Kenyan bourse bear-run wipes out 5 pct investors' wealth in a week

NAIROBI, April 23 (Xinhua) -- Investors' wealth at the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) declined 5 percent in one week following drop in prices of various stocks.

Market capitalization, which measures shareholders' wealth, went down by nearly 100 million dollars to 26.95 billion dollars on Friday last week from 27.94 billion dollars at start of the week pulled down by a bear-run, data from the market showed on Monday.

The biggest decline of the index was recorded on Thursday when the bourse forfeited 17.9 million dollars to end at 27.05 billion dollars.

Decline in stock prices have been recorded across the board but mainly on counters in the energy and petroleum, telecommunications and technology and construction and allied sectors.

Some of the stocks whose prices have gone down include Safaricom, Nation Media Group, Kengen, Athi River Mining and Kenya Airways.

Market capitalization hit a peak of 28.89 billion dollars early April but has been on a downward trend since, with stock brokers attributing the current decline to correction of share prices.

Foreign investors, who account for the bulk of the trading at the market, have mainly been sellers during the period, disposing Safaricom and bank stocks, mainly Kenya Commercial Bank and Equity Bank. Enditem