Domestic investors continued to dominate transactions at the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) statistics released by the exchange has shown. According to the data for the month of March, domestic investors outperformed foreign investors by 28.48 per cent.
Although the total transactions in the month of March 2016 decreased by 17.87 per cent from N117.27 billion recorded in February 2016 to N96.31 billon, domestic investors dominated the performance. Comparatively, the N96.31 billion recorded in 2016 is 47.66 per cent lower than the N184.02 billion recorded in 2015. The bourse recorded N201.37 billion transactions.
However, in the month of March 2016, domestic investors accounted for N61.87 billion, while foreign investors recorded N34.44 billion. But, monthly foreign outflows outpaced inflows, which was consistent with the same period in 2015. Foreign outflows decreased by 40.20 per cent from N31.84 billion in February 2016 to N19.04 billion while foreign inflows increased by 40.77 per cent from N10.94 billion in February 2016 to N15.40 billion in March 2016.
A further analysis of transactions by domestic investors showed that institutional investors remain in control. Out of the N61.87 billion traded by domestic investors, institutional investors accounted for N38.52 billion, while retail investors recorded N23.35 billion.
Compared to February, the transactions by domestic investors fell from N36.24 billion, while transactions by institutional investors increased marginally from N38.25 billion.
Market analysts and some investors have called on the regulators to ensure more participation of retail investors, saying that would check the volatility in the market.
Meanwhile trading at the stock market turned bearish yesterday as investors took profit following the significant gains recorded by some stocks the previous day.
The NSE All-Share Index depreciated 0.6 per cent to close at 25,716.06, while market capitalisation shed N51.4 billion to be at N8.8 trillion. However, volume and value of trading grew by grew 50.1 per cent and 50.5 per cent to 330.5 million shares and N2.3 billion respectively.
Sectorally, the NSE Banking went down by 1.0 per cent following losses recorded by FBN Holdings Plc (0.85 per cent) and Guaranty Trust Bank Plc (0.58 per cent). Similarly, the NSE Insurance Index fell by ).59 per cent due to decline in the shares of AIICO Insurance Plc (2.60 per cent) and NEM Insurance Plc (1.23 per cent) respectively.
