By Bamidele Famoofo
WorldStage— Bearish sentiments persisted in the local bourse as losses in GEREGU (-10.0%), OKOMUOIL (-9.9%) caused a 0.5 percent decline in the All-Share Index to 240,808.72 points.
Consequently, the Month-to-Date and Year-to-Date returns settled lower at -3.4 percent and +54.8 percent, respectively.
The total volume traded advanced by 5.4 percent to 482.40 million units, valued at N32.60billion, and exchanged in 48,306 deals. ACCESSCORP was the most traded stock by volume at 130.26 million units, while MTNN was the most traded stock by value at N8.19 billion.
Sectoral performance was negative as the Insurance (-2.3%), and Banking (-1.0%) Indices declined, while the Consumer Goods, Industrial Goods and Oil & Gas indices closed flat.
As measured by market breadth, market sentiment was negative (0.3x), as 13 tickers gained relative to 50 losers. GEREGU (-10.0%) and OKOMUOIL (-9.9%) led the laggards, while NEIMETH (+9.5%) and CORNERST (+9.3%) posted the most significant gains of the day.
Meanwhile, the official FX rate depreciated by 0.5 percent to N1,362.50/USD at the currency market on Wednesday as the overnight lending rate contracted by 2bps to 22.2 percent in the absence of any significant funding pressure on the system in the money market.
Activities in the Treasury bills secondary market were bearish, as the average yield expanded by 12bps to 17.9 percent. Across the curve, the average yield expanded at the short (+5bps), mid (+5bps) and long (+20bps) segments, due to the profit taking activities on the 22DTM (+53bps), 169DTM (+25bps) and 295DTM (+72bps) bills respectively. Similarly, the average yield expanded by 58bps to 20.8 percent in the OMO segment.
The FGN bond secondary market traded on a bearish note as the average yield expanded by 6bps to 16.6 percent. Across the benchmark curve, the average yield expanded at the short (+16bps) and long (+1bp) end due to sell pressures on the FEB-2031 (+34bps) and APR-2037 (+22bps) bonds, respectively, but remained unchanged at the mid segment.
