By Dipo Olowookere
Trading activities on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) were on Thursday suspended for 30 minutes after the All-Share Index (ASI) increased by over 5 per cent.
During the trading session, the index jumped to 5.08 per cent, forcing the management of the exchange to trigger the index circuit breaker.
Business Post reports that an index circuit breaker is usually triggered by the exchange to control the movement in the benchmark performance indicators of the market for the trading day.
The breaker can be pulled when the market is witnessing an unusual rise or fall. When triggered, trading activities are halted for a while.
Today, when the index reached the 5 per cent threshold, the stock exchange was paused for 30 minutes for calm and at 1.35pm, investors were allowed to resume trading of securities.
But before then, stockbrokers sent notices to their customers, informing them of the development.
One of the brokerage companies, Morgan Capital, wrote that, “Kindly be informed that the Index Circuit breaker has been triggered, thus all securities on the All Share Index (ASI) will be suspended for the next 30 minutes. Trading will resume at 1.35pm.”
At 1.50pm, before publishing the article, trading activities had resumed and the index was up by 5.74 per cent to 35,178.67 points from the previous day’s 33,268.36 points.
Adedapo Adesanya