By Modupe Gbadeyanka
Investors are anticipating treasury bills worth N164.58 billion to mature today via the secondary market which.
This is expected to cause a slight reduction in the T-bills average yields today, especially with the refusal of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to conduct Open Market Operations (OMO) since the beginning of this week.
However, market players would be anticipating one today to suppress buying interests in the market, especially if a long tenor bill above 300 days is offered by the apex bank.
Yesterday, the market traded with mixed sentiments with further selloff witnessed on the shorter end of the curve (Oct – Dec), while slight interests were witnessed around the mid tenors (Jan –Mar).
Consequently, yields stayed relatively flat at 12.97 percent on average on Wednesday.
It was observed yesterday that yield gains were recorded across all the tenors, except for the 6-month and the 9-month tenors, which declined by 0.05 percent and 0.002 percent.
Meanwhile, the Open Buy Back (OBB) and Overnight (OVN) rates declined on Wednesday by 1.33 percent and 1.50 percent respectively to close at 16.67 percent and 17.92 percent, leaving the average money market rate at 17.30 percent at the close of business.
However, the rates are expected to trend lower today as a result of the anticipated inflows from OMO maturities and Retail forex refunds.
Market players would however remain wary of expected funding for CBN’s Retail FX auction on Friday.
