Dipo Olowookere
By Modupe Gbadeyanka
Investors in the capital market have been advised to exploit the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) market data for smart investment decisions.
Speaking at an event held at The Civic Centre in Lagos on October 17, 2016, Chief Executive Officer of the NSE, Mr Oscar Onyema, remarked that, “Domestic investors, and indeed foreign portfolio investors, require an elevated level of insight in order to discern between great investments and lame investments, especially during a challenging down cycle.”
“That is why this workshop is designed specifically to provide capital market participants with sufficient knowledge about exploiting NSE market data for smart investment decisions,” he said in his opening speech at the inaugural NSE Market Data Workshop.
Speaking further at the occasion themed ‘Understanding Market Data for Savvy Investing and Wealth Creation’, Mr Onyema said, “When we talk about market data, we refer to the pre and post trade-related data for the financial instruments traded on the NSE.”
“Our market data informs traders, investors, media and others in our market on the quotations, latest price, and historical trends for the equities, fixed-income, and exchange traded funds (ETF) products that are traded on our platform.
“This information is not only used in real time to make instantaneous buy and sell decisions, but the historical market data is used to make price projections, as well as calculate market risk on investment portfolios,” he stated.
NSE boss also said the delivery of market data to users is resource heavy and requires specialised technologies designed to handle the collection, processing and dissemination of massive data streams.
“At the NSE, this effort is underpinned by our ‘next generation’ trading engine, X-GEN, which was built in collaboration with Nasdaq in 2013. It is therefore very pleasant that this workshop is coinciding with the 3rd anniversary of X-GEN.”
He said X-GEN was not only built to trade a wide range of securities, but extendable to multiple interfaces for the consumption of market data.
“Additionally, it is FIX protocol version five enabled, improving market transparency and providing wide market access.
“It is these systems that we rely on daily to deliver approximately 2.5GB worth of data to our various domestic and global market data consumers. Excellence drives our services, thus we continually challenge ourselves to deliver our data faster and in more easily accessible formats to our clients,” he added.
In his presentation, Mr Ade Bajomo, Executive Director, Market Operations and Technology, NSE, said that market data is the bedrock of sound investment decisions.
“The conference brings to fore the critical application of market data in making sound investment decisions whilst highlighting the various data products available in the Nigerian marketplace, thereby allowing investors to maximize their wealth creation opportunities,” Mr Bajomo submitted.
The NSE Market Data Workshop featured two panel discussions and several presentations from thought leaders.
Some of the speakers for the event included Dr Yemi Kale, Statistician-General of the National Bureau of Statistics of Nigeria; Mr Bola Ajomale, Managing Director, NASD; Mr Haruna Jalo-Waziri, Executive Director, Capital Markets; Mr Uwa Agbonile, Managing Director, Infoware Ltd; Obiora Anyichie, MD/CEO, Global Trybe Solutions Nig. Ltd; Ade Ewuosho, Head of Market Services, NSE.
Others were Kemi Oluwashina, Director, ARM Securities, Buki Abu: ETF Manager, NSE; Daniel Eve, African Sales Manager, Bloomberg Manager; Natasha Punwani, Exchanges Business Manager, Bloomberg L.P; Uchenna Igwebuike, CEO, Zanibal LLC and Amos Emmanuel, Chief Software Architect/CEO, Programos Software Group.
