Movers & Shakers: January 20, 2014

Botswana: DCI +0.19%, USD 315k

Not much on the go in Garone today as value traded amounted to USD 315k with Barclays (233k shares) and FNBB (254k) shares accounting for the lions shares of the day's turnover.

Egypt: EGX 30 +0.49%, USD 75m

The market managed to end the day in the positive territory, leaving the EGX30 to end the day up 0.49% to close at 7,037.80 points. The market continues to trade on thin volumes compared to recent turnovers, as it traded at total turnover of USD 75m. The market started the day with negative sentiment to reach a low of 6,969.82 points lead by continuous selling pressure from local institutional investors. After 30 minutes of trading, local retail investors lifted the market to trade in the greens as net buyers targeting mostly mid/small caps such as AMER, AIND, and PIOH. Local retail investors ended the day as net sellers. International and GCC institutions ended the day as the net-buyers targeting names such as TMGH (+1.35%), ESRS (+0.57%), and GTHE (+1.84%).

Kenya: NSE 20 +0.09%, USD 9.6m

Foreign selling in the two large banks caused the sector to come under pressure with Kenya Commercial Bank (96.3% foreign sales) and Equity Bank (97% foreign sales) falling -1.1% and -0.8% respectively on big volume. It was an active day to start the week with value traded amounting to $9.6m with the two big banks also leading in terms of activity. Insurers Kenya-Re and Britam were star performers in terms of performance as the counters managed to gain 8.2% and 4.7% respectively. Safcom managed to bounce back and gained 1.7% to close at KES 11.70 on the back of foreign purchases.

Mauritius: Semdex -0.32%, USD 1.04m

Mauritius took a backwards step today as the banks finally showed signs that the rally is coming to an end. MCB lost 46bps to Rs216 while SBM fell by 93bps to Rs1.06. Elsewhere in the Sem-7 we saw weakness in ENL Land (-1%, Rs49.50) and Terra (-78bps, Rs38.00).

Nigeria: ASI -0.67%, USD 28.3m

It was a rather pleasing start to the week from an activity point of view as value traded amounted to $28.3m. Crosses in Flour Mills ($7.08m), Guaranty Trust Bank ($2.58m) and Oando ($2.25m) drove turnover. Banks (-0.07%) closed ever so slightly lower with First Bank (-1.86%) and Zenith (-1.00%) dragging the sector lower while Acces bucked the trend in the tier-1 space and managed to gain +3.24%. Consumers (-0.09%) also closed slightly lower with Danogote Sugar (-1.88%) and PZ Cussons (-1.57%) amongst the worst performers. Cements came under a bit of pressure with Dangote Cement (-2.17%) being the hardest hit.

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

South Africa: Top 40 +0.63%, USD 1.02bn

The JSE ended the day higher with the Top 40 Index gaining 0.63% to close at 42,240 while value traded amounted to USD 1.02bn. Industrials were the day's biggest gainers with the Index gaining 0.77% followed by Resources and Financials which gained 0.62% and 0.12% respectively. The Rand was trading at 10.84 and 14.71 to the USD and EUR respectively by the time local markets closed.

Zimbabwe: Industrials -0.62%, Mining -1.16%, USD 1.4m

The soft close to last week continued into the new week as the Industrials index lost 62bps. Most of this weakness can be attributed to Delta which fell for the second straight session after announcing their poor Q3 trading update on Friday morning. The beverage maker lost 2.15% to 136c. Countering this somewhat was a strong +80bps increase in Econet to 62.01c. Volumes were generally light with foreign activity also quiet.

African Currencies