Kayode Ekundayo
4 November 2008
Lagos — Within a week, investors in the Nigerian capital market lost over N1.463 trillion to falling shares price as stocks depreciated further against various measures introduced by the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) to revive the market.
The market Monday last week opened at N9.188 trillion with a turnover of 987.5 million shares worth N8.44 billion in 19,885 deals. However, by the time the market closed yesterday, market capitalization has dropped to N7.725 trillion, about N1.463 trillion losses.
All-share-index also dropped by 6,670.65 points. The market opened at 41.884.10 points but by yesterday, it dropped to 35,213.45 points
In an attempt to drive the market to recovery, NSE director general, Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke last week reviewed the trading guideline from 100,000 units of share to 50,000 units in order to allow more stock broking firms raise the stock price upward or downward.
"There are some companies that have limited number of shares; they can never be market makers, because they don't have up to 100,000 units of share as stipulated in the guideline. So we are bringing down the number of making market to 50,000 from 100,000", she said
The director general said the 1 per cent downward limit on daily price movement has been returned to 5 per cent while the current 5 per cent limit on upward movement is retained.
The downward limit was reversed to 1 per cent from initial 5 per cent by the stakeholders of the NSE after a meeting with government officials in August as part of efforts toward stabilizing the Nigerian capital market.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor, Charles Soludo last weekend exonerated the apex bank and Nigerian banks from the continuing fall in shares price in the capital market, saying that the problem is as a result of global financial crunch.
"When it was said that it was margin trading and common-year-end policies, initially we suspended them but when the downwards persisted we cancelled out rightly. The next day, we took the action, the price went down by at least 5 per cent. This simply shows that global financial crunch has its effect on our capital market", he said
Meanwhile, 159.601 million shares worth N1.571 billion in 4,820 deals were exchanged on Monday.
Activities in the market was driven by banking sector with Spring bank's share of 68.047 million shares valued at N380.385 million, BankPHB 12.182 million worth N134.128 million, Diamond Bank 10.816 million valued at N81.340 million
Unfortunately only one gainer, Omatek gained N0.04 per share at the end of the trading activities on the floor of the exchange yesterday
Guinness led the losers' chart with a loss of N4.31 per share, 7 UP, N2.44 per share, Nigerian Bottling Company N2.14 and UACN N2.17 per share to close the business of the day
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