The Shilling Still Heading South As Equity Maintain Upward Trajectory

Equities closed higher for the third consecutive day supported by 63.3 percent higher turnover as relative calm takes over after a long political uncertainty.

Safaricom Limited regained top trading charts from East African Breweries Ltd which trailed SCOM. Equity Group Holdings followed KCB Group while the Co-operative Bank of Kenya closed the top five register.

All the top traded counters except EABL settled higher, with EQTY rallying the most (+7.2%). Trading concentration was fairly spread out in the top traded counters.

Foreign participation closed lower (54.7 percent) from Wednesday’s 78.5 percent with activity inclining towards SCOM, EABL, and KCB. Net buys were on EQTY, KCB, and COOP while net sells were on EABL, SCOM and KenolKobil Ltd. Foreigners turned net sellers today, with a net outflow of 171.2 million shillings.

Bond turnover dropped 78.3 percent to 455.6 million shillings on 32 deals in the session from 48 deals traded previously.

The Kenyan shilling, on the other hand, weakened against the US Dollar, the Sterling Pound, and the Euro for the third consecutive day.

Against the US Dollar, the shilling weakened by 1.23 percent on a year-to-date basis. The same trend was replicated against the Sterling Pound, where the shilling weakened by 9.58 percent on the same basis. Against the Euro, the shilling weakened by 12.79 percent.

On the Kenyan Stock Market, the market turnover at the bourse rose 63.2 percent to USD 11.96 million or an equivalent of 1,240.6 million shillings from Wednesday’s trading.

The NSE 20 and NASI gained 0.81 percent and 1.22 percent to close the day at 3,759.67 and 163.96 respectively. Foreign investors, on the other hand, assumed a net selling position by accounting for 68.5 of total market sales and 40.9 percent of total market purchases.

On East African Community Markets, in Rwanda, the RSE RSI and RASI went up 5.07 percent and 0.70 percent to close the day at 133.90 and 132.27 respectively while in Uganda, the USE ALSI and USE LCI rose 0.65 percent and 0.35 percent to close at 1,690.63 and 386.56 respectively.