High FX Transactions Weaken Naira by 0.04% at I$E

By Adedapo Adesanya

The Naira closed weaker against the United States Dollar at the Investors and Exporters (I&E) window of the foreign exchange market on Friday, December 16, amid a significant increase in the value of FX transactions.

According to data from the FMDQ Securities Exchange, the turnover for the last trading session of the week stood at $355.12 million. This put pressure on the domestic currency as it depreciated by 92 Kobo or 0.04 per cent to trade at N451.50/$1 compared with the previous day’s rate of N450.58/$1.

However, in the peer-to-peer (P2P) segment of the forex market, the Nigerian currency appreciated against its American pair by N14 to close at N756/$1, in contrast to the N770/$1 of the preceding session.

But at the parallel market, the domestic currency maintained stability against the greenback on Friday at N742/$1.

In the interbank window, the local currency appreciated against the Euro by N1.04 to quote at N473.90/€1, in contrast to Thursday’s value of N474.94/€1, and against the Pound Sterling, it improved by N3 to settle at N549.46/£1 compared with the previous day’s N552.46/£1.

Meanwhile, in the cryptocurrency market, most of the cryptos tracked by Business Post closed in the negative territory as the market continued to reel from the decision of the US Federal Reserve.

The Fed hiked interest rates by 0.50 per cent, which was well within the expectation of most market participants, but the eyebrow-raiser was the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) consensus that rates would need to reach the 5 per cent–5.5 per cent+ range to achieve the Fed’s 2 per cent inflation target hopefully.

This information affected the value of the world’s largest crypto by value, Bitcoin (BTC), as it fell by 4.2 per cent to $16,728.80, with Ethereum (ETH) losing 7.4 per cent to trade at $1,181.48.

Cardano (ADA) went down by 12.3 per cent to $0.2637, Solana (SOL) recorded a 12.2 per cent slump to trade at $12.35, Binance Coin (BNB) also slid by 12.2 per cent to $231.25, Litecoin (LTC) declined by 11.8 per cent to $64.65, Dogecoin (DOGE) dropped 10.2 per cent to sell at $0.0777, and Ripple (XRP) shrank by 2.2 per cent to trade at $0.3913.

However, Binance USD (BUSD) and the US Dollar Tether (USDT) closed flat at $1.00 apiece.