Stocks lost N107.69 billion on Monday to dividend restrictions

• Following the CBN’s directive suspending dividend payments (dividend restrictions), bonus disbursements, and offshore investments for banks under regulatory forbearance, the Nigerian stock market opened the week on a negative note, as investor sentiment weakened amid concerns over earnings retention and capital constraints within the banking sector, as a result, the benchmark index shed 0.15% to close at 115,258.77 points, bringing the y-t-d return down to 11.98% from 12.15%. In the same vein, the market capitalisation also lost N107.69bn to close at N72.68tn.
• The market downturn was spurred by sell pressure in Tier 1 banking ticker; ZENITHBANK (-6.37%), UBA (-5.67%), FIRSTHOLDCO (-6.03%), and ACCESSCORP (-8.28%) outweighing  buy interests in MTNN (+0.31%), BUAFOODS (+4.58%) and INTBREW (+1.89%).
• Analysis of today’s market activities showed trade turnover settled higher relative to the previous session, with the value of transactions up by 22.61%. A total of 721.75m units of shares valued at ₦22.01bn were exchanged in 22,100 deals. ACCESSCORP (-8.28%) led the volume chart with 92.70m units traded while ZENITHBANK (-6.37%) led the value chart in deals worth ₦3.56bn.
• Market breadth closed negative at a 0.49-to-1 ratio with declining issues outnumbering the advancing ones. NNFM (-10.00%) topped forty-two (42) others on the laggard’s table while GUINEAINS (+10.00%) led twenty (20) others on the leader’s log.

NASD Summary

• The NASD OTC Securities Exchange started the week down, with the NASD Securities Index (NSI) losing 0.45% to end the session at 3,326.3 points. However, market capitalisation decreased by the same margin to N1.95tn.
• Market performance elevated,  Volume traded increased by 99.79% to 479,638 units, while the total value of transactions increased by 138.38% to N21.75m. A total of 37 deals were recorded during the session.