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Tuesday 14th of December 2010 |
Afternoon Africa |
www.rich.co.ke Register and its all Free.
If you are tracking the NSE Do it via RICHLIVE and use Mozilla Firefox as your Browser. 0930-1500 KENYA TIME Normal Board - The Whole shebang Prompt Board Next day settlement Expert Board All you need re an Individual stock.
The Latest Daily PodCast can be found here http://www.rich.co.ke/rctools/richpod.php
A #Mindspeak Aperitif RICH TV http://bit.ly/1mPS6v
Bob Collymore CEO Safaricom Liza Wisner-Mucheru Martin O-O CEO Kenya Commercial Bank Jeff Koinange K24
My Presentation at @Africagathering Business Start Ups Making Ideas Happen http://bit.ly/he67J8
I start by playing the Rolling Stones' Start Me Up http://bit.ly/eA23yj
The #Star #Wikileaks #ICC The Hague The Political Tape turns Parabolic http://bit.ly/fcAVB3
Macro Thoughts
The Dollar might well TIP now that the QE2 has hit the Water with some Purpose/
Home Thoughts
The Girls are all on Holiday now. |
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No Secrets Julian Assange Wikileaks New Yorker Law & Politics |
The house on Grettisgata Street, in Reykjavik, is a century old, small and white, situated just a few streets from the North Atlantic. The shifting northerly winds can suddenly bring ice and snow to the city, even in springtime, and when they do a certain kind of silence sets in. This was the case on the morning of March 30th, when a tall Australian man named Julian Paul Assange, with gray eyes and a mop of silver-white hair, arrived to rent the place. Assange was dressed in a gray full-body snowsuit, and he had with him a small entourage. “We are journalists,” he told the owner of the house. Eyjafjallajökull had recently begun erupting, and he said, “We’re here to write about the volcano.” After the owner left, Assange quickly closed the drapes, and he made sure that they stayed closed, day and night. The house, as far as he was concerned, would now serve as a war room; people called it the Bunker. Half a dozen computers were set up in a starkly decorated, white-walled living space.
Assange is an international trafficker, of sorts.
Assange calls the site “an uncensorable system for untraceable mass document leaking and public analysis,” and a government or company that wanted to remove content from WikiLeaks would have to practically dismantle the Internet itself.
Under the studio lights, he can seem—with his spectral white hair, pallid skin, cool eyes, and expansive forehead—like a rail-thin being who has rocketed to Earth to deliver humanity some hidden truth. This impression is magnified by his rigid demeanor and his baritone voice, which he deploys slowly, at low volume.
WikiLeaks receives about thirty submissions a day, and typically posts the ones it deems credible in their raw, unedited state, with commentary alongside. Assange told me, “I want to set up a new standard: ‘scientific journalism.’ If you publish a paper on DNA, you are required, by all the good biological journals, to submit the data that has informed your research—the idea being that people will replicate it, check it, verify it. So this is something that needs to be done for journalism as well. There is an immediate power imbalance, in that readers are unable to verify what they are being told, and that leads to abuse.”
The name Assange is thought to derive from Ah Sang, or Mr. Sang, a Chinese émigré who settled on Thursday Island, off the coast of Australia, in the early eighteen-hundreds, and whose descendants later moved to the continent.
. In any event, the family had moved thirty-seven times by the time Assange was fourteen, making consistent education impossible.
Assange recalled her saying, “Now we need to disappear,” and he lived on the run with her from the age of eleven to sixteen. When I asked him about the experience, he told me that there was evidence that the man belonged to a powerful cult called the Family—its motto was “Unseen, Unknown, and Unheard.”
“The austerity of one’s interaction with a computer is something that appealed to me,” he said. “It is like chess—chess is very austere, in that you don’t have many rules, there is no randomness, and the problem is very hard.”
When Assange was eighteen, the two got married in an unofficial ceremony, and soon afterward they had a son.
“Underground” describes Assange’s growing fear of arrest: “Mendax dreamed of police raids all the time. He dreamed of footsteps crunching on the driveway gravel, of shadows in the pre-dawn darkness, of a gun-toting police squad bursting through his backdoor at 5 am.”
