Movers & Shakers: November 18, 2013

Botswana: DCI unch, USD 78k

A very quiet day in Botswana as just smalls in BIHL (1055t), Choppies (312t) and Barclays (558t) traded.

Egypt: EGX 30 +1.05%, USD 80m

Another strong day with good volumes adding to the excitement. Volumes remained within recent market averages, with total turnover at $80m. With positive news of the UAE and Saudi Arabia donating aid worth $9bn as well as the news that the government will finalize the constitution before January 2014, the market traded the day on positive sentiment. Local institutional investors were notable net buyers, targeting names such as GTHE (+1.69%), ESRS (+2.34%), and HRHO (+2.08%) as ESRS reached a new 52-week high of EGP14.65 today.

Kenya: NSE 20 +0.29%, USD 4.7m

Turnover fell yet again as foreign participation remains low. As usual, most of the activity centers on the blue chips and today was no exception. We saw gains in EABL (+30bps, KES 320), KNCB (+1.1%, KES 46.50and Equity Bank (+2.1bps, KES 36) mostly driven by some mild foreign buying while Safcom (+50bps, KES 9.90) was almost exclusively driven by local investors. These gains were the main reason for the NSE outperformance.

Mauritius: Semdex -0.41%, USD 2.61m

A rather active day in Port Louis although the bears did win the day. The bulk of today’s action took place in MCB (unch, Rs205) and ENL Land (unch, Rs50). NMH fell by 1.14% to Rs87 while Alteo gained a modest 27bps to Rs36.90.

Nigeria: ASI +0.45%, USD 35.6m

A very active day in Lagos today with a huge chunk of activity in Transcor which continues on its merry run by gaining another 10% today to N4.00. The stock traded almost $10m worth of stock. The rest of the session was also characterized by some chunky crossing in selected names. Banks fell by a mild 28bps with most names not changing price much on the day. Most of the activity was in Zenith (+24bps, N21.30), Access (+83bps, N9.69), Guaranty (-1.13%, N26.30) and Stanbic (unch, N19.40). The consumer bulls returned with a vengeance today and pushed the sector up 1% with the gains mostly coming in Nestle (+4.4%, N1178.78 on big volumes), Guinness (+2.18%, N235.01) and 7UP (+5%, N71.40).

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

South Africa: Top 40 +0.49%, USD 1.15bn

The JSE ended the day slightly in the green as most sector (outside of Golds) outperformed. The Rand remains rather resilient and was trading at R10.12, R16.32 and R13.69 vs the USD, GBP and EUR respectively at the time of writing.

Zimbabwe: Industrials +0.48%, Mining unch, USD 1.11m

The Industrials index rose a bit more today with most of the heavyweights rising. Delta continues its strength after last week’s results announcement and gained 1.69% to 150.5c. We also saw a strong gain of 2.33% in Natfoods to 220c while Econet and OK were both unchanged at 61c and 25c respectively. The market does remain very quiet though and foreign buying is mostly concentrated in large caps like Delta and Econet.

African Currencies