By Yakubu LAAH InvestAdvocate

Lagos (INVESTADVOCATE)-The bears on Wednesday tightened its grip on Nigerian stocks as sell-offs across all sectors of the market let the benchmark index to its eight consecutive losing sessions.

At the end of transactions,  all-share index (ASI) dipped further  2.78 percent to close at 28,961.67 points, while market capitalisation declined by N273 billion to close at N9.56 trillion.

Current Year-to-Date (Y-t-D) and Month-to-Date (M-t-D) returns at the Nigerian Stock exchange (NSE) now stands at a negative 29.29 percent and 16.16 percent respectively.

Cordros in its daily market update affirmed that for the second consecutive session this week, all of the five NSE sectoral indices closed in the negative territory.

According to the report, the Oil/Gas and Banking indices recorded the poorest performances, closing 4.51 percent and 4.42 percent respectively. Consumers Goods index followed with a huge loss of 3.63 percent, while the Industrial and Insurance indices where not left out on the losing streak as they posted 1.89 percent and 0.65 percent respectively.

In terms of market breadth, the Nigerian bourse closed on a negative note as it recorded 10 gainers and 49 losers. Flour Mills Nigeria Plc led the losers chart with a loss of N3.84; while glass manufacturers, Beta Glass Plc emerged top gainers with a gain of N1.26.

The Nigerian equities market turnover at the end of trading showed that volume traded decreased by 84.58 percent to 481.85 million shares, valued at N6.21 billion and traded in 3,822 deals.

“We expect bearish trading to continue tomorrow as foreign investors react to the brisk depreciation in the naira,” the Cordros update affirmed.