Movers & Shakers: August 30, 2013

Botswana: DCI +0.15%, USD 9k

A dismal day in Gaborone as absolutely nothing happened. Seems like the weekend started early in Gaborone.

Egypt: Closed for the day.

Kenya: NSE 20 -0.22%, USD 7.5m

Activity dropped off today but was still rather robust (especially for a Friday in Nairobi) with value traded amounting to $7.5m. The pain in EABL unfortunately continued today with foreigners still driving the counter lower, closing the day at KES 284 (-0.7%) on very good volume of 793k shares. Equity Bank was also very active thanks to a few large blocks with a total of 4.20m shares changing hands as locals dominated activity in the name. SCAN Group (-3.4%) continued to fall after posting dissapointing H1 2013 results yesterday. Nation Media Group posted a 24%y/y jump in H1 2013 net profits towards the close of the session and declared a dividend of KES 2.50 per share, unchanged y/y.

Mauritius: Semdex -0.03%, USD 1.7m

Activity was higher than usual in Mauritius although the Semdex and Sem-7 fell by 3bps and 11bps respectively. The losers were MCB (-26bps, Rs193.50), Alteo (-71bps, Rs34.75) and Terra (-25bps, Rs40). The gainers were NMH (+76bps, Rs66.50) and ENL Land (+11bps, Rs47.05).

Nigeria: NSE 20 -0.42%, USD 16.12m

A rather frustrating day to end the month in Lagos as the Bloomberg feed was down for a large part of the session. As has been the case in recent sessions the day was extremely dull with just the odd cross punctuating the boredom. The main crossing was in DangCem which saw more than 1/3 of today’s turnover as the name closed unchanged at N190. The banks slipped by 66bps but again it is difficult to gauge true conviction on such thin volumes. Banking names were totally mixed with FBNH the leading light (+3.23%, N16.00) and GTB the leading loser (-2.39%, N24.53). The consumer sector also gave up ground as it lost 1.08% for the day. There were no positive stocks in the sector and the biggest losers were UACN and Unilever.

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

South Africa: Top 40 -0.66%, USD 1.53bn

The JSE ended the day lower with the Top 40 Index falling 0.66% to close at 37,863 while value traded amounted to USD 1.53bn. Resources were the day's biggest loser's with the Index falling 1.35% followed by Industrials which fell 0.31% while Financials gained 0.04%. The Rand was trading at 10.24 and 13.51 to the USD and EUR respectively by the time local markets closed.

Zimbabwe: Industrials -0.27%, Mining -3.87%, USD 1.8m

The mainstream index traded -0.27% weaker at 182.17pts in week ending trades against a background of mixed interim reports most of which have failed to exert a stimuli to the waning index. Heavy caps whose free float is mainly favoured by foreigners continue to weigh on the industrials as the economy trudged along on delayed announcement of a new government. Weighing on the index were losses in OK, Delta and Innscor easing; the later is due to present its full year results next week. The minings index equally gave up part of yesterday's gains receding -3.87% to 48.73pts on the backd of a lower offer of 25c in RioZim having last traded at 35c. Notably there were no trades among the resources with Falgold closing sellers only at 10c. Value traded recovered 16% to $1.8m as foreign participation remains weak.

African Currencies