DAILY NIGERIAN FOREIGN EXCHANGE MARKET (NFEM) RATES (₦/US$)
Moving Average = 1,334.7080 (NFEM)
Previous Average = 1,332.0469
Change = -0.1998%
Forex Analysis
Our Naira to Dollar moving average dropped by about 0.2% this week. A major institutional re-pricing accounts for most of this drop. The Naira depreciated by 2.1% on Thursday October 22, the sharpest single-day decline in over a year, to close at ₦1,365.00/$. The sharp 2.1% single-day official drop was the direct result of commercial banks clearing out accumulated, higher-priced corporate import orders.
Small-scale businesses and individuals continue to source dollars for international travel allocations, overseas school tuition payments, and Q4 festive inventory imports. This structural retail demand outpaced immediate street liquidity, causing parallel market rates to tick upward slightly. As a result, the spread between official and parallel rates narrowed to ₦46 to ₦50.
Daily Crude Oil Prices
Moving Average = $109.45
Previous Average = $105.63
Change = +3.6164%
Crude Oil Analysis
Our Brent crude moving average rose a further 3.6% this week as $111 to $112 per barrel after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed that seven commercial vessels had been hit by separate drone strikes and naval mines around the critical Strait of Hormuz and the northern Persian Gulf. This sparked severe institutional concern over a near-term blockade of the world’s primary oil transit chokepoint.
Further pressures came followed from multi-pronged Houthi militant strikes hitting Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea port of Yanbu, alongside an oil field and key airports. The damage to Saudi infrastructure left the world’s largest crude exporter pumping 2.18 million barrels per day below its OPEC+ targets.
The geopolitical premium was further worsened by multi-day structural disruptions elsewhere. Extended pipeline shutdowns in Libya heavily choked off Mediterranean supply lines, while a massive tanker oil spill incident in the UAE created a severe bottleneck for remaining shipping logistics.
NGX Top 10 Gainers for the week closing 23rd Oct 2026
NGX Top 10 Losers for the week closing 23rd Oct 2026
Stock Market Index Activity for the week closing 23rd Oct 2026
Stock Market Index Analysis
Twenty (20) equities appreciated in price during the week, lower than fifty (50) equities in the previous week. Fifty-five (55) equities depreciated in price, higher than thirty (30) equities in the previous week, while seventy-one (71) equities remained unchanged, higher than sixty-six (66) recorded in the previous week.
This week’s trading was defined by a sharp bearish correction driven by institutional profit-taking, portfolio rebalancing, and a rapid rotation of funds. Institutional investors actively trimmed exposure to recent top-performing sectors and heavily weighted blue-chips, redirecting liquid capital either to the safer FGN Bond primary auction (which occurred on October 19, soaking up over ₦2 trillion in liquidity) or into deeply discounted tier-1 equities like Fidelity Bank.
Below is a sector by sector breakdown of performance for the week October 16 to October 23
Fixed-Income Analysis
Market activity this week across Nigerian government securities was defined by a massive surge in money market liquidity, which triggered an aggressive primary intervention by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and a major sovereign debt auction.
The behavior of each asset class reflects how institutional investors shifted capital as a huge wave of maturing securities flooded the banking ecosystem.
For Nigerian Treasury Bills (NTB), it was a relatively tame week however. With no primary market NTB auction scheduled for this exact week, activity shifted entirely to secondary trading and systemic re-pricing. Indicative secondary market yields on Treasury bills closed out the week holding steady at an elevated baseline of roughly 18.54%. Investors actively utilized the secondary window to match short-term corporate liquidity needs ahead of next week’s scheduled maturities.
In Federal Government (FGN) Bonds, There was an auction on October 19th as the FG looked to raise a massive ₦1.75 trillion across re-openings of benchmark 10-year and 15-year tenors to finance the federal fiscal deficit. Institutional demand (led by Pension Fund Administrators and asset managers) was highly robust, pushing cumulative sovereign debt subscriptions significantly higher [1.16, 1.24]. However, to successfully lock in this massive volume of borrowing, the Debt Management Office (DMO) had to yield to investor pressure and accept higher stop rates.
The pertinent details of the auction are in the table below:
The OMO bill segment was the absolute center of gravity for fixed-income activity this week due to an immense liquidity surge. To prevent this avalanche of cash from crashing the economy and driving up inflation, the CBN floated a massive ₦2.00 trillion OMO auction on Thursday, October 22, 2026. The pertinent details of this auction are in the table below:
Daily Bitcoin Prices
Moving Average = $82,180.30
Previous Average = $82,579.87
Change = -0.4839%
Bitcoin Analysis
Our Bitcoin moving average fell by about 0.5% this week, reflecting a transition from aggressive selling into a highly cautious “wait-and-see” consolidation phase. The primary market drivers behind this flat-to-bearish consolidation include:
- Institutional inertia as investors collectively paused ahead of the Federal Reserve’s upcoming interest rate policy meeting. This lack of decisive economic direction kept price volatility exceptionally low, resulting in a horizontal price grind that gently dragged down short-term moving averages
- Highly uneven and erratic Exchange Trade Fund (ETF) flows. Early in the week, institutional buying staged a mini-resurgence, pulling in over $1.07 billion in net inflows across a three-day streak to briefly push prices toward $84,000. However, this momentum completely reversed on Thursday, October 22, when macro anxieties triggered a sharp $635 million to $681 million single-day net outflow, wiping out the week’s institutional progress and pinning Bitcoin back down.
- The surge in Brent crude oil prices above $113 per barrel. This exerted a quiet, structural drag on risk assets. For macro fund managers, surging global energy and commodity costs serve as a direct indicator of sticky, long-term inflation. This dynamic forced a portion of institutional capital to flow away from speculative digital assets and back toward physical commodity hedges and defensive instruments.
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