You know, my first love was and still remains, the capital market. As a trader on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange, I used to love the excitement of closing deals, selling and buying, and haggling for shares.
So when I saw the post by one who bought shares in a particular bank for N22,300 some 15 years ago and sold them for N20,000 without earning a dividend, I stood up.
Although she didn’t mention the name of the bank, she posted the share certificate, which had Access Bank on it.
My quick take on this is that there is a dearth of investor education in this country, and this blame falls squarely on the shoulders of every stakeholder, from the regulators to the brokers down to the quoted companies.
With a fairly above-average investor education, posts like these would be minimized, and the unfortunate comparison between the markets and bitcoins would not have happened.
Access Bank remains one of the most traded shares on the markets. The firm has gone through a lot of transformations within the stated period, which has led to tremendous investor benefits for those who have held the shares.
Some banks have been acquired, a merger has occurred, I think, and much more recently, a robust and comprehensive restructuring, which has seen the firm move into a Holdco structure with about 15 subsidiaries.
All these movements have thrown up significant investor benefits, making its shares well sought after in the markets.
A deeper look at the share movement history would show that these posts, which have inadvertently gone wide, are way off the mark.
My request to the reading public is to open this lady’s home to me. Not only her but anybody who holds this kind of position so that I can better educate them on the markets.
People invest for three major reasons, amongst others. Dividends, capital appreciation, and growth by bonus shares
So, if you take a position in a share like Access Bank, you should benefit from any of these three positions.
If it were true that Access Bank has not paid a dividend in 15 years, I would think the share price would be trading below par right now, with investor confidence significantly eroded.
Over the period, this lady, not being properly schooled on the markets, would have seen these opportunities come and go without taking advantage.
Prices are expected to go up and down as they chase equilibrium. It is a perfect market, and investors are expected to have an investment objective, making them very closely watch the price to know when to enter or come out.
A lot of people who do not understand this, like this lady, would have entered Access and gone to sleep, only to wake up when the pricing has come down and others have reaped the benefits to now sell at a funny price, which I must say would be of tremendous advantage to discerning investors who would be waiting for that break-even point to enter again.
This is why I am annoyed with the capital market: deliberate efforts at education are at best weak, hence this kind of mumu talk.
Unclaimed dividends are running into trillions of dollars. People are not moving their share certificates to CSCS, and as such, their dividends are hanging in the air, and they are shouting.
The Access Bank share certificate being displayed is as old as my son, who is now 22 years old. Everything is now electronic, and this is why the CSCS run by my brother Jallo Waziri is very critical in the back end.
What this lady need is a good broker or an investment adviser who would better guide her as she navigates the markets.
She should also get the broker to help her locate her dividends and help move her share certificates into the CSCS so that it will be easy to take advantage of price movements and spare us this kind of sad song.
Finally, I will get either Access Bank or the Stock Exchange, or even the CSCS to organize a quick investor education series to better educate Nigerians on the markets, especially on how they can take advantage of their tremendous benefits.
Thank you.
Edgar Joseph
Editor in Chief.
