Despite the initial public offering by Airtel on the Nigerian Stock Exchange ( NSE) last month, figures from NSE on its Domestic and Foreign Portfolio Investment (FPI) flows for July show that a tepid atmosphere still persists on the nation’s bourse.
According to the NSE, as at July 31, 2019, total transactions at the nation’s bourse tanked 61.82 percent from N297.25 billion (about $970.1m) in June 2019 to N113.47 billion (about $370.4m) in July 2019. Foreign inflows also plummeted from N44.3 billion in
June to N28.38 billion in July. The performance in July when compared to the performance in the same period in July 2018 of the prior year revealed that total transactions also decreased 22.31 percent.
In July 2019, the total value of transactions executed by foreign investors outperformed transactions executed by domestic investors by 2 percent.
Further analysis of the total transactions executed between the current and prior month June 2019 reveals that total domestic transactions decreased significantly by 72.22 percent from N200.51 billion in June to N55.69 billion in July 2019.
Similarly, total foreign transactions also decreased 40.27 percent from N96.74 billion ( about $ 315.7m) to N57.78 billion ( about $188.6m) between June and July 2019.
The value of domestic transactions executed by institutional investors outperformed retail investors by 8 percent, a comparison of domestic transactions in the current and prior month, June 2019, revealed that retail transactions decreased by 83.59 percent from N155.12 billion in June 2019 to N25.44 billion in July 2019.
However, the institutional composition of the domestic market reduced by 33.28 percent from N45.34 billion in June 2019 to N30.25 billion in July 2019.
The massive sell-off in equities by investors has seen most capitalised firms on the nation’s bourse shed N2.36 trillion year-to-date.
The NSE30 index, which consists of the 30 most capitalised firms on the exchange, lost value, with share prices on a free fall, analysis of the entire NSE 30 index further shows that 80 percent of total listed companies in the index under-performed the ASI eroding more than 12 percent of investors’ worth on the exchange.
