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Nigeria Stock Exchange Watch: Market Begins Second Quarter on Negative Note

By Afolabi Ogunde on April 2, 2012

The market resumed the second quarter of 2012, continuing its free-fall, shedding 0.01% today, after shedding 2.54% last week. Selling pressure forced most of the banking and consumer stocks to spiral downwards. Although some blue chip companies including Mobil (+5%) performed well as they released their FY 2011 results today.

3 vs 8 banking sub-sector stocks recorded gains today including Sterling (+3.64%), GTBank (+2.3%), and FCMB (+1.38%). Trailing the sub-sector in losses were First Bank (-4.99%), Access (-4.92%), Union (-4.80%). Fidelity (-0.71%), Skye (-0.77%) and UBA (-0.38%) also recorded marginal losses. The sub-sector as a whole fell by 0.95%.

Shares of Diamond bank did not record any movement, although the stock topped the volumes chart, trading over 41 million units, even as the company recently recorded a N 11 billion loss in its FYE 2011 reports.

Across the consumer goods sector, the breweries index was silent. However the Food and Beverages sector was predominantly plagued with losses as Dangote Sugar (-0.79%), Nascon (-4.89%), and Nestle (-4.12%) shed points. On the positive side of the sector, Dangote Flour (+4.27%) and Honeywell Flour (+4.61%) gained points.

Mobil (+5%) and Eterna (+4.86%) led the Oil and Gas sector in price appreciation, whilst Oando’s (-4.59%) stock took a big hit and Forte (-0.09%) was down marginally.

The market’s YTD performance is -0.38%. Market Capitalization stands at N 6.5 trillion.

Leading the Exchange in Price Performance today were: