Movers & Shakers: December 19, 2013

Botswana: No data available

Egypt: EGX 30 +0.36%, USD 101m

The market maintains its bullish momentum and rose by 36bps. Market volumes continued to improve significantly relative to recent market turnovers, with the market trading a total turnover of EGP697 million. The market started the day with notable positive sentiment mainly attributed to notable buying accumulation from local institutions along with local retail investors. Names such as JUFO(+4.22%), AMER(+1.41%) and PHDC(+1.14%) reached a new 52-week high with international institutions as net sellers targeting names such as EKHO(-2.15%) and, GTHE(-0.63%). It worth mentioning at med-session local institutions changed to be net sellers pressuring names such as ESRS and COMI who reached a new high today to close flat.

Kenya: NSE 20 -0.13%, USD 7.4m

Total turnover dropped a bit today although foreign buying was markedly improved on recent sessions with buying returning back to the blue chips. Most of the activity for the day was focused on Safcom (+50bps, KES 10.00), KNCB (unch, KES 44.50) and EABL (+30bps, KES 290) while Equity Bank was much quieter yet closed the day unchanged at KES 32.25. Foreign activity was high on all of these names yet the most notable difference was how much more foreign buying was involved.

Mauritius: Semdex -0.19%, USD 1.3m

Weakness across most of the Sem-7 was the theme for the day. The only stock to buck this trend was MCB which rose by 24bps to Rs207. The losers included NMH (-1.41%, Rs87.25), Alteo (-13bps, Rs37.35) and ENL Land (-97bps, Rs51).

Nigeria: ASI +0.96%, USD 19.1m

After an extremely slow start activity levels picked up throughout the day with some crosses in a handful of names driving activity. The buying clearly returned across the broader market after last night’s Fed announcement. FCMB saw chunky crossing for the second consecutive day as the name ended the session up 63bps at N3.21. Overall, banks rose by 1.73% with Zenith (+6.15%, N23.31) and UBA (+2.86%, N7.90) leading the charge. Consumers also rose by 2.16% as strong buying in names like Nestle (+5.7%, N1190), PZ (+1.8%, N35.39), Unilever (+1.9%, N53) and NB (+1.8%, N167.97) led the sector higher.

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

South Africa: Top 40 +1.03%, USD2.72bn

The JSE followed global markets higher on the back of the Fed announcement. The Rand weakened somewhat late in the day and was trading at R10.40, R17.01 and R14.21 vs the USD, GBP and EUR respectively at the time of writing.

Zimbabwe: Industrials -0.37%, Mining +5.75%, USD 1.14m

Another fairly quiet day in Harare while the index continues to slowly lose its way into the year end. Monday is also a holiday in Zimbabwe so not many trading sessions left before the end of the year. Today is also the presentation of the National Budget. Pleasingly, Econet (62c) and Delta (135.01c) are showing some signs of stability while OK Zim rallied 4.7% to 20c.

African Currencies