Movers & Shakers: October 08, 2013

Botswana: DCI +0.07%, USD 554k

Some activity in FNBB went through today and this was almost 100% of the market. FNBB closed at 372t while there were barely a few scraps that traded in a handful of other names.

Egypt: EGX 30 -0.20%, USD 54m

The market witnessed some profit booking mainly lead by local retail investors along with international institutions, leaving the EGX30 to end the day down 0.20% to close at 5,754.42 points. Market volumes were slightly weaker than recent average turnovers, the market traded a total turnover of USD 54m, its worth mentioning that EAST witnessed several crosses. The market traded the day were profit booking was evident lead by local retail investors targeting mostly med/small caps after the recent surge, names such as APSW, ACGC and EIUD witnessed notable selling leaving each to end the day 2.47%, 1.77% and 1.90% respectively, it’s worth mentioning all that all major blue-chips witnessed very thin volumes, were names such as TMGH, ETEL and COMI witnessed more then 50% less than its 30 day average volume.

Kenya: NSE 20 +1.01%, USD 11.4m

The Kenyan market continued to impress today with both foreign and local investors pushing the Index (+1.01%) higher while value traded amounted to a very impressive $11.4m. The rally in the two major banking stocks continued with Equity Bank gaining 4.9% while Kenya Commercial Bank gained 2.1%. It should however be noted that there were a few sellers that started to emerge towards the end of the session. Safcom was very active and strong once again as foreigners dominated activity in the counter has 28m shares traded with the name gaining 3.3%. There was a large cross in COOP Bank relatively early in the session with the buyer being foreign while the seller was local. It will be very interesting to see if the momentum can continue tomorrow; one does however get the feeling that a breather is due.

Mauritius: Semdex +0.02%, USD 1.1m

A relatively muted session in Port Louis as the market just ambled along with nothing much of note to report. The Sem-7 gained 4 bps with only 1 stock actually changing price and that was Alteo which gained 42bps to Rs35.90.

Nigeria: ASI +0.13%, USD 18.56m

Some excitement just before the close in a generally quiet day. Not included in the above numbers was a large off-market cross of 18m Dangote Cement shares which took place shortly after the open. In general trading we saw banks slip a mere 7bps with performance mixed across the sector. FBNH (+1.88%, N16.81) and UBA (+1.37%, N7.40) were the most notable outperformers. Consumers fell by 15bps with performance also mixed in the sector. Nestle saw chunky action and closed down 20bps at N1000. Stocks that gained were Flourmills (+3.19%), PZ (+2.65%) and UACN (+3.74%).Outside of the large DangCem cross, Dangote Cement closed unchanged at N190 on good volume while Wapco rose by 51bps to N99, also on good volume.

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

South Africa: Top 40 -1.21%, USD 1.42bn

The JSE ended the day lower with the Top 40 Index falling 1.21% to close at 38,578 while value traded amounted to USD 1.42bn. Resources were the day's biggest losers with the Index falling 1.35% followed by Industrials and Financials which fell 1.26% and 0.80% respectively. The Rand was trading at 9.96 and 13.54 respectively by the time local markets closed.

Zimbabwe: Industrials +0.19%, Mining -3.37%, USD 1.72m

There was an improvement in activity with 38 counters trading from yesterday’s 21 culminating in 111 trades. Demand continued in large cap stocks as Delta advanced +0.74% to 136c amid reports of beer price increases which are likely to boost the brewer’s revenues going forward. Econet which announced that it won the Supreme court case against Trustco added +1.7% to settle at 61c. Sugar cane processors Hippo gained +5% to 105c while diversified group Innscor currently working on a tight budget in the year under review went up +2.3% to 89c while its associate National Foods rose +4.2% to 250c. Today’s rises resulted in the index’s 0.19% gain to 210.23pts. Minings weakened -3.37% to 50.71pts weighed down by Bindura’s -10% fall to 1.8c. Despite increased market activity, the value of trades fell -13.1% to 1.72m.

African Currencies