Movers & Shakers: October 30, 2013

Botswana: DCI -0.01%, USD 104k

As was the case yesterday, a dull day in Gaborone with Choppies accounting for the bulk of the trading activity. The name ticked up to 307t while Engen saw mild activity at 791t.

Egypt: EGX 30 +1.29%, USD 72m

The market witnessed a notable rally today lead by strong buying from International GCC and local institutions along with GCC Individual investors, leaving the EGX30 to end the day up 1.29% to close at 6,173.59 points. Market volumes continue to be fairly strong, the market traded at total turnover USD 72m. After the market witnessed profit booking over the last couple of sessions, institutional investors stepped in to lift the market to trade in the greens targeting names such as JUFO, ESRS and HRHO, leaving each to end the day up 5.78%, 2.35% and 2.14% respectively, its worth mentioning that retail investors were notable sellers targeting mostly med/small caps.

Kenya: NSE 20 +0.62%, USD 12.6m

After yesterday's technical issues with the market not even opening, turnover increased rather drastically with value traded amounting to $12.6m on the back of a surge in foreign participation (60%). The two major banks drove activity today on the back of substantial foreign demand with 7.39m shares and 4.24m shares changing hands in Equity Bank and Kenya Commercial Bank respectively. Activity in Safcom was rather robust as 18.02m shares traded with foreign demand driving both purchases and performance (+2.8%). There were a few decent crosses in EABL as the counter gained 1.6% on 410k shares. ARM gained 3.9% closing at a new 12 month high of KES 80 on strong foreign investor demand.

Mauritius: Semdex +0.18%, USD 1.85m

Although the Semdex rose today we actually saw the Sem-7 lose 28bps and thus reversing some of yesterday’s gains. The biggest loser today was SBM which lost 1.94% back to Rs1.01 while Alteo fell by 14bps to Rs36.35. Offsetting these losses were gains in NMH (+1.12%, Rs90), ENL Land (+31bps, Rs49.30) and Terra (+49bps, Rs41.10).

Nigeria: ASI -0.38%, USD 22.14m

The Lagos bourse lost a little ground today as some softness in the banks dragged the ASI lower. The banks were down 81bps with Tier 2 banks bearing the brunt of the sell-off as all Tier 2 names closed in the red. In the Tier 1 names Access got hit hard and closed down 4.59% at N9.35. FCMB released their Q3 results before the session and the name closed down 3.49% at N3.60 today. Consumers ended the day unchanged as the sector saw some mixed performance. The only real outliers in the sector were Cadbury (+5.02%, N56.50) and PZ (-3.54%, N37.62).

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

South Africa: Top 40 +0.35%, USD 1.07bn

The JSE ended the day higher with the Top 40 Index gaining 0.35% to close at 40,740 while value traded amounted to USD 1.07bn. Resources were the day's biggest gainers with the Index gaining 0.62% followed by Industrials and Financials which gained 0.31% and 0.23% respectively. The Rand was trading at 9.87 and 13.60 to the USD and EUR respectively by the time local markets closed.

Zimbabwe: Industrials +0.05%, Mining +1.71%, USD 1.06m

The mainstream industrial index recovered in mid week trades closing at 209.13pts on a gain of 0.05%. Marginal gains in 3 heavy cap stocks to including Delta, Innscor and BAT spurred the recovery. Delta notched 0.01% to 135.01c while the duo of Innscor and BAT firmed 0.12% and 9% to 82.1c and 1199c respectively. The cigarette manufacturer BAT was also among the top risers on a volume of circa 10,000 shares. The mining index gained 1.71% to 48.29pts on a firm bid in Falgold to 5c. Turnover fell slightly with value taded amounting to $1.06m.

African Currencies