The naira looks to have resumed rapid decline, approaching N900/$ at the parallel market, barely a week after it started showing some gains.
After President Bola Tinubu met with the leadership of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) two weeks ago to discuss how to protect the currency from debauchery, the local currency saw modest increases. According to The Guardian, it increased to N820/$ at the beginning of the week.
The appreciation appears to be fleeting as the naira started a new problem at the start of the week. According to information provided to The Guardian, yesterday’s exchange rate in Abuja was roughly N890 to $1.
While speculative trading appears to be rearing its ugly head once more in Lagos, the situation is essentially unchanged. Naira traded 0.4% lower than Tuesday’s closing rate of N770.72/$1 at N773.42/$1 in the Exporters and Investors (I&E) market.
In the meantime, the market value of listed stocks increased by N160 billion to close at N35.84 trillion yesterday from N35.7 trillion when trading resumed for the week on Monday.
Additionally, the all-share index (ASI) increased by 0.4% from 65,200.75 to 65,492.92. Price increases in major and medium capitalized stocks, including Transcorp Hotel, Dangote Sugar Refinery, Transnational Corporation (Transcorp), Computer Warehouse Group (CWG), and Vitafoam Nigeria, were the primary drivers of the upturn.
Market sentiment was down as evidenced by the market’s breadth, which showed that 26 equities declined opposed to 22 advances. The company with the largest price increase, closing at 57 kobo, was Associated Bus Company, up 9.62 percent.
Transcorp Hotel increased by 8.99% to close at N40, and Thomas Wyatt Nigeria gained 9.3 percent to settle at N1.41. Transcorp increased by 7.14 percent to close at N4.80 kobo, while Courteville Business Solutions increased by 8.33 percent to close at 65 kobo.
Conoil, on the other hand, led other losses on the chart with 10% as it closed at N99. Following John Holt, which fell by 9.38% to close at 29 kobo, Mutual Benefits Assurance fell by 8.75% to finish at N2.92 kobo.
Tantalizer lost 8.33% of its value to close at 33 kobo, while Eterna lost 8.24% to finish at N15.60 kobo. With 6,237 transactions, the overall volume of trading climbed by 18.69% to 348.323 million units worth N4.048 billion. Transcorp shares had the most trading, with 144.711 million shares changing hands for N682.613 million.
Dangote Sugar Refinery exchanged 316.124 million shares worth N632.58 million, Universal Insurance followed with an account of 27.531 million shares priced at N5.638 million.
Consolidated Hallmark Insurance traded 15.776 million shares worth N13.001 million, while Fidelity Bank traded 15.804 million shares worth N111.214 million.
