The Nigerian equity market dipped by 0.7 per cent at the end of trading today. This followed 10 per cent drop in the share price of BUA Foods and 1.2 per cent price decline by Airtel Africa. A 30kobo loss by tier one lender, Zenith Bank also helped in dragging the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) indices down.

At the end of the day, the NGX ASI (All share index) declined by 0.7 per cent to stand at 52,411.09 points. Consequently, the Month-to-Date loss increased to -1.1 per cent, while the Year-to-Date return moderated to +22.7 per cent.

The total volume of shares traded increased by 12.5 per cent to 211.61 million units, valued at NGN2.37 billion, and exchanged in 4,750 deals. Sterling Bank was the most traded stock by volume at 63.66 million units, while Zenith Bank was the most traded stock by value at N382.57 million.

Performance across sectors was broadly negative, as the Oil & Gas (-0.8%), Banking (-0.6%), and Insurance (-0.3%) indices recorded losses, while the Consumer Goods and Industrial Goods indices closed flat.

As measured by market breadth, market sentiment was negative (0.5x) as 22 tickers lost relative to 10 gainers. Conoil (-10.0%) and BUA Foods (-10.0%) topped the losers’ chart, while Linkage Assurance (+9.8%) and Courtville (+8.0%) recorded the highest gains of the day.