Stockbrokers to Flag Trading of 500,000 Stocks, Others from January 2021

By Dipo Olowookere

From January 2021, stockbrokers would be mandated to give details of any investor in the Nigerian capital market who trades any security more than 499,999 units.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has already sent out a circular to registered brokers/dealers that the implementation of this policy will commence from Saturday, January 2, 2021.

It is in line with one of the rules and regulations of the apex capital market regulator, which the brokerage companies agreed to adhere to.

In the notice, SEC reminded the brokers that Rule 56 (1&2) (c) of the Rules and Regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission provides that:

“Registered brokers/dealers shall disclose to the Commission any dealings in a Security valued at a minimum of 500,000 units executed in a single deal or in multiple deals on the same day on behalf of his clients or on his own account not later than 24 hours after such activity.”

It noted that, “In line with the above rule, the commission wishes to request all Capital Market Operators registered as brokers, dealers or broker-dealers to henceforth comply with the rule and forward the required returns as in the template below. The returns shall be sent to the following email address in excel CSV template, stockexchange@sec.gov.ng.

In the template, stockbrokers are required to supply its name, clearing house (CH) number, investor name, permanent address, email address, phone number, transaction date, security symbol, transaction type, ticket number, volume, unit price and total price.

This policy may have been triggered to monitor the movement of funds in the market.

The stock market has seen a huge interest of domestic investors lately, especially as a result of the low yield environment in the fixed income market.

This recently caused the management of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) to pull the circuit breaker for the first time since it was introduced in 2016.

This was on Thursday, November 12, 2020, when the All-Share Index (ASI) rose beyond the set threshold of 5 per cent, triggering a 30-minute trading halt of all stocks.