Chinwendu Obienyi
Total foreign transactions on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) increased by 12.69 per cent from N34.59billion (about $89.00million) to N38.98billion (about $100.81 million) between July and August.
Statistics obtained from the NSE’s website reveals that the total transactions executed between the current and prior month (July 2020) the total domestic transactions decreased by 19.16 per cent from N68.62 billion in July to N55.47 billion in August 2020.
This was contained in the NSE’s Domestic & Foreign Portfolio Investment Report released yesterday to the investing community. The report includes transactions from nearly all custodians and capital market operators.
Analysis of the report showed that as at August 31, 2020, total transactions at the nation’s bourse decreased by 8.49 per cent from N103.21billion (about $265.55million) in July 2020 to N94.45billion (about $244.27million) in August 2020. Further analysis showed that the performance of the current month when compared with the performance in August 2019 (N121.99billion) revealed that total transactions decreased by 22.58 per cent, while the total value of transactions executed by domestic investors outperformed transactions executed by foreign Investors by 18 per cent.
The report showed that institutional investors outperformed retail Investors by 4 per cent while retail transactions decreased by 18.22 per cent from N32.54 billion in July 2020 to N26.61billion in August 2020. On the other hand, the institutional composition of the domestic market decreased by 20.01 per cent from N36.08 billion in July 2020 to N28.86 billion in August 2020.
Meanwhile, the bulls continued its dominance in the domestic equities market, as buying interest in MTNN (+0.1 per cent), NB (+10 per cent) and Zenith Bank (+0.6 per cent) drove the market higher for the fifth consecutive trading session.
At the close of trading yesterday, the All-Share Index (ASI) climbed 0.79 per cent to close at 25,987.14 points. Accordingly, market capitalisation rose N106 billion to N13.581 trillion while Year-to-Date (YtD) return improved to -3.2 per cent.