“Your inner voice quiets down,” he told me. “Internal dialogue is stimulated by a preparatory desire to speak, but it is not actually useful if there are no other people around.” He added, “I don’t want to sound too Buddhist. But your vision of yourself disappears.”
He sketched out a manifesto of sorts, titled “Conspiracy as Governance,” which sought to apply graph theory to politics. Assange wrote that illegitimate governance was by definition conspiratorial—the product of functionaries in “collaborative secrecy, working to the detriment of a population.” He argued that, when a regime’s lines of internal communication are disrupted, the information flow among conspirators must dwindle, and that, as the flow approaches zero, the conspiracy dissolves. Leaks were an instrument of information warfare.
Assange ended up staying in Kenya for several months. He would check in with friends by phone and through the Internet from time to time, but was never precise about his movements. One friend told me, “It would always be, ‘Where is Julian?’ It was always difficult to know where he was. It was almost like he was trying to hide.”
Conclusions
Very Sun Tzu is Assange.
Ultimate Excellence lies not in Winning every Battle but in defeating the Enemy without Ever fighting - Master Sun Tzu.
The ICC has made arrangements to broadcast the press conference on the Internet. It can be watched at "http://livestream.xs4all.nl/icc5.asx" link
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Currency markets At A Glance World Currencies |
Euro 1.3392 rose more than 1.2% against the dollar in afternoon trading in New York Pound 1.5864 Yen 83.44 Aussie 0.9953 Rand 6.8305 India Rupee 45.045 Brazil Real 1.6935 South Korea Won 1140.70
The euro rose more than 1.2% against the dollar in afternoon trading in New York. Gains accelerated after the euro climbed above $1.34, triggering some automatic orders as it approached short-term technical highs, said Brian Dolan, chief currency strategist at Gain Capital. |
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US Bond Market at a Glance WSJ World Of Finance |
1-Month Bill 0/32 0.089 3-Month Bill 0/32 0.127 6-Month Bill 0/32 0.188 1-Year Note 0/32 0.271 2-Year Note -0/32 0.596 3-Year Note -1/32 0.983 5-Year Note -4/32 1.904 7-Year Note -3/32 2.636 10-Year Note -3/32 3.288 30-Year Bond 2/32 4.411
Gains also came as the Federal Reserve completed its first purchase of Treasury securities for the week, buying nearly $8 billion in Treasurys. Traders said bond yields had reached levels that looked enticing to buyers after the prior week's sharp move up in yield, sparking purchasing by foreign central banks. Early Monday, the 10-year yield hit a 3.395% high, a level last seen in June.
Conclusions
The FED bought the Lows.
Euro Dollar 5 day Chart INO 1.3393 Last http://bit.ly/deyPwl
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Austerity, Wall Street-Style WSJ Misc. |
In Christmases past, the top bankers on Wall Street would often load their families onto a private jet and head to the beaches of St. Barts or slopes of Aspen for the holidays.
This holiday season, many Wall Streeters are flying commercial, according to jet brokers. Those who are still flying private are jet-pooling with strangers to cut costs. Some are even skipping the catered in-flight meals, which can cost $1,000 or more for four people.
"They're telling me, 'We'll just bring our own lunch,' " said Ricky Sitomer, chief executive of Blue Star Jets, a private-jet charter company. "They still want to travel in luxury, but they want the best value they can get." |
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Why the Mind Sees the Future in the Past Tense WSJ Misc. |
I recently came across the phrase "remembering the future." Rather than some empty poetic paradox, it appeared in an article about a neuroscientific experiment that tested a hypothesis of Karl Friston of University College, London, that the brain is more active when it is surprised.
In the study, volunteers watched patterns of moving dots while having their brains scanned. Occasionally, a dot would appear out of step. Although there was the same number of dots, the visual part of the subjects' brains was more active when the dots broke step. According to Arjen Alink of the Max Planck Institute in Frankfurt, Germany, who did the experiment, the brains were predicting what would happen next and having to work harder when their predictions failed. They were "remembering the future."
There is a growing conviction within neuroscience that one of the human mind's chief preoccupations is prediction. Jeff Hawkins, the founder of Palm Computing who is now a full-time neuroscientist, argued in his 2004 book "On Intelligence" that the mind does this by detecting a familiar pattern in its input, then anticipating from past experience what usually follows. The more unexpected something is, the more conscious we are of it.
