The Markets

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – The pressures on South African consumers are showing in the country’s retail stocks. An index of general retailers traded in Johannesburg has fallen for the past seven weeks, the longest losing streak since February 2014. A government report Wednesday showed that retail sales in Africa’s most-industrialized economy in April rose at the slowest pace since February last year. South African shoppers are contending with rising fuel prices, partly as weakness in the…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Emerging-market investors need increasingly deeper pockets as they prepare to add stocks from the region’s largest exchange. Saudi Arabian shares have climbed 14 percent this year, partly as foreign investors bet the country will win upgrades to emerging-market status, which they expect to trigger billions of dollars of inflows from funds tracking global benchmark indexes. The buying has pushed the capitalization of Riyadh’s market beyond that of South Africa in dollar terms for…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – The Nigerian bourse extended its bullish run, as the NSE All-Share index advanced by 0.83%, to settle the year-to-date return at +2.42%. The market turnover increased by 33.57%, however, the volume of transactions declined by 43.39%. The market breadth stood at 1.29x, indicating twenty-seven (27) gainers and twenty-one (21) laggards. SEPLAT emerged the top gainer, as its share price appreciated by 8.14% to close at NGN769.00. The top gainers’…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Investors looking for a haven amid the rout in emerging markets over the past two months would have found one in Nigeria’s domestic debt. Naira bonds issued by the government have returned 8.4 percent in dollar terms this year, the most in the Bloomberg Barclays Global EM Local Currency Index, which includes 25 countries from Argentina to Turkey. And it’s the only local-currency debt not to have made losses…