Stock market suffers 0.34% drop, losing N126bn amidst selling pressure
Investors in the Nigerian stock market are proceeding with caution as they continue to sell off their positions due to the weakening naira.
This selling pressure has led to a significant decrease of 0.34 per cent or N126 billion in the market. Prior to the Nigerian senate’s screening of Olayemi Cardoso for the new Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), data from AbokiFX, an online platform that monitors exchange rates on the parallel market, revealed that one dollar was trading at N1,000.
The uncertainty surrounding the nation’s macro-economic outlook, particularly in regards to foreign exchange, has made stock investors wary as it directly impacts foreign investments in the market, according to analysts at Lagos-based Vetiva research.
“With half-year (H1) 2023 results now out of the way, we expect to see a slightly bearish undertone in the banking sector, as profit taking activities persist, while general market sentiments remain mixed,” Vetiva analysts had noted on Monday.
Only this week, the stock market has dropped by 1 percent, while its return year-to-date (YtD) lowered to +30.05percent on Tuesday.
Stocks like Conoil, Oando, Berger Paints were on offer. Conoil dropped most from day-open high of N89.10 to N80.20, losing N8.90 or 9.99percent. Oando was also down, from a high of N10.70 to N9.65, losing N1.05 or 9.81percent.
Berger Paints went down from N12.75 to N11.65, losing N1.10 or 8.63 percent. FTN Cocoa made the league of top laggards after dropping from N1.91 to N1.72, losing 19kobo or 9.95percent, while the share price of Lasaco, another major laggard dropped from N2.02 to N1.85, shedding 17kobo or 8.42percent.
The Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) All-Share Index (ASI) and equities market capitalisation decreased further on Tuesday from preceding day’s 66,882.64 points and N36.605trillion respectively to 66,652.17 points and N36.479trillion.
At the close of trading, the stock investors in 7,018 deals exchanged 363,989,562 shares valued at N4.529billion.
The market has since last week gotten some level of bearish sentiments as the NGX All-Share Index closed lower by 0.11percent to settle at 67,324.59 points.
“As we advised last week, we rebalanced our portfolio in line with our weighting strategy, mirroring the changes in the NGX-ASI weight constituents. In addition, we also adjusted the weighting strategy for our notional positions in some tickers, given our perception of the market. This adjustment implied selling off some units (considering market liquidity) using the respective close prices on Monday September 18, 2023,” according to CardinalStone research analysts in their Model Equity Portfolio released on September 25.
“We are now neutral in our overall bank exposure but will make further adjustments this week to bring our weights in line with the sub-index of banks, as much as possible, and bring our overall position to a small underweight,” said Coronation Research analysts in their Model Equity Portfolio released on September 25.
They noted that last week that made notional purchases of Seplat Energy as part of their effort to create a double overweight in the stock, prompted to do this by recent gains in oil prices.
“Liquidity was insufficient to get the job done (we respect actual market liquidity even though this is a notional portfolio) and so we will continue to make such notional purchases this week. We plan no other changes this week,” the analysts added.
