Rise in shares investment

Investment in shares in the Nigerian stock market has continued to get better after the general elections in the country which returned President Goodluck Jonathan  to the seat of power.
The attitude of both local and foreign investors to the equities market after the elections can be described as positive following the increase in turnover and capital appreciation that has become the order of the day in the stock market.
The stock market, prior to the April general elections, especially after the global financial contraption, was variously described as an anathema with which majority of investors did not want  to have anything to do, let alone investing in the stocks.
But with the successful completion of the elections, despite pockets of violence in some regions of the country that led to the destruction of lives and property, investors have begun, once again, to embrace investment in shares.
Shares investment, it would be recalled, is a window of investment that is open to both the high and the low in the society, and it has served as a veritable exit route for most people who either want to have another source of income and/or save for retirement purposes.
An x-ray of the transaction in the equities market last week showed that investors’ confidence has greatly risen as against the palpable fear and patent uncertainty shown by the investors when the elections were at hand. Most capitalised stocks and the penny stocks are beginning to enjoy much attention as investors have continued to inject fund in the area.
Stockbrokers, who were technically out of job in the market owing to investors’ apathy to investment in the stock market, are now busy with investors mandate either to sell or buy as the case may be.
Most dealing houses that laid off their staff in the wake of the financial crises that hit the emerging market, and by extension, the stock market, have started to recall them, as there are now more transactions to do, unlike that bleak period when brokerage firms could not afford to pay their staff let alone paying their rents as and when due.
A cross section of investors who spoke to  the Nigerian Tribune Investors Guide, said that another good time to inject money into stocks was now, when especially all the permutations on the likelihood that the elections would turn violent did not come to past.
They were of the belief that, considering the reform drive of the regulators which has, in no small measure, helped to stabilise the stock market and which, in any way, would not be truncated, there is high probability that the market will begin to return to its old glories of being the greatest market in terms of ratio on investment return.
Investors’ earlier apathy to stocks investment
As a market computed by value of a unit of share either on the selling or buying side and the cumulative turnover on a daily basis, investors’ equities market, due to apathy prior to the election, went through great ordeal which, it was believed in several quarters, would have swallowed the securities market if the general elections had failed.
The trend in the market then, saw the foreign portfolio managers offloading their shares and exiting the economy for fear of the outcome of the election while the local investors exercised cautions when investing in the stock market.
The fear by the local investors stood on a tripod of violence that was likely to engulf the country due to the violent tendencies of the contestants for the elections, the possible reversal of reforms already embarked on by the securities and Exchange Commission and the legal issues still hanging on the position of the Director General and the President of the Council.
It was also a period during which the banks which largely are the major financiers of share purchase by majority of huge portfolio owners in the market were sceptical about further lending for investments in shares.
The banks, it will be recalled, at the close of 2009 financial year, have over N2.1 trillion toxic debt hanging on their necks as result of investments in  shares to which they traced 80 per cent of the money.
SEC’s reforms aiding confidence The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) recently assured investors in the capital market that the reform policies being put in place by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was the needed tonic that would help revamp the equities market.