Nairobi bourse low stock prices attract foreign buys

Foreign investors at the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) sustained buys Wednesday, going for telecom and bank stocks in particular, amid low turnover.

The NSE has become a buyers' market following decline in prices of various stocks, especially those of the banking sector that saw prices of some stocks dropping by over 30 percent in about a month.

Kenya's leading telecom operator Safaricom was the day's biggest mover, attracting foreign inflows to trade 10.8 million shares at 0.19 U.S. dollars to account for 60 percent of the day's traded volume.

In the banking sector, some 4.9 million shares were traded, representing 28 percent of the day's traded volume.

Equity Bank saw 2.2 million shares changing hands at 0.26 dollars while Kenya Commercial Bank went down to 0.25 dollars and moved 1 million shares.

The energy sector had 713,000 shares traded with KenolKobil moving 545,000 shares of the total at 0.11 dollars.

In total, some 18 million shares valued at 3.5 million dollars were traded, down from 21 million shares at 4.8 million dollars posted Tuesday.

The NSE 20 Share Index went down 22.09 points to stand at 3,170.22.

The All Share Index (NASI), on the other hand, was up 0.51 points to stand at 132.85 while the NSE 25 Share Index was up 6.48 points to stand at 3,494.36. Endit