FRI NOV 06 2026-theGBJournal| Nigeria’s equities market recorded its steepest decline of the week on Thursday, as aggressive selloffs in heavyweight stocks, including Dangote Cement, Presco and First HoldCo, dragged the benchmark All-Share Index (ASI) down 2.0% to 249,710.59 points.
Market capitalisation shed value to close at ₦162.13 trillion, reflecting broad-based weakness across major sectors. DANGCEM (-10.0%), PRESCO (-10.0%), HBMNG (-7.7%), FIRSTHOLDCO (-2.4%) and NB (-2.5%) were among the key drivers of the market downturn.
Consequently, the market’s Month-to-Date (MTD) return deteriorated to -1.8%, while the Year-to-Date (YTD) return moderated to +60.5%.
Despite the negative price performance, trading activity strengthened significantly. Total volume traded increased by 49.6% to 825.95 million shares, valued at ₦70.42 billion across 31,866 deals. FIRSTHOLDCO dominated market activity, accounting for 478.42 million shares traded, worth ₦44.94 billion.
Sectoral performance was broadly negative, with the Industrial Goods index leading losses, declining 7.1%. The Insurance, Banking and Consumer Goods indices also shed 2.5%, 0.7% and 0.1%, respectively, while the Oil & Gas index closed flat.
Market breadth remained firmly negative at 0.6x, with 20 stocks advancing against 36 decliners. DANGCEM (-10.0%) and PRESCO (-10.0%) led the losers, while CWG (+9.9%) and ABBEYBANK (+9.8%) recorded the strongest gains.
In contrast, the NASD OTC market closed Thursday’s session on a positive note, with the NASD Securities Index (NSI) advancing 1.96% day-on-day to 4,273.18 points.
Market capitalisation increased by 1.94% to ₦2.56 trillion, lifting the market’s YTD return to 20.58%, from 18.27% in the previous session.
Trading activity was mixed. Total volume traded surged 122.67% to 1.15 million units, while transaction value declined sharply by 79.94% to ₦10.60 million. The number of deals also fell 19.35% to 25.
SDOKITIPUPA (+9.87%) emerged as the session’s top gainer, while SDIGIPLC (-9.34%) was the sole decliner.
The naira recorded a marginal depreciation at the official foreign exchange market, with the exchange rate weakening by 3 basis points (bps) to ₦1,347.47 per US dollar.
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