Chinwendu Obienyi
Amid the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) currently rocking economies globally, transactions on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) increased by 63.58 per cent from N148.50 billion (about $484.60 million) in February 2020 to N242.91billion (about $630.04 million) in March 2020.
This was contained in the NSE Domestic and Foreign Portfolio Investment Report which was released to the investing community yesterday. The NSE Domestic and Foreign Portfolio Investment Report is prepared on a monthly basis, with trading figures from market operators on their Domestic and Foreign Portfolio Investment (FPI) flows.
According to the report, the performance of the current month when compared to the performance in March 2019 (N110.11 billion) revealed that total transactions increased by 120.60 per cent while the total value of transactions executed by domestic investors outperformed that of foreign investors by 10 per cent.
Further analysis of the total transactions executed between the current and prior month (February 2020) revealed that total domestic transactions increased by 71.97 per cent from N77.16 billion in February to N132.69 billion in March 2020. Also, total foreign transactions increased by 54.50 per cent from N71.34 billion (about $232.79million) to N110.22 billion (about $285.89million) between February and March 2020.
However, foreign outflows rose by N87.73 billion as against N52.37 billion in February 2020 while foreign inflows for the month under review grew by N22.49 billion compared with N18.87 billion in the corresponding period of February 2019.
Furthermore, the value of domestic transactions executed by Institutional investors outperformed retail investors by 10 per cent while a comparison of domestic transactions in the current and prior month (February 2020) revealed that retail transactions increased significantly by 103.72 per cent from N29.56 billion in February 2020 to N60.22 billion in March 2020.
Similarly, the institutional composition of the domestic market increased by 52.23 per cent from N47.60 billion in February 2020 to N72.46 billion in March 2020.
Meanwhile, the Nigerian Stock Exchange opened the week in the green as its All Share Index (ASI) soared 0.30 per cent to close at 23,089.86 points due to price appreciation in the shares of MTNN, Union Bank of Nigeria (UBN) and Dangote Sugar.
This was as investors gained N36 billion after market capitalisation rose to N12.033 trillion while YTD loss moderated to -14.0 per cent.