**As Total Transactions Rise by 28% in March
By Dipo Olowookere
Though the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) has been bullish since February this year, this has provided an opportunity for wise investors to buy up shares experience poor run lately at the market.
According to the domestic and foreign portfolio participation in equity trading report for the month of March 2018 released by the NSE, the value of total transactions at the nation’s bourse last month increased by 28.50 percent from N212.05 billion recorded in February 2018 to N272.48 billion achieved in March 2018.
The report obtained by Business Post showed that the cumulative transactions from January to March increased by 48.29 percent from N454.48 billion recorded in 2017 to N878.97 billion in 2018.
It was observed that during the period, domestic investors outperformed foreign investors by 2.96 percent.
Specifically, total domestic transactions increased by 8.88 percent from N128.83 billion in February to N140.27 billion in March 2018.
It was gathered that last month, investors have intensified their interest in the stock market, buying up more shares at the market.
This was reflected in the increase in the value of their transactions during the period under review.
However, the amount of money they have pulled out from the market increased in March 2018 when compared with February 2018, but lower than what was recorded in January 2018.
Business Post reports that foreign transactions increased more significantly by 58.87 percent from N83.22 billion two months ago to N132.21 billion last month.
In the report, it was observed that there was a 55.29 percent increase in foreign inflows from N44.89 billion in February 2018 to N69.71 billion in March 2018.
Also, foreign outflows increased by 63.06 percent from N38.33 billion to N62.50 billion within the same period.
The report said the institutional composition of the domestic market increased by 19.97 percent from N76.08 billion in February to N91.27 billion in March 2018.
However, the retail composition decreased by 7.11 percent from N52.75 billion to N49 billion within the same period.
Since 2011, foreign transactions consistently outperformed domestic transactions.
However, domestic transactions marginally outperformed foreign transactions in 2016 and 2017, accounting for 52 percent of the total transaction value in 2017.
Also, foreign transactions, which was N1.539 trillion in 2014, declined to N518 billion in 2016, but increased significantly by 133 percent to N1.208 trillion in 2017, thereby accounting for about 48 percent of total transactions in 2017.
Over an 11 year period, domestic transactions have decreased by 62.46 percent from N3.556 trillion in 2007 to N1.335 trillion in 2017.
However, there was a significant increase in 2017 by 111 percent from N634 billion recorded in 2016.
