Movers & Shakers: September 19, 2013

Botswana: DCI unch, USD 3.2m

Chunky Letshego and Sechaba blocks raised market activity today to above average levels. Letshego closed at 211t while Sechaba closed at 1805t.

Egypt: EGX 30 +0.26%, USD 62.2m

The market ended the day in positive territory to continue with its bullish trend leaving the EGX30 to end the day up 26bps. Market volumes remains weak yet with a notable improvement to recent turnovers, the market traded a total turnover of EGP429m. The market managed to pick up its bullish trend yet on low momentum after witnessing some minor profit booking yesterday, local retail investors continue to net along with GCC investors, were names such as EKHO, ACGC and ETEL managed to gain investors interest leaving each to end the day up 6.41%, 2.37% and 1.15% respectively, yet local institutional investors continue with their profit booking sentiment targeting names such as SWDY, ESRS and COMI leaving each to end the day down 1.84%, 0.88% and 0.61% respectively.

Kenya: NSE 20 +0.37%, USD 5.3m

Despite overall market activity falling we saw foreign investors increasing their activity on the bourse although this was evenly split on both the buy and sell side. EABL continues to be the most actively traded stock and inched up a further 30bps to KES 301 with foreign trading on both sides of the coin. Equity Bank and KNCB also found favour with investors and closed up 80bps and 110bps at KES 33.50 and KES 45.00 respectively. Safcom gained another 1.8% to close at KES 8.35 as foreign demand for the telco remains strong.

Mauritius: Semdex +0.05%, USD 2.57m

Another active day on the Mauritian bourse. MCB saw some chunky crossing going through and was most of the volume for the session as the name close up just 13bps at Rs193.50, although this is skewed as most of the volume went through at the Rs193.25 level. NMH fell by 1.87% to Rs78.75 and was thus the largest faller.

Nigeria: ASI +0.35%, USD 22m

The bulls returned to the Nigerian banks after last night’s Fed announcement. The banks gained a massive 2.35% today led higher by the Tier 1 names. The biggest gainers were GTB (+4.62%, N24.89), Fidelity (+4.58%, N2.51), UBA (+3.25%, N7.30) and Zenith (+2.31%, N19.90). The consumers lost 29bps for the day with some chunky crossing in NB (+61bps, N161.99) and Nestle (unch, N940.02) the real action in the sector. Cadbury was the main drag on the sector as it lost 7.33% to N45.41 while Intbrew gained 9.72% to N19.75. Cements were extremely muted with Dangote Cement closing down 53bps at N189.

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

South Africa: Top 40 +2.24%, USD 3bn

The JSE followed global markets higher with all sectors closing in the green. The Rand rallied after last night’s announcement yet did give back some gains throughout the day and was trading at R9.68, R15.55 and R13.10 vs the USD, GBP and EUR respectively at the time of writing.

Zimbabwe: Industrials +0.54%, Mining unch, USD 2.48m

The market heavyweights returned into favour pushing the index higher by 54bps. OK Zim continues to rally as it gained a further 4bps to 25.11c in the wake of an issuance to beneficiaries of its share option scheme. Econet gained an impressive 3% to 52.01c after approving a share buyback of 10% of its issued share capital at the Board meeting on Tuesday. BAT continues its run as it gained an impressive 4.76% to 1100c. The mining index was uneventful yet again. Volumes also improved to a solid $2.48m but most interestingly, foreigners were net buyers for the first time since the elections.

African Currencies