Equities trading at the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) on Tuesday closed in red, extending the bearish-run from the previous week as most of Airtel shares put up for sales failed to find buyers. As a result, the year- to-date (YTD) return dipped to 1.37 per cent, the market capitalization shed N569.12 billion to close at N28.30 trillion while the the benchmark index gave up 1.96 per cent to close at 51,952.99 points. Market activities showed trade turnover settled higher relative to the previous session, with the value of trans- actions up by 148.31 per cent.
A total of 1.72 billion shares valued at N4.79 billion were exchanged in 4,286 deals. T R A N S C O R P (+2.19%) led the volume and value charts with 1.55 billion units traded in deals worth N2.10 billion.
Performance across the sub-sector gauges tracked was negative except for the NGX Oil/Gas index, which remained unchanged. Tier-1 banks pushed the decline in the Banking index (-0.34%) as ACCESSCORP (-2.33%), and GTCO (-0.41%) recorded losses in their share prices, while Roy- al Exchange (-9.09%), AIICO (-5.00%), Prestige (-5.00%), and WAPIC (-2.50%) led the decline in the NGX Insurance Index (-1.83%). Notably NGX Con- sumer Goods index and NGX Industrial index fell by 0.16 per cent and 0.57 per cent respectively. Market breadth closed negative with declining issues outnumbering ad- vancing ones. A I R T E L A F R I (-10.00%) topped 21 oth- ers on the laggard’s log, while NAHCO (+3.06%) topped TRANSCORP (+2.19%) on the leader’s table.