Where Can I Find Historical Data on the Nigerian Stock Market and NGX?

1. NGX X-Factbook is probably the best starting point

NGX X-Factbook

The NGX X-Factbook is an annual capital-market reference covering historical information. It includes:

Listed-company profiles
Five-year financial performance
Corporate-action history
Market statistics
Index performance
Information about listed companies and market participants

NGX says the publication has existed since 1980, so it is particularly useful for understanding how the Nigerian market developed over time.

2. NGX historical price data

NGX Historical Data

This is what you want for questions like:

“What was this company’s share price years ago?”

NGX says historical end-of-day quotations are available as far back as 1996, although historical data is provided on request and may involve a fee. NGX also says undergraduate and master’s students can receive an 80% discount on historical-data requests.

The NGX Data Portal also provides downloadable historical equity information such as open, high, low, close, volume and number of trades.

3. Companies that disappeared from the market

This is particularly interesting for what you’re trying to learn.

NGX Delisted Companies

NGX has a list of 144 delisted companies and gives the date and reason for delisting. Reasons include voluntary delisting, mergers, regulatory delisting and nationalisation.

For example, the list includes historical companies such as Afribank, Ashaka Cement, A.G. Leventis, African Paints and Ardova.

That can teach you an important investing lesson:

A company being listed today doesn’t mean it will necessarily remain listed forever.

4. SEC Nigeria — fraud, violations and enforcement

For the “what went wrong?” part of your research, use the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Nigeria.

SEC Nigeria Enforcement Portal

The SEC publishes information on enforcement actions, litigation, referred cases and other regulatory matters.

For example, SEC records contain historical cases involving things such as unauthorised sale of clients’ shares, failure to remit funds and breaches of capital-market rules.

5. NGX X-Compliance Report

NGX X-Compliance Report

This is useful when you’re studying company problems before they become obvious.

NGX’s report tracks things such as:

Companies breaching listing rules
Companies operating below listing standards
Delinquent financial-reporting companies
Companies facing enforcement actions
Companies scheduled for delisting
New listing applications