The performance at the Nairobi Securities Exchange ended at a slight dip on Friday with both major indices recording decreased performance. The number of shares that were traded edged up to 43.7 million compared to 35.2 million on Thursday. Market capitalization however, dipped by around KES 850 million. It was basically bad news for foreign investors, whose main focus on the securities exchange is market capitalization.

Today (and for most of the week), we shall focus on the banking sector as announcements of their results for Q3 are expected. There are 10 listed banks on the NSE so we shall examine 2 per day. For starters, we shall look at Co-operative bank and Standard Chartered, who have already made their announcements.

• Co-operative Bank –With an increase of profit-after-tax to KES 5.7 billion, a 47.18% increase from that of June, one would expect investors’ attention to be caught. This was unfortunately not the case last Friday. The volume traded stood at 627,500 and the share price dipped to KES 12.20, both down from Thursday with over 1 million shares traded at KES 12.55. We shall monitor the stock’s price and quantity movement in light of last week’s results announcement.
• Standard Chartered Bank – There has been good news around the bank last week. Their rights issue saw them raise an excess of KES 5 billion and the group reported a profit-after-tax figure of KES 6.4 billion, up 68% from last year’s KES 3.86 billion for the same period. The stock price went up to KES 235, up KES 1 from the previous day’s trading. Shareholders seem to barely react to the announcements despite an almost doubling of profits by the bank. We shall keep an eye on the price change for the day in case the reaction by local shareholders is delayed.