Offshore investors were net sellers of stocks on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), in the first quarter of 2014, even as their share of total transactions averaged 65.11 percent in the period, compared with 34.89 percent for domestic investors.
Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPI’s), sold N229.09 billion worth of stocks between January and March 2014, compared to N127.41 billion worth of inflows from FPI’s.
February 2014 saw the highest level of outflows worth N103.5 billion, compared with N32.75 billion of inflows.
Foreign investors reacted negatively to the February 20, 2014 suspension of Nigeria’s Central bank governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, by selling stocks and bonds.
The NSE All Share Index is down -5.74 percent year to date (Thursday May 15 2014).
FPI transactions which accounted for 49.28 percent at the beginning of the year, increased significantly to 78.25 percent at the end of March 2014.
In contrast, domestic transactions decreased significantly from 50.72 percent to 21.75 percent over the same period.
This represents an overall decrease of 8.31 percent in total transactions, according to the NSE, broken down into a 50.42 percent increase in FPI transactions and a 60.68 percent decrease in domestic transactions.
In comparison to the same period in 2013, there was a significant increase in total FPI by 62.90 percent, whilst the total domestic transactions reduced by 49.43 percent.
