Nigerian Stocks ended Thursday’s trading session on a slightly bullish note. The All Share Index gained +0.10% to close at 34,803 points, as against the 1.25% gain seen on Wednesday. Its Year-to-Date (YTD) returns currently stands at +29.66%.

• Nigerian Stock Exchange trading turnover ended on a bearish note, taking to account that volume dipped by 40.78% as against the +19.02% gain recorded in the previous session.
• ZENITHBANK, TRANSCORP, and ACCESS were the most active to boost market turnover.
• DAARCOMM leads the list of active stocks that recorded an impressive volume spike at the end of today’s session.
• The market breadth closed flat as NCR led 21 Gainers as against 21 Losers topped by AFRIPRUD at the end of today’s session – an unimproved performance when compared with the previous outlook.

Top gainers

1. INTBREW up 9.62% to close at N7.18
2. MOBIL up 9.89% to close at N208.8
3. CADBURY up 9.09% to close at N9.6
4. GUINNESS up 7.22% to close at N19.3
5. GUARANTY up 2.61% to close at N35.4

Top losers

1. AFRIPRUD down 5.76% to close at N5.89
2. UBN down 5.17% to close at N5.5
3. DANGSUGAR down 3.15% to close at N20
4. UBA down 2.94% to close at N8.25
5. FBNH down 2.68% to close at N7.25

Outlook

Nigerian bourse ended the fourth trading session on a slightly positive note amid falling oil prices prevailing at the U.S trading session.

• Top gains from GTBank, Mobil, Cadbury, and Guinness, neutralized the losses that came from First Bank, UBA, and Union Bank.
• Nairametrics envisage cautious buying on prevailing market conditions seen in Nigeria’s key international markets, particularly Europe.

Salesforce is reportedly interested in buying Slack. The popular workplace for many leading firms like Amazon has sent shares of the smaller firm up over 22% at the most recent trading session.

In a report credited to WSJ, the companies could reach a deal within days and possibly by the time Salesforce reports its third-quarter financial results, Tuesday.

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The anticipated deal has got global investors excited as Slack shares gained over 37%, according to data retrieved from Bloomberg. Slack is worth $40.70 per share as of the time of writing, valuing it at around $23.22 billion.

Salesforce the world’s biggest seller of customer relationship software is led by co-founder Marc Benioff, a pioneer in providing software via the cloud through a subscription.

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What this means

Slack is popularly known among many firms for its user-friendly interface. It empowers global businesses to embed workflows. Stock experts anticipate such a deal would be beneficial to the Salesforce family of products, which spans marketing, sales, service, and more.

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However, at the time of writing of Salesforce fell around 5% as some investors in the American-based SaaS pioneer were not so delighted about such synergy or perhaps worried about the price that would be required to bring such business to Salesforce fold.

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Nigerian based Popular stock broking application, Bamboo, informed its users on Wednesday that it will no longer allow USD wire transfer options for deposits.

Bamboo offers investors a platform to invest in stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. Users can access these markets by depositing dollars in their wallets, or Naira which will then be converting at the prevailing exchange rate (which is usually closer to the parallel market exchange rate).

The company notified its customers via the application’s notification feature leaving the option to fund wallets with United States dollars to USD domiciliary deposits or cash deposits.

“The USD Wire Transfer option is no longer available for deposits. However, you can still make deposits through USD domiciliary transfers or other channels. We apologize for any inconvenience caused.”

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The company also sent an email stating in part as follows;

“We will like to inform you that our USD Wire transfer option is no longer available for use due to regulatory reasons. Effective immediately, no transfers made to our Silvergate or BBVA accounts will be received. We encourage you to use our USD Domiciliary Transfer option on the Bamboo app, or any other payment method you prefer.  We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.” 

The company did not provide further information detailing which regulator may issue the instruction to stop the service.

What this means

USD Wire transfers allow investors who have domiciliary accounts in the US to transfer dollars to Bamboo’s corresponding account in the US. It also allowed its users to transfer directly from Nigeria to their US Dollar accounts. This helps investors avoid some of the local USD transfer restrictions from one domiciliary account in a bank to a third party account in another bank.

The is often convenient for investors who have dollars abroad and want to avoid the hassles of sourcing forex locally. Whilst no reason was provided for the regulatory requirement, Nairametrics believes it may not be unconnected with several unscrupulous.  activities associated with wired transfers or a Nigerian regulators trying to block a loophole which would allow investors transfer fx out of the country from their domiciilary accounts.