Foreign investors spend N381.8bn in stock market in Q1 2018
Kayode Ogunwale

 

Foreign portfolio investment have invested N381.82 billion in the Nigerian stock market during the first quarter of 2018.
The latest data on domestic and foreign portfolio participation in equity trading for the month of March released by the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) shows that, total transactions at the nation’s bourse increased by 28.50 percent from N212.05 billion recorded in February 2018 to N272.48 billion (about $0.89 billion) in March 2018.
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.
Domestic investors however outperformed foreign investors by 2.96 percent in March 2018. Total domestic transactions increased by 8.88 percent from N128.83 billion in February to N140.27 billion in March 2018. Foreign transactions increased more significantly by 58.87 percent from N83.22 billion to N132.21 billion within the same period.
There was a 55.29 percent increase in foreign inflows from N44.89 billion in February 2018 to N69.71 billion in March 2018. Foreign outflows also increased by 63.06 percent from N38.33 billion to N62.50 billion within the same period.
Meanwhile, the domestic composition of transactions on the exchange between January and March 2018 indicates that, 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 N49.00 billion within the same period.
This indicates a higher participation by institutional investors over their retail counterparts.
In the last eight years, 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 eleven 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.