Investors’ sentiment on fixed income heightens

Investors’ sentiment towards the short-term fixed income instruments heightened, as yields across all tenors trended south, with higher declines seen around the shorter-term instruments, analysts at Meristem Securities Limited, have said.

Yields on the 1M (0.69%), 2M (0.68%) and 3M (0.54%) tenor pared accordingly.

In contrast to the activities in the T-bills market, investors’ appetite was frail in the bonds space. Save for the APR-2017 (-0.19%), MAY-2029 (-0.15%), MAY-2029 (-0.22%) and JUL-2030 (-0.31%) bonds that pared in yields. Yields across all other bond instruments closed up, as average yield settled marginally higher at 15.04 percent (+0.03%).

Naira remained stable at the Bureau de Change segment of the foreign exchange market and the parallel market closing at N210/$ and N211/$, respectively.

However, at the inter-bank foreign exchange market, the local currency depreciated by N0.49k/$ or 0.25 percent to close at N197.72 compared with N197.23 traded the previous day, according to data from FMDQ.

Activities in the Inter-bank market was moderated during today’s trading session, as NIBOR waned across tenors thereby pegging average NIBOR at 25.50 percent (-1.40%).

Consequently, rates declined in the Money Market (MM) space, as OBB and OVN rates respectively pared by 3.33 percent and 4.33 percent to fix the average MM rate at 36.25 percent (-3.83%).