Nigeria stocks end five-day rally as investors book profit

Nigerian stocks ended a five-day rally to fall 0.55 percent on Tuesday as investors booked profits from recent gains.

The index, which has the second biggest weighting on the MSCI frontier market index after Kuwait, closed at 23,832 points after gaining 5.9 percent over five days from Jan. 19.

Traders said investors were taking profits in stocks that had rallied more than 20 percent over the five-day period.

Unilever was the hardest hit, dropping 4.90 percent. FBN Holdings shed 3.51 percent, Stanbic IBTC was down 2.26 percent while Dangote Cement, which accounts for a third of the market capitalization, fell 0.14 percent.

The Nigerian stock market, sub-Saharan Africa's second biggest, has fallen 16.3 percent so far this month, depressed by a weak outlook for the naira currency and the persistent drop in the price of oil, the country's main export.