Nigeria’s stock market shed N13.29 trillion off the value of listed equities in June, in what has been described as broad-based selloff that ended one of the strongest rallies in the market’s history.
The June decline is the largest monthly destruction of shareholder value ever recorded on the Nigerian Exchange.
The benchmark All-Share Index (ASI) declined 8.28% during the month, its biggest monthly drop since President Bola Tinubu assumed office, while year-to-date gains narrowed sharply from over 60% at the end of May to 47.43%.
The Nigerian Exchange started June with Market capitalisation at N160.5 trillion after a five-month rally that had added roughly N60 trillion in value, with the All-Share Index posting gains of more than 60% for the year.
By the end of June, however, market capitalisation dropped to N147.2 trillion, erasing N13.29 trillion in just one month.
Although the market still closed the first half of the year with a respectable 47.43% year-to-date return, June effectively wiped out a large portion of the gains accumulated during one of the exchange’s strongest runs in nearly two decades.
The reversal was particularly striking because April had ranked among the market’s strongest months in recent history, delivering a 20.36% monthly return, the best monthly performance since May 2009.
Warning signs emerged in May, when market breadth weakened despite the NGX still managing a modest 3.24% gain for the month.
Those cracks widened significantly in June as sustained selling pressure accelerated throughout the month, with several trading weeks recording market capitalization losses exceeding N4 trillion.
