Week Ahead (August 27 – September 02)

Monday Aug 28

NBS

·   July 2017 Consumer Price Index

Tuesday Aug 29

NBS

·   Q2 2017 Nigeria Domestic and Foreign Debt

Wednesday Aug 30

NBS

·   Q2 2017 Producer Price Index

GUINNESS NIGERIA

·   Closure Date for rights issue (N58 per share)

Friday Sep 1

NBS

·   Q1, Q2 2017 National Agriculture Sample Survey

FOREIGN

Wednesday Aug 30

·   US Corporate Profits

10.00 a.m. ET

Corporate profits are derived from the national income and product accounts and are expressed in several measures. Economists focus is on the most relevant measure for the total economy, after-tax profits.

Why Investors Care
Corporate profits are the lifeblood of investment spending. Profits are the income of a corporation. When profits are strong, then companies will be able to increase their capital spending. This could allow better growth prospects for a company and is likely to increase its underlying value. When corporate profits decline, then capital spending tends to decline. Without the potential for growth, a company could be at a disadvantage, particularly in our global economic environment.

Friday Sep 1

·   Baker – Hughes rig count

1:00 PM ET

The Baker Hughes North American rig count tracks weekly changes in the number of active operating oil & gas rigs.

Used for drilling wellbores for wells that may eventually produce oil or gas, active rigs are essential for the exploration and development of oil and gas fields. Rigs that are not active are not counted. Components in the data are the United States and Canada with a separate count for the Gulf of Mexico (which is a subset of the U.S. total). The count includes only rigs that are significant users of oilfield services and supplies.

Why Investors Care

Changes in rig counts point to changes in the supply of oil & gas. The higher the rig count, the greater the upward pressure is on oil & gas supply and in turn the greater the downward pressure is on oil & gas prices

Currency outlook: Naira seen stable

The Nigerian naira is expected to be stable in the coming week as investors seek to fill their dollar requirements from the official window, reducing pressure in other market segments.

The local currency was quoted at N361.54 per dollar on the investor forex window on Friday, around the same level as last week.

On the black market, the local currency was trading at N370 to the dollar, weaker than N367 a dollar last week.

“We expect that some of the demand that drove down the naira this week would have been taken care of, and the market will stabilise around the present level next week,” a senior currency trader said.

 

Compiled by Patrick Atuanya