Movers & Shakers: August 22, 2013

Botswana: DCI -0.09%, USD 923k

Choppies accounted for most of the daily turnover and closed at 308t. There was also decent activity in FNBB (340t), Letshego (215t) and Sefalana (626t).

Egypt: EGX 30 +0.65%, USD 43m

The EGX30 managed to end the day on a positive note to close at 5,424.63 points up 0.65% on average volume of USD 43m. As expected Locals continued to support the market in-addition to GCC institutions with both ending the session as decent net buyers which left foreign investors the sole net-sellers of today's session and taking advantage of any signs of strength to reduce their exposure. The EGX70 continues to outperform +1.35% as retail investors maintained their bullish momentum into mid/small caps for the 3rd consecutive day.

Kenya: NSE 20 -0.34%, USD 7.2m

There was once again some crossing action in Kenya Commercial Bank which drove activity as the name accounted for 38% of turnover with 5m shares crossing at KES 45. Locals dominated activity today as foreigners only accounted for 25% of trades. Profit taking in Safcom continued today after what was an exceptional run with the counter falling 1.2% to close at KES 7.95. EABL closed flat ahead of results tomorrow morning, as the counter has come under some pressure over the past few sessions. NIC Bank eased 0.9% to KES 57, despite posting a 17.41%y/y rise in 1H13 EPS. Stanchart released its 1H13 performance figures posting a 4.4% drop in EPS, with the counter closing 0.3% lower at KES 294.

Mauritius: Semdex +0.48%, USD 1.43m

Some chunky action in SBM lit up a very dull Mauritian session. The Sem-7 gained 38bps with only 4 stocks changing price and all 4 of these to the positive. MCB gained 65bps to Rs193.25 while the other gainers were Alteo (+57bps. Rs35.20), ENL Land (+57bps, Rs44.00) and Terra (+51bps, Rs39.80).

Nigeria: ASI +0.60%, USD 22.29m

There was a big jump in turnover today with value traded amounting to $22.29m. This was however very deceptive as the session was extremely slow but the volume was very much skewed towards a few chunky crosses in select names. The usually very illiquid Glaxo Smith Kline saw crosses of 12m shares at 65 while there was also a cross of 660k shares in Guinness. Zenith Bank ($3.77m) and Guaranty Trust Bank ($2.32m) were just about the only two names with some decent two way flow. The market managed to rebound today with the ASI gaining 0.60% thanks largely to banking stocks (+1.50%) as investors seemed to favour tier-1 stocks. Consumers also put in a pleasing performance with the Consumer Goods Index gaining 0.56% as NB (+0.67%) and Flour Mills (+9.80%) boosted the sector.

Please note that the index figure above is correct at the time of writing.

South Africa: Top 40 +0.76%, USD 1.33bn

The JSE ended the day higher with the Top 40 Index gaining 0.76% to close at 38,676 while value traded amounted to USD 1.33bn. Resources were the day's biggest gainers with the Index gaining 0.89% followed by Industrials and Financials which gained 0.60% and 0.32% respectively. The Rand was trading at 10.28 and 13.74 to the USD and EUR respectively by the time local markets closed.

Zambia: LuSE +0.01%, USD 4k

The Lusaka exchange continues to trade embarrassingly low volumes as just $4k changed hands.

Zimbabwe: Closed for the day.

African Currencies