by Bedah Mengo
NAIROBI, July 3 (Xinhua) -- Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) opened the week on Monday on a low as both turnover and the benchmark index went down.
Turnover stood at 3.9 million U.S. dollars from 17 million shares, a decline from 34 million shares worth 7.6 million dollars last Friday.
On the other hand, the indicative NSE 20 share index dropped 24 points to close at a new low of 3,583.41 points.
Kenya's leading telecom Safaricom was the day's top mover, trading 8.4 million shares at 0.23 dollars, a rise of 1.1 percent.
The telecom was followed at a distance by advertising firm Scangroup which traded 1.7 million shares at unchanged price of 0.20 dollars.
Cooperative Bank came third with 1.4 million shares at 0.14 dollars, a massive decline of 14.5 percent. The shares had been on a rally in the past weeks hitting a high of 0.17 dollars.
Following closely was troubled retail chain Uchumi Supermarket which traded 1.3 million shares at 0.02 dollars, an increase of 9.3 percent.
Kenya Commercial Bank closed the list of the top traded stocks with 796,800 shares, which were transacted at 0.38 dollars, a marginal increase of 0.7 dollars.
During the session, the top gainers included Deacons (9.7 percent), Uchumi (9.3 percent) and Ugandan electricity distributor Umeme (9.2 percent).
Foreign investors' participation stood at 69 percent and local 31 percent while bond turnover went down to 1.5 percent to 27 million dollars.
