TheCable

For the second consecutive day, the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) closed in the negative losing N435 billion after an initial loss of N294 billion on Tuesday.

The market, which had a 35-month high, hitting N13 trillion ended in the red on Friday, to recover on Monday and begin the downward movement on Tuesday.

Market capitalisation closed at N12,443,508,048,791 losing N435,608,813,894 as against Tuesday’s closing figure of N12,879,116,862,686.

Nestle had led the gainers chart with NASCON, UBN, Dangote Sugar and Vitafoam making it to the top five gainers.

Dangote Cement lost N11 to top the losers’ chart with Total, Nigerian Breweries, Guinness and Stanbic making the top five losers.

Although Godwin Emefiele, Central Bank of Nigeria governor, had warned investors to exercise caution in the market, warning of a bubble, the Securities Exchange Commission had attributed the upward movement to other factors.

In a policy brief released on Tuesday, SEC had attributed the gains in the market to macroeconomic factors like foreign exchange rate stability, lower inflation rate and fixed income rate.

According to the brief, SEC explained that constant interventions by the CBN in the foreign exchange market and the introduction of the investors’ and exporters’ window (I&E) positively affected the companies in terms of their ability to obtain foreign exchange for importation of inputs and the purchasing power of the citizen.