The bull and bear market at the Nairobi Securities Exchange

Abstract

This research sought to establish the existence of the bull and bear market at the Nairobi Securities Exchange. The bull market is experienced when the prices of securities are in an upward trend while the Bear market is experienced when the prices of securities are in a downward trend. Bull and bear market can be traced back to the time of Charles Dow when he made analysis of trends in the stock market. The current and potential investors do not have any form of reference when making investment decisions, they will therefore benefit from this research since they will confirm which months are prone to the bull and bear markets and therefore not dispose their stocks in panic and also know the best time to purchase shares respectively. The Government will also benefit from it since it will be able to create a conducive environment for investment in the stock exchange and also for taxation purposes. It will also be useful to the Capital Markets Authority which is the main regulator of the Nairobi Securities Exchange since they will establish the genuine bull and bear market. The research was entirely based on secondary data from stocks of the year 2006. The research design was historical since it was dealing with issues that had occurred. Some fifteen out of the fifty two equities of companies trading in the Nairobi Securities Exchange were analyzed. Stratified and purposive samplings were used to select the fifteen companies. The data was analysed using percentages, mean, standard deviation and correlation coefficients. The findings confirmed that all the sampled stocks experienced both the bull and bear market. January, February and March were the months when most stocks experienced the bear market while August to November were the months when the majority of stocks experienced bull market. The study recommends the licensing of more stock brokers by CMA and also a further research into the role of stock brokers in influencing stock prices in the secondary market