Fidelity Bank Plc, Sterling Financial Holdings Company Plc and Mutual Benefits Assurance Plc accounted for nearly 38 percent of all shares traded on the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) in the week ended September 18.
The three companies recorded a combined 1.229 billion shares worth N15.942 billion in 7,796 deals, according to the NGX weekly market report.
Their combined turnover represented 37.83 percent of the 3.249 billion shares exchanged across the equities market during the week.
However, the three stocks accounted for only 6.70 percent of the N237.986 billion in total transaction value, highlighting a sharp difference between their dominance by volume and their contribution by value.
The pattern reflects the broader concentration of trading activity in the Financial Services Industry, which generated 2.581 billion shares worth N97.212 billion in 138,900 deals.
Financial stocks consequently accounted for 79.43 percent of total equity volume and 40.85 percent of transaction value.
Fidelity Bank, Sterling Financial and Mutual Benefits alone were responsible for nearly half of the entire Financial Services Industry’s weekly share volume.
Their 1.229 billion shares represented approximately 47.6 percent of the 2.581 billion shares traded across the sector.
Fidelity Bank was particularly prominent during the week.
On September 17 alone, investors exchanged about 524.33 million Fidelity Bank shares worth N10.30 billion, making the lender the most actively traded stock by volume during that session.
The heavy activity in Fidelity Bank contributed to a sharp increase in overall market turnover on September 17, when investors traded approximately 1.111 billion shares worth N46.01 billion.
Despite the concentration in financial stocks, the week’s turnover data showed that high share volume did not necessarily translate into an equally large share of capital deployed.
While Fidelity Bank, Sterling Financial and Mutual Benefits generated more than one-third of all shares exchanged, their combined N15.94 billion transaction value represented less than 7 percent of the market total.
Other sectors generated substantially more value relative to their volumes. The ICT Industry, for example, recorded only 114.62 million shares but generated N21.54 billion in transaction value during the week.
Overall, investors exchanged 3.249 billion shares worth N237.986 billion in 287,919 deals, compared with 3.647 billion shares valued at N130.151 billion in 244,777 deals in the previous week.
Weekly share volume therefore declined approximately 10.9 percent, but transaction value surged about 82.9 percent, indicating that substantially more money changed hands despite fewer shares being traded.
The dominance of Fidelity Bank, Sterling Financial and Mutual Benefits reinforces the role of financial stocks as the primary source of NGX share liquidity, while the relatively small share of transaction value generated by the three counters shows that the week’s largest capital flows extended well beyond the market’s most heavily traded stocks.