This explains a lot about awareness. When I push my foot down on the brake pedal, I expect to feel deceleration. If I do, I am barely conscious of the fact: My mind continues to concentrate on the radio or my conversation with my passenger. If I don't, I am immediately so aware of the car skidding on the ice or the brakes failing that my mind is fully occupied with the failed prediction.
The big brains of human beings undoubtedly lead them to predict patterns further ahead than other animals. My dog is quite capable of expecting to be taken for a walk or given her dinner at certain times of the day. But she is not capable, as I am, of expecting cold weather in winter or predicting the need to pack a suitcase before a trip. Still, she probably has a longer view of the future than a guinea pig, which in turn sees further ahead than a frog.
Some birds stand out as exceptionally good at "mental time travel." The psychologist Nicky Clayton observed that western scrub jays steal food left behind by lunching students at the University of California at Davis. The jays hid the food by digging it into the ground. Sometimes they came back later and moved the food—but only if they had been observed by other jays when hiding the food in the first place. Dr. Clayton has since shown in her lab at Cambridge University that they do this to foil thieves, and that scrub jays are uniquely forward-thinking in this respect, even compared with other food-caching species of bird.
Dr. Clayton's other experiments with children reveal that this mental time travel becomes possible for human beings around the age of five. As adults, we inhabit longer futures than children, and longer pasts, too.
Daniel Schacter of Harvard University has made the remarkable discovery that the same parts of the mind hold both our episodic memories and our imagined futures. That is to say, if asked to imagine some specific future event, people activate the very same regions of the brain as they do when asked to recall some particular past event. Indeed, people who suffer strokes that affect these regions lose not just the ability to remember their own lives but the ability to imagine future possibilities as well.
Dr. Schacter concludes, much like Dr. Hawkins and Dr. Friston, that "a crucial function of the brain is to use stored information to imagine, simulate and predict possible future events." Through technology like writing and printing, the longer we extend the past, the longer our view of the future becomes. But that is a subject for another column. |
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Jacobi’s Power-Crazed Lear Chills With Whispers of Rage Bloomberg Misc. |
Over a quiet rumbling white noise, Jacobi, 72, delivers the famous storm speech “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!” in a whisper, as if he’s the calm eye of a destructive hurricane. It’s febrile, disturbing stuff.
He’s helped by a superb cast. Gina McKee (Goneril) and Justine Mitchell (Regan) watch Lear’s every move like hawks. They’ve learned to survive his sudden rages, just as the children of alcoholics do: by treading on eggshells. Their path from sympathetic underdogs to power-crazed murderers is presented step by terrifyingly reasonable step. |
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Soft Commodities at a Glance INO Commodities |
COCOA CC.H11.E Mar 2011 (E) 2890 +2 +0.07% COFFEE KC.H11.E Mar 2011 (E) 217.55 +7.30 +3.36% COTTON #2 (NYBOT:CT) CT.K11.E May 2011 (E) 137.90 +4.67 +3.51% SUGAR #11-WORLD (NYBOT:SB) SB.H11.E Mar 2011 (E) 30.49 +1.39 +4.55%
Conclusions
Coffee is sniffing at New All Time Highs for this Move.
Coffee March 2011 INO 217.55 +7.30 (+3.36%) http://bit.ly/ejwT2X
Last Price 217.55 Open Int. 86107 Contract High 221.45 Contract High Date 2010-11-10 Contract Low 131.4 First Delivery 2011-03-31 Expiration 2011-03-21
A couple of Warhol-inspired bottles of Dom Perignon at the “Vegas,” event Vanity Fair http://bit.ly/fO4eon |
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S.Africa eases exchange controls to offset inflows Reuters World Of Finance |
South Africa has eased exchange controls further to let local institutions invest more abroad in an attempt to offset a surge in foreign inflows which have strengthened the rand.But analysts saw limited immediate rand impact from the 5 percentage point rise in the amount institutional investors can take offshore, announced by Treasury late on Monday "as part of a package of measures to respond to surging portfolio inflows".
The rand is up nearly 30 percent against the dollar since early 2009.
The new limits will allow different types of institutions to take between 25 and 35 percent of assets abroad.
