In spite of the bearish sentiment sweeping through the Nigeria’s capital market, domestic investors executed N376 billion out of N626.87 billion transactions done in the first quarter of 2020. The value of the transactions done by domestic investors in the first quarter represented 59.82 percent of the entire first quarter transactions. This implies that foreign investors were responsible for N251.87 billion, representing 40.18 percent in the first three months of this year.
On a month on month basis, domestic investors traded N165.14 billion in January 2020; N77.16 billion in February, and N132.69 billion in March. On the other hand, foreign investors traded N70.31 billion in January; N71.34 billion in February, and N110.22 billion in March.
“The Nigerian Stock Exchange polls trading figures from market operators on their Domestic and Foreign Portfolio Investment (FPI) flows. As at 31 March 2020, total transactions at the nation’s bourse increased by 63.58% from N148.50billion (about $484.60million) in February 2020 to N242.91billion (about $630.04million) in March 2020. The performance of the current month when compared to the performance in March 2019 (N110.11billion) revealed that total transactions increased by 120.60%”, the NSE said in its March 2020 report
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However, more foreign funds left the nation’s capital market in the first quarter of 2020. The total foreign inflow for January was N23.81 billion as against N46.5 billion foreign outflow; inflow was N18.97 billion in February compared with N52.37 billion foreign outflow during the same month, and N22.49 billion foreign inflow in March in contrast to N87.73 billion foreign outflow during the same month. That brought the total inflow to N65.27 billion in March as against N186.6 billion outflow in the same quarter.
Compared with the first quarter of 2019, foreign inflow in March 2020 at N65.27 billion was far lower than N97.63 billion in March 2019. On the contrary, foreign outflow of N186.6 billion in March 2020 was higher than outflow of N124.24 billion in comparable period in 2019.
When the domestic transactions are further analysed, retail domestic investors accounted for 45 percent while domestic institutional investors accounted for 55 percent in the first quarter of 2020.
