the benchmark index into negative territory and shaved nearly ₦719 billion off total market wealth.
The Nigerian Exchange (NGX) All-Share Index (ASI) fell by 0.44% to close the mid-week session at 252,882.78 points, down from 253,990.06 points.
Driven by widespread selling pressure, the total market capitalisation contracted correspondingly, dropping by approximately ₦718.95 billion to settle at ₦164.19 trillion, moderating the year-to-date (YTD) return to 62.51%.
The wave of sell-offs heavily impacted bellwether stocks across the financial services, industrial, and energy sectors. FIRSTHOLDCO bore the brunt of the downward pressure with a steep 10.00% decline, followed by market pullbacks in HONYFLOUR (-2.55%), GTCO (-1.79%), OANDO (-1.37%), BUACEMENT (-1.21%), ZENITHBANK (-0.42%), and NGXGROUP (-0.12%).
Meanwhile, REGALINS saw further downward movement, dipping below its 52-week low to ₦0.68. Conversely, SOVRENINS managed to lead the day’s marginal gainers.
Reflecting the defensive posture of market participants, Proshare’s memorandum indexes closed bearish, with the market cap-weighted index sliding 0.94% to 1,508.51 points and the total return float-adjusted index shedding 2.25% to 1,186.41 points.
Trading metrics also cooled significantly following the previous session’s heightened activity. Total volume traded plummeted by 92.28% to 404.11 million units valued at ₦27.91 billion across 39,012 deals.
UBA drove the volume charts with 38.48 million shares (9.52% of total volume), trailed by ACCESSCORP and ZENITHBANK, while DANGCEM recorded the highest transaction value at ₦4.86 billion (17.41% of the day’s value), closely followed by ZENITHBANK and GTCO.
