Investors' wealth at Nairobi bourse rises slightly to cross the 20 bln USD mark

Investors at the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) Wednesday saw their wealth cross the 20 billion U.S. dollars mark as market capitalization went up from 19.8 billion dollars.

Market capitalization, which measures shareholders' wealth, has been on a downward trend in the past weeks as it remained below 20 billion dollars.

Since mid-June, the index has lost about 900 million dollars as prices of various top stocks tumble.

The bulk of investors' wealth was eroded toward the end of last month when the key index fell by 642 million dollars due to share price erosion.

But Wednesday's marginal rise is a relief to investors as prices of several key stocks mainly in the telecom, petroleum and banking sectors went up marginally or remained unstable.

Some 25 million shares valued at 5.7 million dollars were traded, down from 26 million shares that were valued at 5.9 million dollars Tuesday.

The banking sector had 7.8 million shares traded with Equity Bank moving 3.1 million shares at a high of 0.39 million dollars.

Kenya Commercial Bank, on the other hand, rose marginally to trade at 0.32 dollars as it moved 3.1 million shares.

Standard Chartered Bank, similarly, rose to 2.2 dollars on a volume of 611,000 shares, up from 2 dollars registered the previous session.

The commercial and services and insurance sectors too helped lift the bourse by trading 6.5 million shares and 6.8 million shares respectively.

Safaricom, in the telecommunication sector, moved 2.7 million shares at an average of 0.17 dollars.

The NSE 20 Share Index went down slightly to 3.57 points to stand at 3,616.10 and All Share Index (NASI) edged 0.30 points higher to stand at 139.17. Endit