Nairobi bourse declines as Christmas mood weighs on trading

Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) declined further Thursday as turnover stood at a mere 1.9 million U.S. dollars on a volume of 8 million shares from 10 million worth 3.8 million dollars the previous session.

Like the previous day, the downward spiral was mainly due to drop in large stocks prices as foreign investors cut participation to 58 percent from 73 percent, with stockbrokers noting that the Christmas mood, with reduced interest in stocks trading, had begun to weigh down the bourse.

Safaricom, Kenya's leading telecom, was the day's top trader, moving 2 million shares after going down 0.8 percent to trade at 0.17 dollars. Wednesday, the company traded 3.5 million shares.

Equity Bank was the second top trader after transacting 1.5 million shares at unchanged prices of 0.30 dollars. This was an improvement from the previous day's 966,000 shares.

Uchumi Supermarkets was the third top mover, trading 1 million shares at 0.04 dollars, a drop of 4 percent.

Kenya Commercial Bank and Cooperative Bank, which closed the list of the big movers, did not trade more than a million shares. In total, the banking sector had 3.2 million shares traded and represented 40 percent of the day's traded volume.

The NSE 20 Share Index was down 19 points to stand at 3,129.78 while the All Share Index (NASI) ended at 130.95 from 131.63 and the NSE 25 Share Index went down from 3,482.38 to 3,466.52 stand.

The bonds market had securities worth 21 million dollars transacted compared to 15 million registered the previous session. Endit