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Nigeria Stock Exchange Watch: Bearish Sentiments Linger as Market Spirals Downwards

By Afolabi Ogunde on February 9, 2012

Selling pressure contributed to ensuring the market continued its downward spiral for the third consecutive day in a row.

The Nigerian Stock Exchange shed 0.3% in today’s trading causing the All Share Index to settle at 20,631.38. The Year-to-Date performance of the bourse is -0.48%.

The Consumer Goods sector was the only sectorial indice to trend upwards, clinching a very marginal 0.01% based on slight movement in the prices of stock such as Guinness (+0.05%), Nigerian Breweries (+0.01%), and Nestle (1.05%). The bearish performers in that sector today included all three Dangote subsidiaries namely Dangote Flour (-4.96%), Dangote Sugar (-4.38%) and NASCON (-1.03%). Honeywell (-0.33%) was also on the decline.

The Banking sub-sector (-0.87%) witnessed the lingering of bearish sentiment, although the price of Diamond (+1.17%), Sterling (+2.41%), and Zenith (+0.66%) firmed up as investors were willing to purchase at their current price levels. Also recording gain today were Unity and Stanbic IBTC.

Stellar performances by Goldlink (+3.45%) and Intercontinental Wapic (+3.85%) was insufficient to stop the Insurance sub-sector (-1.69%) from going to the dumps today. Prestige (-4.76%), Custodian (-4.73%), and Aiico (-3.85%) were all down in today’s session. Other losers were GTAssurance and Continental Re.

The top 5 gainers in today’s session were: