The Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) has waived the payment of transaction fees on the second leg of day trading for the next 30 days effective Wednesday, an incentive for the daily retail traders at the bourse.
The discounted new levies were previously seen as a hindrance to the uptake of day trading which had only two per cent of market activity at the Nairobi bourse as at June 2022.
For one month the NSE has waived the payment of fees on the second leg of trading to allow new investors in the market while offering the existing investors a reprieve from the 0.114 per cent charged on the second leg of transactions.
“We are announcing with effect from today, we will not be charging on the second leg of day trading to increase activation. Today you can buy securities three or more times without incurring extra fees on the second trading cycle in the day,” said NSE chief executive Mr Geoffrey Odundo.
“If you take a position and you want to exit it on the second leg, we will not charge as NSE.”
The move aims at luring investors into the trading market through discounted fees.
Day trading occurs when people buy and sell shares of the same security multiple times in a day. It enables traders to exit positions within the same day and only open positions proceed to settlement.
The service was introduced in November last year to allow investors and speculators to make several trades in a day with the potential to make a profit from price changes.
The current 0.114 per cent of levy charged on the second leg of day trading was previously discounted from 0.12 per cent to make day trading more attractive.