On Thursday, investors in the Nigerian Exchange Limited experienced a loss of N118 billion, primarily due to declines in the share prices of Omatek Ventures, Cutix Plc, and First City Monument Bank.

Omatek Ventures experienced a 10% decrease, closing at N0.63, while Cutix Plc saw a 9.51% decline, closing at N5.33. First City Monument Bank also suffered an 8.75% loss, closing at N7.30.

In contrast, the gainers chart was led by Custodian Investment, which recorded an 8.51% increase to close at N0.80. Livestock Feeds rose by 3.91% to close at N0.09, and Wapic Insurance surged by 3.90% to end the trading day at N0.03.

Today’s market experienced a bearish trend, with the All Share Index declining by 0.21%, settling at 100,156.96 points, a decline of 208.21 points from the previous close of 100,365.17. This decline occurred despite increased regulatory attention.

Consequently, the year-to-date return stands at 34.08%, the month-to-date return at 0.10%, and the week-to-date return at negative 0.38%.

Furthermore, market capitalization decreased by 0.21%, closing at N56.711 trillion. Trading activity involved 366,249,965 units of shares exchanged in 8,075 deals, with a total value of N6.88 billion.

The activity level experienced a significant increase, with a 169.1% surge in volume traded and a 12.4% rise in value traded, reaching 1.3 billion units and N9.7 billion, respectively.

However, the market sentiment remained bearish, as the exchange witnessed a limited number of gainers (12) compared to the higher number of losers (25), while 86 stocks remained unchanged.

Sectoral performance was predominantly negative, with five indices declining and only one index showing a gain. The Banking index underperformed, recording a 1.6% decrease primarily due to price declines in Zenith Bank (-2.6%), First Bank of Nigeria Holdings (-2.89%), and United Bank for Africa (-2.8%).

In the same vein, Linkage Assurance experienced a decrease of 7.5 per cent, Veritas Kapital dropped by 3.9 per cent, Dangote Sugar fell by 2.6 per cent, and National Salt Company saw a decline of 2.2 per cent, causing the insurance and Consumer Goods indices to decrease by 0.756 per cent and 0.3 per cent, respectively.

The Industrial Goods and Airtel Africa ICT indices also experienced losses of 0.01 per cent and 0.03 per cent, respectively, due to declines in Cutix plc (-9.5 per cent) and Omatek ventures (-10.0 per cent).

Conversely, Oando Plc gained 3.1 per cent and Japaul Gold and Ventures Plc gained 0.5 per cent, leading to a modest 0.01 per cent increase in the Oil & Gas index.

Afrinvest Research predicts that the market will maintain its negative performance in the last trading session of the week due to higher yield repricing on risk-free securities and policy-induced value reassessment in major industries.

Analysts at Afrinvest Research anticipate that the market will continue its bearish performance in the final trading session of the week, as a result of policy-induced valuation re-assessment in major sectors and upward yield repricing on risk-free instruments.

On Wednesday the equity market sustained its bearish trading, resulting in a loss of N68bn for investors. The All Share Index and the Market Capitalisation both decreased by 0.12 per cent to settle at 100,365.17 points and N56.83tn, respectively.