Nigerian Stock Exchange Watch: Profit takers Rule the Day

The market succumbed to profit takers today, the All Share Index dropped by 0.64% to 20,364.56.

Investors were eager to harvest their profits made from gains on banking, consumer and Insurance stocks.

First Bank (-4.07%), Union Bank (-4.99%), Fidelity (-0.71%), Diamond (-1.92%), and Zenith (-0.45%) all shed points due to heavy selling pressure.

UBA (+4.62%) continued to build on its positive momentum, extending its gains since February 14^th to 52%.

Other gainers in the banking sub-sector today included Access (+1.14%), FCMB (1.83%), Skye (+0.48%) and GTBank (+0.35%).

Nigerian Breweries shed 1.93% in today’s session. Other losers across the consumer goods sector included Dangote Flour (-4.99%), Nestle (-4.76%), Honeywell (-4.74%) and Cadbury (-2.17%).

On the flip side were Guinness (+0.28%) up marginally, Dangote Sugar (+4.53%), and Flour Mills (+0.38%).

Profit takers trimmed GTAssure (-4.35%). Custodian and Continental Re were up 440 and 417 points respectively.

The volume of shares traded (428 million) and the value (N2.62 billion) were down 20% and 26% respectively.

The day’s top gainers included:

Stocks trailing the market today were:

Leading the activity charts were: