Kenya's bourse trading slows down amid decline of some large stocks

NAIROBI, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Trading at the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) slowed down on Thursday as a number of large stocks declined albeit marginally.

Kenya Power, Britam, British American Tobacco and Bamburi Cement are among the top stocks whose prices dropped by between 0.4 percent and 6 percent.

However, the decline which would have affected the 20 Share Index was cancelled by the surge of leading telecom Safaricom shares, which rose by 3 percent to stand at 0.27 U.S. dollars, a new high.

The NSE 20 Share Index gained a paltry one point to stand at 3,752.17, an improvement from Wednesday's drop of 18 points and Tuesday's 34.44 points.

On the other hand, the NSE All Share Index (NASI) surged to close at 175.08 from 173.63 points on Wednesday.

The most traded counters were Safaricom, Equity Bank, KenolKobil, Kenya Airways and HomeAfricka moving 14.2 million, 3.2 million, 2.9 million, 1.5 million and 728,000 shares respectively.

The turnover stood at 7.4 million dollars on a volume of 26 million shares from 8.7 million dollars from 37 million shares on Wednesday.

At the bond market, turnover went down considerably to stand at 5 million dollars from 27 million on Wednesday as foreigner participation stood at 64 percent from 72 percent. Enditem