Trading activities on the Nigerian Stocks Exchange (NSE) yesterday closed in the red as market capitalisation of equities depreciated by N27 billion to close at N6.590 trillion, while the key benchmark indices dropped 84.67 basis points or 0.40 per cent to close at 20,913.21.
Meanwhile, the Chief Executive Officer of The NSE, Mr. Oscar Onyema, is set to address a world press conference to appraise the market performance in 2011 and make prognosis into 2012 on Monday.
The press conference according to a statement from the management, would?? also afford the CEO the opportunity to intimate the press with the plans for repositioning the market for better performance.
Consequently, three out of the five NSE sectoral indices closed negative as NSE 30 index which basically measures the performance of blue chips dropped by 4.46 basis points to close at 937.29 points, NSE Banking index drop by 5.05 basis points to closed at 270.82 basis point and NSE Insurance index also lost 0.64 basis points to close at 128.47 points. NSE Food & Beverages index gain 5.26 basis points to close at 1,702.31 points, while NSE Oil & Gas closed parallel at 228.34 basis points.
During the day, a turnover of 178 million shares worth N1.169 billion in 3,259 deals was recorded, in contrast to a total of 106 million shares valued at N874 million exchanged in 3,297 deals during the previous trading day.
The Financial Services sector accounted for 131 million shares valued at N671 million traded in 1,731 deals. The Banking sub-sector of the Financial Services sector was the most active during the day (measured by turnover volume), with 109 million shares worth N651 million exchanged by investors in 1,634 deals.