Movers & Shakers: May 06, 2013

Botswana: DCI +0.07%, USD 133k

Market breadth was dire in Gaborone today as value traded amounted to USD 133k with FNBB accounting for 70% of value traded. There was a small bit of activity in Choppies as 100k shares traded.

Egypt: Closed for the day.

Kenya: NSE 20 +0.52%, USD 9.1m

The market opened the week with robust trading witnessed among the large caps. Safaricom, KCB and EABL were the main movers of the day. Equity turnover rose 19.6% with foreign investors accounting for 35.3% compared to 61.1% of trades in the previous session. Safaricom continued to see healthy demand ahead of results expected next week. At the close of the trading session, South African based Dimension Data announced plans to takeover AccessKenya from the market for KES 3.05bn, a 42% premium to the last week's closing price of KES 9,85. Dimension Data is a wholly owned subsidiary of Japanese NTT Group. The counter had traded 3% lower on the day ahead of the the announcement. The Monetary Policy Committee announces its position on the benchmark Central Bank Rate tomorrow. As inflation has remained stable,we expect that there will be a reduction.

Mauritius: Semdex -0.02%, USD 708k

Slow start to the week with value traded amounting to USD 708k. Alteo dominated activity as 184k shares changed hands and reached a new all time high of 37.80. There was a decent amount of activity in NMH as 56k shares traded with the counter closing at 72.00. After last week's rally, MCB succumbed to some selling pressure, falling 1.03% on very thin volume.

Nigeria: ASI +0.08%, USD 15.77m

Extremely slow start to the week in Lagos with value traded amounting to a rather dissapointing $15.77m. Unilever lead from the front in terms of value traded thanks to a cross of 10.9m shares at 57. Banks were mostly flat with the Bank 10 Index falling 0.02% as activity was very dull in the sector while Fidelity and Skye Bank both went ex-dividend today. Cosumer stocks were also rather subdued with the Consumer Goods Index gaining 0.27% with Nigerian Breweries the only name that witnessed some form of active trading in the sector.

South Africa: Top 40 +0.67%, USD 1.10bn

The JSE ended the day higher with the Top 40 Index gaining 0.67% to close at 35,199 while value traded amounted to USD 1.10bn. Resources were the day's biggest gainers with the Index gaining 1.09% followed by Industrials and Financials which gained 0.45% and 0.39%. The Rand was trading at 9.01 and 11.77 to the USD and EUR respectively by the time local markets closed.

Zambia: LuSE +0.90%, USD 80k

Not much went on in Lusaka today as value traded amounted to USD 80k and this was largely attirbutable to a cross in BATZ as 78k shares changed hands in the name. The market closed the day higher with the LuSE gaining 0.90% to close at 4,313.10.

Zimbabwe: Industrials +1.93%, Mining unch, USD 200k

The ZSE started the week on a high note with the industrials gaining 1.93% to close at 192.68pts on gains in market heavy weights Delta, Econet and Innscor while the mining index continued stuttering as it remained unchanged from the previous trade at 71.09pts. Heightening political rhetoric centred around elections which are expected any time from June and a lack of understanding in that regard among GNU partners have lately contributed to the slowing down of activity on the bourse. Today the market registered a one year low of $0.2m in value terms as investors mainly foreign, engage a wait and see mode. Foreign participation gradually dissipated 90% to $0.03m while total volume traded simultaneously shed 64% to 0.89m shares.

African Currencies