For the week ending on December 8, the FMDQ Spot and Derivatives markets reported a turnover of $557.8 million, which was 6.63 percent ($39.60 million) less than the $597.4 million realized the week before.
The week-over-week (WoW) decline in total transactions, as reported by FMDQ Securities Exchange, was caused by a combined 4.6% ($26.81 million) and 67.7% ($12.79 million) decline in spot and futures turnover, respectively.
The exchange clarified that no trades were made in the exchange-traded FX Futures or the Cleared Naira-settled Non-deliverable Forwards markets and that the WoW decline in FX derivatives turnover was exclusively caused by the 67.6% ($12.7 million) decrease in FX Forwards turnover.
Additionally, for the week ending December 8, the total value of transactions in the FX Spot market was $551.7 million, which is 4.6 percent ($26.81 million) less than the value of transactions completed for the week ending December 1 ($578.55 million).
The average Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Fixing (NAFEX) rate for the week ending December 8 was $/₦867.76, down from $/₦848.72 reported in the week ending December 1. This indicates a 2.19 percent ($/₦19.04) devaluation of the naira against the US dollar.
In the equity market, a high volume of shares traded was caused by heavy trading in the shares of certain financial stocks, particularly Universal Insurance and United Bank for Africa (UBA). Last week, investors on the Exchange floor transacted 34,704 deals totaling 2.4 billion shares, valued at N45 billion.
On December 1, however, the amount of shares moved exceeded 2.5 billion units, valued at N38.6 billion, and was swapped in 36,138 deals.
With 1.7 billion shares worth N22.8 billion exchanged in 18,190 deals, the financial services sector dominated the activity chart when measured by volume. This sector accounted for 71.2% of the overall stock turnover volume.
Following with 201.5 million shares valued at N2.4 billion in 1,533 transactions was the conglomerates industry. With a turnover of 127.5 million shares worth N3.7 billion in 4,113 deals, the consumer goods sector came in third.
A total of N10.6 billion in 3,860 deals, or 543.3 million shares, were traded in the top three stocks (Universal Insurance Plc, United Bank for Africa Plc, and Guaranty Trust Holdings Company Plc) according to volume. This represented 22.4% of the overall equity turnover.
Additionally, this week saw 1,064 deals involving 149,237 units valued at N82.359 million, as opposed to last week’s 308 deals involving 43,318 units valued at N10.993 million.
Additionally, in contrast to the 17,903 units worth N18.305 million that were transacted in 14 deals the week before, 43,802 units valued at N46.2 million were sold in 20 deals.
As a result, the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) all-share index and market capitalization increased by 0.2% to end the week at 71,541.74 and N39.149 trillion, respectively. This corresponds to returns for the month and year to date of +0.2% and +39.6%, respectively.
The NGX Sovereign Bond index closed flat, while all other indices finished higher. These included the NGX Main Board, NGX Insurance, NGX ASeM, NGX Oil & Gas, NGX Lotus II, and NGX Industrial Goods, which all saw depreciation of 0.54 percent, 1.44 percent, 1.03 percent, 0.58 percent, 0.22 percent, and 3.03 percent, respectively.
