The Nigerian equities market went on a losing streak during the week, which ended on Friday, as bearish sentiment prevailed across the five trading sessions.
This, analysts believe, was mainly driven by investors’ reaction to the recent jack-up of the Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) of commercial banks to 27per cent from 22.5per cent by the CBN, in its effort to pressure down the current rising inflation rate.
This development, which is expected to impact negatively the bottom line of commercial banks triggered sell-off on most banking stocks in the course of the week. As a result, the NSE-ASI and NSE-Market Capitalisation value declined by 2.65 per cent w/w to close for this week at 28,843.53 absolute points and N14.86 trillion respectively as against 29,628.84 absolute points and N15.26 trillion the previous Friday.This in nominal term translates to a week-on-week loss of N404.50 billion in Market Capitalisation value.
Two sector closed positive on week-on-week basis, led by Insurance (+0.90per cent), and Consumer Goods (+0.09per cent) while Banking (-5.17per cent), Industrial Goods (-2.83per cent), and Oil & Gas (-1.14per cent) sector closed negatively. LINKASSURE emerged top gainers this week; appreciating by 18.75per cent w/w, while ETERNA shed 23.81 per cent w/w to emerge top loser.
Overall, a total turnover of 1.56 billion shares worth N26.07 billion in 21,444 deals were traded this week by investors on the floor of the Nigerian exchange in contrast to a total 1.23 billion shares valued at N22.71 billion that exchanged hands last week in 21,098 deals.
