by Bedah Mengo
NAIROBI, May 23 (Xinhua) -- Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) 20 Share Index gained 21 points Tuesday to hit an eight-month record high of 3,317.16.
The last time the index was at that level was in October 2016, with latest increase boosted by sustained rise of large stock share prices.
Among the big stocks whose prices surged on Tuesday were Safaricom, Umeme and Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB), which went up by between 1 percent and 10 percent.
Safaricom, Kenya's leading telecom, was the top traded stock during the session after trading 28 million shares from 24 million shares at 0.20 U.S. dollars, a rise of 1.2 percent.
KCB was the second best traded stock with 4.7 million shares at 0.38 dollars after going up 2 percent while Umeme was third with 3.5 million shares at 0.15 dollars, an increase of 10 percent.
Kenya Power and KenolKobil closed the list of the top five traded stocks with 3.2 million and 2.5 million shares respectively.
A total of 50 million shares valued at 10 million dollars were traded against 36 million shares valued at 7.1 million dollars posted on Monday.
Bond trading at the secondary market, similarly, surged with securities worth 40 million dollars traded up from 16 million dollars.
