Investors at the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) will now trade online on derivative contracts of blue-chip firms like Safaricom #ticker:SCOM, KCB Group #ticker:KCB, Equity Bank #ticker:EQTY and East African Breweries #ticker:EABL.
This comes after NSE granted online forex trader EGM Securities the operating licence on Tuesday to trade derivative contracts at the bourse.
EGM Securities, a subsidiary of the Jordan-based Equiti Group, becomes the first broker to offer derivative contracts of the firms at the NSE.
The broker will initially offer futures contracts on the six most traded stocks – British American Tobacco Kenya #ticker:BAT, KCB, Equity, Safaricom, EABL and Absa Bank #ticker:ABSA.
Investors will take less than five minutes to trade on the stocks as opposed to the current average two-day processing time putting Kenya at par with global standards.
“To enhance uptake of our innovative products, the NSE, continues to engage with key stakeholders, specifically concentrating its efforts towards enhancing the knowledge and training of key market participants, addressing the need to update Investment Policy Statements (IPS) that govern local institutional assets with administrators, trustees and fund managers; and onboarding of online trading members who have built a sizeable community of active retail investors,” said NSE chairman Kiprono Kittony.
The NSE #ticker:NSE trades Safaricom, KCB, KenGen, Equity, BAT, EABL, Bamburi #ticker:BAMB and the NSE 25 index on the derivatives market, dubbed Next.
The licence for EGM Securities comes barely six months after the firm was listed as a trading member of NEXT on the Nairobi bourse.