Conclusions
The Government is tinkering but I think the Rand is the Proxy for something more Macro than SA Fund Managers and their FX Allocation. For example, This Year SA sold 400% more Bonds to Foreigners than in any Previous Year.
$ versus Rand Live ForexPros 6.8263 http://bit.ly/1sDk25
My Objective is 6.61 And was it not an Optimal Buy above 7.00.
South Africa All Share Bloomberg Visual +14.595% 2010 http://bit.ly/cy0gLj
Value31,704.56 Change139.380 % Change0.442
We will eventually take out the all time Highs of 33,333 from 21.05.2008 and in the 1st Half Next Year, I venture. |
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Sudan's former rebel SPLM backs independence for south BBC Law & Politics |
The governing party in southern Sudan - the SPLM - has for the first time publicly backed independence for the south, ahead of next month's referendum on the issue.The statement is at odds with the terms of a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of civil war with northern Sudan.In that deal, the SPLM and the north's governing party, the NCP, agreed to work for unity.But a senior SPLM official said the NCP had made unity look very unattractive.The official, Anne Itto, said the SPLM would now campaign for separation. "Since unity has not been made attractive, we are promoting what our people choose because we are following the people," she said.
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Nairobi land dealers nearly double prices in 12 months Business Daily RealEstate, Housing & Construction |
Land prices in prime sections of Nairobi and surrounding districts nearly doubled in the past 12 months riding on increased demand from real estate investors racing to cash in on Kenya’s booming property market.Latest market data indicates that prices rose by the highest margins in for the popular eighth of an acre pieces in prime real estate areas along Thika, Kiambu and Mombasa roads.In Kiambu town on the outskirts of Nairobi, for instance, an eighth of an acre of what has mainly been coffee estates now costs an average of Sh1.2 million up from Sh700,000 in December last year.A similar piece of land in Mlolongo along Mombasa Road is now priced at Sh1.6 million up from Sh900,000 12 months ago while in Kahawa West on Thika Road, prices have risen to an average of Sh1.5 million from Sh900,000.
Conclusions
Nairobi Juba Kinshasa Everywhere I have been ex South Africa which has a different and earlier Dynamic. |
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Small is beautiful: Slum traders spark big business trend MarketPlace Africa Retail & Manufacturing |
CNN's Marketplace Africa offers viewers a unique window into African business on and off the continent. This week the show looks at Kenya's single-serve packaging industry.
Nairobi, Kenya (CNN) -- Deep in Kibera, Kenya's largest slum, stands Anna Wanjiru's small shop, made out of yellow-painted planks of wood with rusty tin sheets for the roof.Inside, shelves are creaking from her merchandise, which consists mainly of consumer items used in homes daily -- from margarine and washing detergent to cooking fat and toothpaste.A common factor in these goods is that they are sold in small packages, weighing from 45 grams to just four grams, and costing from as little as half a cent.Though now all her goods are sold in branded packaging, Wanjiru has been selling the same items in similar small portions for decades to the low-income market.
"My customers are poor and were locked out of the supermarkets where everyday things were packaged in large quantities, making them unaffordable," said Wanjiru.
"So I decided to buy the big packs and then resell in small portions to my customers."
The ingenuity of Wanjiru and other shopkeepers who serve people in low-income areas gave rise to Kenya's "Kadogo economy," which loosely means low-unit economy.
Progressively, big consumer goods companies noticed the profits and decided to cash in as well by repackaging their products. The big companies copied us, traders from the slums, and that makes me proud. --Anna Wanjiru
One of the early takers was Unilever Kenya, a leading manufacturing company that makes, among other things, food and home products.It currently has more than 15 low-unit packs that contribute significantly to its total business turnover.
"It has been drummed into our heads by many a statistician that a significant population of Kenyans earn below $1 a day, and if you're not targeting this consumer base then you have no business calling yourself a fast-moving consumer goods company," said Mumbi Kyalo, media manager for the firm.
"Because there will be no fast movement happening in your business."
Mobile phone service providers have also broadened their target markets, with some providing phone cards for as little as 25 cents, in comparison with about 10 years ago, when the cheapest phone card retailed at roughly $3.
"The bulk of our sales come from the 60 and 25 cents-valued phone cards and this is because the people who buy them depend on a daily income," said a senior marketer at Safaricom, a leading mobile phone service provider in Kenya.
