Bearish sentiments persisted on the Nigerian Exchange Limited as the market reacted to the recent Supreme Court judgment concerning the 2023 general elections, resulting in a market capitalization loss of N67 billion.

This marked the second consecutive day of negative trading on the local stock exchange.

The decline in market capitalization was primarily driven by the depreciation in the share values of several key companies, including MTN Nigeria (-0.40 per cent), Flour Mills (-3.23 per cent), Stanbic IBTC (-3.21 per cent), Computer Warehouse Group (-9.94 per cent), Fidelity Bank (-1.82 per cent), and 24 others.

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The Supreme Court’s decision affirmed the verdict of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal, which upheld President Bola Tinubu’s victory in the February 2023 election.

The All-Share index recorded a dip of -0.18 per cent, compared to the previous day’s -0.02 per cent decline, closing at 67,084.95 points, while the market capitalization settled at N36.856 trillion.

Market Breadth, which measures investor sentiments, was negative at 0.41x, in contrast to the previous market breadth of 1.28x, with 29 stocks depreciating against 12 gainers.

Transaction volume decreased from 329.66 million to 267.65 million shares valued at N5.1 billion, traded in 5,205 deals. A total of 117 stocks were traded during the day’s session.

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In terms of sectoral performance, negative sentiment prevailed in two out of five sectors, with the Banking and Insurance indexes declining by 0.33 per cent and 1.82 per cent, respectively.

This was driven by sell-offs in companies like Stanbic, Prestige, Cornerstone Insurance, GTCO, and Zenith Bank.

However, the Consumer Goods sector saw a growth of 0.12 per cent, thanks to companies like Nestle and Transcorp, while the Industrial Goods and Oil & Gas indexes exhibited lackluster performances.

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Some of the top gainers at the close of Thursday’s trading included McNichols, with shares appreciating by 8.93 per cent, Oando gaining 4.07 per cent, UAC Nigeria’s shares increasing by 6.09 per cent, Chams gaining 3.65 per cent, Nestle gaining 2.94 per cent, and Transcorp gaining 2.75 per cent per unit.

The most active stocks of the day were Fidelity, Chams, Nestle, AccessCorp, UBA, and Stanbic.