THE plan of the Nigerian Stock Exchange to extend the trading time from the current 12:30 pm to 2:30 pm may not have positive impact on the market.
BusinessWorld intelligent can reveal that the current volume of transaction in the market is too low compared to the volume recorded in the last two years. The market reached its peak in April 2008, which brought about an average turnover of N24 billion per day but currently the average trading has fallen between N2 billion and N3 billion per day.
However, experts in market believe that this is not a good time to look at the time extension in the market because the volume traded during the boom was so impressive. They noted that before the extension in trading hours there must be much activities. This is because presently, our market up till now is a bit low because the market is trading in less than 300 listed securities, unlike in developed markets where they have a minimum of 1000 or more securities trading.
They advised the exchange management to concentrate on numbers of securities currently listed on the floor of the NSE. The number of securities listed have not significantly increased compared to what we have before and it is very good for the management to work on listing more securities rather than extend the trading time.
There are strong indications that this may not be met very soon.