"This translates to daily high frequency in purchases and consequently high volume in sales," he added.
The World Bank rates Kenya as a low-income country and analysts like Alban Aoko of Consumer Trends say that companies ignoring the mass market do so at their own peril.
"I've seen many companies fold up because they focused on the rich and ignored the low-income earners, so when the economy was hard the companies took a big hit," he said.
"The masses will always be able to afford that spoonful of fat but the high-end market may not always afford the big tins of fat. Not ignoring either is therefore critical to survival," Aoko added.
Busy in her small shop, Wanjiru is content that she and her fellow shopkeepers were pacesetters in this new business trend.
"The profit margins are lower today because then I determined my price while now they come fixed," said Wanjiru.
"But the big companies copied us, traders from the slums, and that makes me proud." |
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Retail giants await Walmart’s assault The Nation Retail & Manufacturing |
The entry of American retail giant Walmart into Africa has raised the stakes in retail and wholesale market.
Early this month, Walmart offered Sh185.6 billion ($2.32 billion) for a 51 per cent stake in South Africa’s Massmart Holdings Ltd, marking the US retailer’s first foray into sub-Saharan Africa’s growing retail market.
Kenya’s Nakumatt Holdings managing director Atul Shah says the entry of Walmart brings more competition the market.
“Definitely, I mean a US giant player like Walmart, the world’s number one player, coming into Africa means competition. But it also means that there is a lot of confidence for the market out there in Africa; that there is a market in Africa,” Mr Shah said in an interview with CNN Marketplace Africa weekly show on Friday.
“Africa has potential. They would, otherwise, not be interested in coming here. So it leaves us a lot of food for thought for us to start expanding very fast and that there is a market to take care of. Let other players come in, but still try to do what you can best,” Mr Shah said.
“They’re buying volumes that would make a difference,” Mr Shah said. “But would we still look at that type of product or what would be the Walmart’s approach?” he asked.
“Would it be that they want to get it (market share) for the mass market with very cheap products, or would it be that they want to look at the middle plus class? So I think that we would still have the upper edge.” Nakumatt is the market leader, followed by Tuskys and Uchumi.
The retailer runs 275 stores in South Africa and 13 in other sub-Saharan countries.
According to a report titled ‘Lions on the move: The progress and potential of African economies’ management consultancy firm McKinsey & Company, Africa’s consumer spending is forecast to Sh112 trillion ($1.4 trillion) by the end of 2010.
Conclusions
Wal-Mart could lead corporate #America into Africa #csmonitor http://bit.ly/9ASLGt
There are 1 billion souls in Africa, 40 percent of whom live in urban areas, and according to a McKinsey report on Africa’s booming opportunities, Africa already has more middle-class households than India. It’s fitting that a company like Wal-Mart that has always understood the economies of scale is leading the way for America. Africa’s consumer market has scale, and plenty of it.
Big purchases like Wal-Mart's "were a wake up to the rest of the world that Africa is popping up on the radar screens," said Aly Khan Satchu Businessweek http://bit.ly/9UpWih
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N.S.E Today |
I have to dash across Town to the IHUB referencing this http://bit.ly/dQ5HBY so please accept a potted Recap of what happened at the Nairobi Stock Exchange Today. The Kenya ICT Board will host a group of entrepreneurs at an event at the iHub on Tuesday, 14 Decemeber at 3pm. Guests include Russel Simmons, co-founder of PayPal, and Jawed Karim, co-founder of YouTube. The Nairobi All Share edged 0.12 points lower to close at 97.38. The NSE20 rose 0.87 points to close at 4384.23. Market Cap was 1.161786 Trillion versus 1.163266 Trillion. Equity Turnover was 240.669m versus 205.238m last time. The Bourse has retreated just under 10% from all time Highs and The Political Risk Barometer refers. KPLC Rights have slumped more than 50% in 2 Sessions and today on very heavy Volume of 22m+ Volume. I made these Comments to Businessweek http://bit.ly/gVnpKD “There is a sense that the political risk factors have spiked,” Aly Khan Satchu, a Nairobi-based independent stock market analyst, said in a phone interview. “There is a little bit of nervousness about tomorrow’s announcement.” “A lot of the froth is being taken off the top performers in the banking sector,” Satchu said. “Investors are of the view they are better off bagging the gains instead of waiting for the full-year performance,” announcements next year, he said. |
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N.S.E Equities - Commercial & Services |
SAFARICOM
shares volume 7,094,200 total turnover 33,348,030 closing PRICE 4.70 Unchanged high price 4.75 low price 4.70 last price 4.70
Conclusions
Safaricom was unchanged at 4.70 and traded 2nd overall. A Big Block of 3m shares went through at 4.75 +1.06% at 14.57 signalling further Head Way in the Near Term. The Price remains 'oversold' and is plain underwritten at 4.50.
