SSA Equity Market: A Sellers' Market Save for Nigeria

Friday, December 04, 2020/ 03:00PM / United Capital Research / Header Image Credit: Brand Spur

The performance of the equity market in the global, emerging and frontier markets was largely negative in H1-2020, the bearish sentiment observed in the market was attributable to the coronavirus pandemic, with investors exiting their positions in riskier assets like equities in favour of safe havens (the US treasury). This action changed the fortune of the SSA equity market under our watch as Foreign investors in SSA equity market took flight despite the fact that some SSA markets started on a good note with Nigeria's equity market ranked among the best performers in the world early in the year.

Fast track to H2- 2020, the narrative changed. The global market turned positive, fueled by the relaxation of lockdown across the world coupled with dovish monetary stances across the globe, giving room for economic activities to rebound. Nevertheless, save for Nigeria, which witnessed a major correction and surged above it pre-COVID level, sentiment for majority of the bourses in SSA remained broadly negative due to a relatively high yield environment, poor monetary policy stimulus and weaker macroeconomic outlook.

While the Nigerian bourse was a clear outperformer (+30.3% YTD), driven by an heterodox monetary policy framework which crashed rates on TBills, followed by the S/African JSE, up 3.2%, Sentiment for Stocks in Mauritius (-26.2% YTD), Ghana (-19.4% YTD), the West Africa BRVM (- 17.2% YTD) and Kenya (-12.1% YTD) remained broadly negative. Looking ahead, we expect a broad-based rebound in 2021on the back of improvement in the overall macro environment.

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Looking Forward

Ghana

General Elections-December 7th

Nov-2020 Inflation Report-December 11^th

Kenya

Oct-2020 M3 Money Supply YoY - December 10^th

Morocco

Nov-2020 M3 Money Supply - December 11th

Dec-2020 Interest Rate Announcement - December 12th

South Africa

Nov-2020 Foreign Exchange Reserves - December 7th

Q3-2020 GDP Report - December 8th

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