By NKIRUKA NNOROM

Improved regulatory environment and performance of quoted companies from 2012 till date have positively impacted share prices and overall indices in the stock market, says the Chief Executive Officer, NSE, Mr. Oscar Onyema.

Onyema made the declaration at the Retail Investors’ Clinic organised by the Exchange for registered shareholders’ associations in Lagos.

He also reiterated the Exchange’s commitment to work with the Board of Trustee of the Investors’ Protection Fund to sustain and promote investors’ confidence in the stock market.

He stated that in pursuit of the its desire to ensure investors’ protection, the NSE has proposed several rules to codify the accepted mode of engagement in our market, as well as adopted a zero-tolerance stance on dealing member firms and listed companies violations.

“We have also started building a robust financial literacy program. Back in February 2012, we kicked off our financial literacy program as a first step in protecting investors. This program aims to enhance investors’ understanding of the basics of investing around portfolio construction, asset allocation and risk diversification.

“The “Investor Clinic” aspect of the program, which is a flag ship product for our financial literacy efforts, has been delivered in partnership with stellar organisations such as Morgan Stanley, Stanbic IBTC, Greenwich Trust and FBN Capital, just to name a few. These have primarily been focused on particular segments of the investing community to discuss the finer details of investing and to shed more light on the capital market eco system,” he said.

He continued, “On the Technology front, we rolled out X-Gen, which is our new generation trading platform that supports our effort to drive our market to a higher level. X-Gen opens an unprecedented level of innovative trading capabilities for the Nigerian capital market, providing direct market access for both the buy and sell sides, and mobile access through smartphones to the retail investors,” saying that therein lies an opportunity for engagement with the 120 million mobile phone owners across the country.

Reviewing the performance of the stock market so far, the NSE boss noted that all vital performance metrics in the market have bounced back from the critical low in 2008 and have generally remained upbeat with the market capitalization of listed equities on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) increasing by over 47.33 percent in the past year alone.

“Also, the average daily value of shares traded went up by 57.36 percent from the N2.65 billion recorded in 2012 to N4.17billion in 2013,” he added.

“Year to date, local investors’ participation in our market stands at over 50 percent compared to the 49.28 percent foreign participation.