ScanGroup traded 157,400 shares worth 9.444m and all at 60.00 unchanged. ScanGroup has posted a 135.941% 1 Year Return and has retreated from 76.00 All Time Closing Highs and trades on a Trailing PE of 33.149.
Scangroup share price data from www.rich.co.ke http://bit.ly/c1tlje
Par Value: 1/- Closing Price: 60.00 Total Shares Issued: 234,570,016 Market Capitalization: 14,074M EPS: 1.81 PE: 33.149
Access Kenya retreated a further 4.36% to close at 14.25 a new 52 week closing Low. Access Kenya was trading at 14.05 -5.7% into the Close. Access Kenya is down 27.329% over a 1 Year Period.
Access Kenya share price data www.rich.co.ke http://bit.ly/4zIr3s
Par Value: 1/- Closing Price: 14.90 Total Shares Issued: 207,227,120 Market Capitalization: 3,088M EPS: 0.76 PE: 19.605
Kenya Airways closed at 45.00 and traded 64,900 shares. |
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N.S.E Equities - Finance & Investment |
Kenya Commercial Bank was unchanged at 22.00 and trading session Highs of 22.25 +1.14% into the Close. KCB traded 813,800 shares worth 18.047m. KCB had a Demand for 2.418m shares versus a Supply of 0.929m which is close to Disequilibrium and signals further Upside Traction. KCB trades on a Forward PE of 8.00 and The Multiplier Effect has yet to feed through post Rights. Equity Bank traded 4th. Equity Bank firmed 1.01% to close at 25.00 and traded a 23.00-25.25 range and 615,400 shares worth 15.376m. Equity Bank has come off 27.75 2010 Highs and has underwritten 50% of the Kenya Power Rights Issue [where 70% of the new Shares need to find a Home as the GOK has declined its Rights] with Centum. COOP Bank was unchanged at 19.05 and traded a 19.05-19.20 range and 571,700 shares worth 10.913m. COOP Bank's Demand versus Supply Equation is inverting again with Demand now 10-7 versus Supply signalling the Profit Taking from 21.50 All Time Highs might be nearing completion. Barclays Bank retreated 0.835% to close at 59.50 [70.00 was its 2010 and 2 Year + Closing High This Year] and was actually trading at 58.00 -3.33% session Lows into the Close. StanChart drifted 1.95% lower to close at 251.00 and traded 3,200 shares only.
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N.S.E Equities - Industrial & Allied |
EABL was the most active share at the Nairobi Bourse. EABL firmed 0.957% to close at 209.00 and was trading 210.00 +1.45% session Highs into the Close. EABL trades on a Trailing PE of 22.772 EABL printed an All Time High of 226.00 in November and profit taking saw a Move lower which based out at 205.00 last week.
EABL share price data www.rich.co.ke http://bit.ly/57wrgL
Par Value: 2/- Closing Price: 207.00 Total Shares Issued: 790,774,336 Market Capitalization: 163,690M EPS: 9.09 PE: 22.772
Kenya Power Ordinary shares closed unchanged at 22.75 and was trading 22.50 -1.1% into the Close. KPLC traded 550,100 shares worth 12.61m. Renaissance Capital have an Outlier Call with a Price Target of 41.00 which equates to about a 22.00 Price Earnings on my Model. KPLC Rights slumped a further 23.809% after a 27% slump Friday. KPLC Rights traded 22.121m times. Thats Big. KenGen was unchanged at 17.00 and traded 213,900 shares. Cables firmed 10 cents to close at 16.10 and traded 19,400 shares.
BAT firmed a shilling to close at 280.00 and traded 2,100 shares.
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