Market News

By Adedapo Adesanya

The Naira opened the week bullish as it recorded a 0.08 per cent or 34 kobo appreciation against the Dollar at the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Rate Fixing (NAFEX) on Monday.

This is coming at a time the foreign exchange (FX) market is gradually being freed of the devaluation fears that gripped it last week, which raised tension.

At the close of transactions yesterday, the value of the Nigerian currency to its American counterpart closed at N414.73/$1 in contrast to N415.07/$1 it ended at the Investors and Exporters (I&E) segment of the forex market.

During the trading session, transactions valued at $172.00 million were carried out by the market participants in contrast to the $337.28 million achieved last Friday, indicating a decline by 49.0 per cent or $165.28 million in the daily turnover.

Similarly, the domestic currency appreciated against the greenback at the interbank segment of the market yesterday by 2 kobo, closing at N410.89/$1 in contrast to N410.91/$1 it traded at the preceding session.

Meanwhile, the cryptocurrency market was bullish on Monday as the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved the first US bitcoin futures exchange-traded funds.

The majority of the traded digital currencies responded well to this development with nine of the 10 tokens tracked by Business Post closing in the green zone.

Ethereum (ETH) appreciated by 3.4 per cent to sell at N2,139,975.82, Litecoin (LTC) gained 2.7 per cent to trade at N105,996.93, Dash (DASH) went up by 2.1 per cent to sell at N106,442.70, while Binance Coin (BNB) improved by 1.4 per cent to quote at N201,698.87.

In addition, Dogecoin (DOGE) increased its value by 1.2 per cent to trade N149.82, Bitcoin (BTC) went up by 0.9 per cent to sell for N35,311,235.54, Cardano (ADA) pushed higher by 0.8 per cent to N1,289.68, Ripple (XRP) went up 0.7 per cent to trade at N616.99, while the United States Dollar Tether moved up by 0.4 per cent to N567.99.

The only decliner was Tron (TRX) which made a 2.9 per cent depreciation to sell at N54.50.