Peter OBIORA investadvocate
Lagos (INVESTADVOCATE)-Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has rallied support for further extension of trading hours on the Floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) affirming that it would allow foreign investors adequate participation.
Arunma Oteh, the Director General (DG) Nigeria’s SEC Tuesday March 15 2011 made this affirmation at the NSE in Lagos Nigeria.
She affirmed that based on their interaction with some international investors, their expectation is that it should be further extended to allow them sufficient time to participate adequately in the Nation’s Stock Market.
“In one interaction, an international investors said that the trading volumes that we are still doing in our Market; despite its potential size is one-tenth (1/10) the size of the ticket that he deals with a particular Operator in another frontier Market; just as a way to continue to encourage us in what we have started, so I do hope that the Exchange will study this issue and be able to look at further extending the hours,” Oteh said.
This is coming on the heels of pronouncement Thursday March 10 2010 by Emmanuel Ikazoboh, Interim Administrator of the Nigeria’s Exchange to Reuters foreign News Agency that the Nigeria’s Exchange will increase trading hours by another two hours within the next two months in its move to attract foreign participation. This move if effected, will take trading hours from five to seven.
Considering that volumes increased as a result of the two hours extension, are we going to further increase the trading hours? I affirmed that we are going to watch and if we observe that volumes are increasing as a result, we will consider increasing it by another two hours. What happens in the next few months will determine if we are going to increase the Trading Hours again,” Ikazoboh said.
The Interim Administrator of the NSE affirmed that there are indications that with the initial two hours increase, volume of transaction from foreign investors increased, and this is because of the timing differences between our zone and the United States (US).
“If they are only able to place orders for only within 30 minutes of our Market closing and volumes have increased, it means that if we increase it by another two hours, our volume will definitely grow further. I think it is what the Council will look at and I am sure figures will determine if they will give their approval or not,” he said.
As earlier reported, NSE February 10 2011 said that the two-hour trading extension has boosted the volume of shares traded in the first two months of the policy by 50.52 percent (50.52%). While out of the 171.875 billion shares traded between Monday December 06 2010, and Friday 04 February 2011, the first two months of the extension, the two-hour added time, accounted for a total of 86.834 billion shares traded, while the three hours between 9.30 am and 12.30 pm accounted for 85.041billion shares traded.
The Nigeria’s Exchangeon Monday December 06 2010 commenced the extension of trading hours on its Floor following its approval by the Capital Market Committee (CMC) on Monday November 29 2010; that the trading hours be extended by two hours from 9.30 am to 2.30 pm compared to its former time of 9.30 am to 12.30 pm; making it a total of five trading hours.
