NIGERIA · MARKETS

Nigeria stock market domestic investors accounted for 89.21% of all trading on the Nigerian Exchange in the first seven months of 2026, a record, while foreign money supplied just 10.79%. The index has now fallen for eight sessions in a row.

Victoria Island, Lagos, the financial district behind the Nigerian Exchange. (Photo: Internet reproduction)

The number that defines the market

The exchange’s own domestic and foreign portfolio investment report puts local transactions at N10.68 trillion between January and July, against N1.29 trillion from abroad. On the naira rate the central bank published for 20 August, that is roughly US$7.9 billion against US$957 million.

Seven months of domestic activity have already beaten the full year 2025, when local investors traded N9.27 trillion, by 15.21%. Nigeria’s biggest equity market is now, in turnover terms, overwhelmingly a domestic affair.

One caveat matters, and it cuts the other way. Foreign turnover of N1.29 trillion in seven months annualises to about N2.21 trillion against N2.65 trillion for the whole of 2025, so the domestic share rose because local volume nearly doubled, not because overseas money grew.

What Nigeria stock market domestic investors have been doing lately

Mostly selling. The All-Share Index closed at 240,037.80 points on Thursday 20 August, down 0.30% on the day and down for an eighth consecutive session.

Market capitalisation slipped to N154.98 trillion from N155.42 trillion, a fall of about N440 billion, or US$327 million, in one day. Fourteen stocks rose and twenty-eight fell.

Measured from Monday 10 August, the index is down 3.42% from 248,529.75 points and market value has fallen N5.44 trillion, or about US$4.0 billion, from N160.42 trillion.

Volume tells its own story. Some 2.87 billion shares changed hands, up 140.65%, on a value of only N33.99 billion, down 10.11%, which is the signature of heavy trading in cheap stocks.

Where the losses landed

Aradel Holdings was the single biggest drag, down 5.40% to N1,300.00 from N1,374.20. The NGX Oil and Gas index fell 2.49% to 4,837.50.

The banks were softer rather than broken. UBA lost 2.17% to N45.00, Zenith 0.48% to N123.40 and GTCO 0.23% to N127.60.

Insurance fell 0.79% and banking 0.41%. This is a broad drift, not a sector rout.

The 2007 to 2025 series, and why to distrust it

The exchange’s own report says domestic transactions rose 160.83% between 2007 and 2025, from N3.56 trillion to N9.27 trillion, while foreign transactions rose 329.87% from N0.62 trillion to N2.65 trillion. Those percentages are worth treating gently.

All of it is nominal naira, and the currency has been devalued heavily since 2023. A series that does not adjust for that is describing the unit of account as much as the market.

The report also contains a decade table whose figures do not sit comfortably with the 2007 base. Where two series inside one document disagree, the safe course is to use neither for a trend claim.

What survives the scepticism is the ratio, and the ratio is unambiguous. Nine out of every ten naira traded this year came from inside Nigeria.

Why a domestic market is not automatically a safer one

A market that no longer depends on foreign flows is insulated from one kind of shock. It is also, by definition, dependent on a much smaller pool of savings.

The same domestic base that set the record is the one now selling. When local institutions rebalance, there is no offsetting foreign bid to absorb it.

Exchange chief executive Temi Popoola has said capitalisation could reach N230 trillion by the end of 2026, roughly US$171 billion at the central bank’s 20 August rate. That requires the domestic savings pool to keep growing faster than it is being asked to fund.

The index is still up 54.3% for the year, so this is a correction inside a very strong run. What has changed is the composition of the buyers rather than the direction of prices.

There is also a supply story underneath the flows. Nigerian portfolios have been raising cash for a heavy pipeline of new listings, most conspicuously the Dangote refinery offering.

That is a healthy use of a domestic savings pool, and it is also a reason the secondary market has been leaking. Money committed to a primary issue has to come from somewhere.

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