In the early hours of April 16, Ademola Adeoye walked leisurely across different sections of his living room in Oluyole area of Ibadan, Oyo State, completely unperturbed by the chaos of events happening outside of his immediate environment. A Lagos-based stock analyst and policy expert, Mr Adeoye moved to his Ibadan home shortly before the Nigerian government declared a nationwide lockdown to arrest the spread of coronavirus in the first quarter of the year.
The finance expert said such moves must be encouraged to eliminate the barrier associated with physical activities at this critical period and deepen the adoption of digitally compliant means of participation in market activities. By 1999, the Exchange had transited from the manual system of trading called Open Outcry or Call-Over or Pit Trading to the Automated Trading System . The ATS refers to the use of computers to execute transactions on the market.
Mr Onyema said that against the backdrop of this development, the NSE quickly implemented a business continuity plan that included, initially, temperature checks, the use of hand sanitizers, and in-office social distancing. It would later transition to remote work, which would not have been possible had the groundwork not already been in place.Within the period, as investors move to safer assets, the NSE’s gold ETF performed quite well, even among foreign investors.
Similarly, within the same period, the Nairobi Securities Exchange opened up its platforms to bankers, stockbrokers and asset managers as well as individuals, wishing to trade from their homes. Within this period, in a bid to break the barrier associated with physical contact in the market, the Nigerian Stock Exchange has been operational through remote trading, leveraging on technology to ease operations.First, on April 15, the Nigerian Stock Exchange published its guidance on virtual Board, Committee, and Management Meetings for stakeholders.
Similarly, the X-BOSS, a broker supervision system, has provided a secure central repository for information about dealing members in order to facilitate compliance. Performance however came out positive in April, amid lockdown and economic downturn, as the market performed with a gain of about 8 percent to close at 23,021.01 points, from an opening point of 21,300.47. Market capitalisation was up by N896 billion, from an opening value of N11.101 trillion to close at N11.997 trillion.