By Peter Egwuatu

SIXTY-TWO stocks, representing 35 per cent of the stocks currently listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, NSE, recorded no price movement in 2016. Out of the 62, stocks from the financial services sector dominated the list with 27, services follow closely with 10 while ICT and oil and gas both have five each.

Construction/Real Estate (four), Consumer Goods (three), Healthcare (three), Agriculture (two), Industrial Goods (two) and Natural resources (one) also made the list to complete the pack.

Standard Insurance recorded the highest number of volumes traded among the 62 stocks closely followed by Equity Assurance and Unity Kapital. Nigerian Stock Market performance in 2016 has been very bearish as the NSE, All Share Index, ASI remained in the negative territory in terms of Year to Date, YTD performance review in most trading days of the year.

However, the market, in the last trading week of the year, ended on a bullish note, driven by sentiments for the highly capitalised securities. Banking, oil and gas and industrial goods sectors ended the year on a negative note as their sub-indices depreciated by of 2.0 per cent, 0.2 per cent and 0.1 per cent respectively.

A review of the market performance showed that the NSE closed the month of January 2016 with a whooping loss of -16.05 per cent. This represents the highest monthly loss recorded so far in 2016 while the +10.38 per cent gain recorded in May 2016 represented the highest monthly gain recorded in 2016.

Market quarterly performance review reveals that NSE ASI recorded -11.65 per cent loss in first quarter , Q1’16 while the index retracted in second quarter, Q2’16 with +16.96 per cent gain to clear previous quarter losses.

In third quarter, Q3’16, the index dropped by -4.27 per cent while it has also dropped further in fourth quarter, Q4’16 by-6.17 per cent as at December 19, 2016.