On June 27, 2023, the market value of an NSE share in the stock exchange was 602 Kenya Shillings (KES). Three days later on June 30, 2023, the share value of the same NSE share had fallen to KES 5.98. This means that if a short seller had sold 1,000,000 NSE shares on June 27 and then covered his position on June 30, 2023, he would have made a pre-tax profit in excess of a half a billion KES or KES/KShs 500,000,000+.
However, if an investor had bought 1,000,000 NSE shares on June 27, 2023 with the intention of going long, he would now (at the time of publishing this article) be counting losses in excess of KES 500,000,000.
So, what is this Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) whose stocks exhibited the most marked price volatility in the history of Kenya’s stock market? Why did the NSE, like its South African equivalent, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, self-list on its own stock exchange under the Main Investment Market Segment (MIMS)? Why did the stock launch through an initial public offering (IPO) of the NSE become the most oversubscribed IPO in the Kenyan stock market, even exceeding the Safaricom IPO? Can the NSE potentiate Kenya’s 2030 vision to become the financial capital of Eastern and Central Africa?
The Beginning of the NSE
