FEB 7, 2019: NAIROBI: BAT LOSES ALL GAINS

When British American Tobacco closed up by Ksh 43 per share on Wednesday February 6, as rare offload took place, it sent ripples through the market.

Now, come Thursday February 7 2019, BAT lost all those gains with a Ksh 55 per share tumble to close at Ksh 588 per share after day high of Ksh 640 and low of Ksh 578 per share.

The reality was any where it touched during the day's down and up, represented decline from the Ksh 643 per share it scaled to on Wednesday in one leap.

Traded volume grew from 33.255m on Wednesday (with good help from BAT) to 44.143m shares but this time with help from equally rare offload of 18.460m shares of Barclay's Bank.

What the Barclay's lead trade could not do was drive traded value up as well the way BAT did previously. Traded value came to Ksh 967.020m compared to Ksh 2.522bn on Wednesday.

But Barclay's did try to pace traded value because the offloaded shares went for Ksh 221m at between Ksh 11.90 and 12 per share. Alas, this was only enough to lead the Banking sector where Equity Group followed with 3.195m shares exchanged for Ksh 137m ahead of NIC Group's 1.483m shares valued at Ksh 57m.

Though recording deals for less shares (12.456m), Safaricom stayed ahead of Barclay's in terms of traded value since investors realised Ksh 336m from the deals at between Ksh 26.90 and 27.10 per share.

The only other equity with above 1m traded volume was WPP Scan Group in which 3.04m shares worth Ksh 39.5m were traded at between Ksh 13 and 14 per share.

The All share index continued to rise but this time by only 0.18 points to 160.44 all because exact number of price gains and drops (20) were recorded.

Standard Chartered Bank, up Ksh 7 per share pace gains to close at Ksh 203 per share compared to Ksh 196 previously and after hitting day high and low of Ksh 205 and 198 per share respectively.

Of course, it was not a lead in the class of the BAT tumble but supported by other major gains and Safaricom's Ksh 0.15 per share up, it was enough to tilted the ASI scale upwards, albeit marginally.

Other major price gains include Ksh 3 per share top up by both Kapchorua Tea and BOC Kenya ;  Ksh 2 per share rise by the duo of Car & General and East African Breweries ; Ksh 1.60 per share increase by Standard Group and Diamond Trust Bank's Ksh 1 per share.

In contrast, BAT was joined downwards by Eaagads with Ksh 1.50 per share and TPS Eastern, down Ksh 1 per share.