An investor looks at the digital board at the Nairobi Stock Exchange(NSE)/FILE The Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) on Wednesday performed well on the arrival of Covid-19 vaccine in the country with all the stock trading higher than Tuesday.
This is a clear indicator of increased activity at the exchange.
The NSE All Share Index (NASI, NSE 20 Share Index and NSE 25 Share Index gained compared to Tuesday with the prime index, NSE20 hitting an eight-week high of 1934.90 points.
NSE 20 that tracks the 20 top stocks at the bourse hit a 17-year low in March last year as foreign investors exited the market in the wake of the global coronavirus outbreak, cutting Sh458 billion from the market during the period under review.
The country received one million Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccines on Tuesday, the first East African nation to get a shipment of the vaccines.
Data from the Nairobi bourse on March 3 shows that the NASI, NSE 20, and NSE 25 were at 163.43, 1934.90 and 3605.78 points respectively.
The cumulative increase saw the total market capitalisation grow to Sh2.51 trillion on March 3 from Sh2.2 trillion same period last year, pushing up paper wealth by a massive Sh300 billion.
The performance was however slightly lower compared to the last week’s high of Sh2.54 trillion.
According to the latest Central Bank weekly bulletin, the NASI, NSE 20 share price index and market capitalisation increased by 0.8 per cent, 1.1 percent and 0.8 percent, respectively during the week ending February 25.
“Equity turnover and total shares traded also increased by 45.1 percent and 38.3 percent, respectively,” said CBK.
Total shares traded grew to Sh5,694,900 while the Equity turnover at the bourse was at Sh197.7million.“Our total turnover is not too far behind compared to last year where we had a very good first quarter. The recent appreciation of prices for firms such as Safaricom has really been pulling the market up,” said Geoffrey Odundo, NSE CEO.Mid last month, Safaricom’s share price rallied to yet another high after the declaration of a surprise interim dividend.The stock price touched an all-time high of Sh37.80 at the close of trading taking its year-to-date gains into the double-digit territory at 10.4 per cent.According to the NSE end year barometer, the telco in 2020 commanded 48.3 per cent of total turnover at the Nairobi bourse which accounts for Sh77.7billion.The Nairobi bourse has been recording improved performance in 2021 from a slightly slow market in […]