By Yakubu LAAH InvestAdvocate

Lagos (INVESTADVOCATE)-Nigerian stocks on Thursday dipped 0.98 percent on profit-taking in the shares of Dangote Cement Plc (DANGCEM) and prevalent sell-offs in the Oil/Gas sector.

At the close of trading in the review period, all-share index (ASI) on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) closed at 29,747.57 basis points, while market capitalisation declined by N101.05 billion to N10.20 trillion.

“The poor performance increased the Month-to-Date and Year-to-Date losses to 1.43 percent and 14.17 percent respectively,” according to Cordros daily market update.

Cordros says two (2) of the five (5) NSE sector indices recorded gains. “The Consumer Goods index had the best performance with a 0.96 percent gain, while the Insurance index added 0.19 percent,” the report affirmed.

On the contrary, the Industrial index had the worst performance with a 1.93 percent loss via a 3.28 percent decline in price of DANGCEM, the Oil/Gas index followed with 1.14 percent depreciation.

“Despite an impressive H1-2015 result by GUARANTY – wherein a N0.25 interim dividend was paid and a 21 percent y/y PAT expansion was recorded, the Banking index lost 0.22 percent as the price per share for the company was unchanged,” the Cordros update added.

At the close business on the Nigerian bourse, market breadth remained negative with 16 gainers and 27 losers.

Lender, Skye Bank Plc led the gainers chart with a gain of 0.14 kobo per share; while drug maker, Evans Medical Plc emerged the top loser with a loss of 0.06 kobo per share.

In terms of turnover, volume traded at the Nigerian equities market grew by 858.92 percent to 2.87 billion shares valued at N5.28 billion and traded in 4,014 deals.

Cordros update affirmed that the huge amount of volume traded was due to the shares of Equity Assurance Plc in which 2.53 billion shares were exchanged.    “We maintain a negative outlook,” the Cordros update said.