On Monday, the official floating of the Naira opened at the interbank market after years of successive pegging by the federal government and Central Bank governors. This comes days after the Central Bank Governor, Godwin Emefiele, announced that Nigeria will be adopting a new exchange rate policy where the price of the Dollar is dictated by market forces rather than a fixed exchange rate.

Yesterday, Ventures Africa observed the activities of the market and how it fared. Here is what we found out:

• When the interbank foreign exchange market opened on Monday, the Naira was quoted at N254/$1 but it closed at NGN280/US$1

• According to the Financial Market Dealers Quote, (FMDQ), on the foreign exchange sales, the CBN sold $532 million in the spot market (immediate delivery) and $3.489 billion in the futures market (delivery in the future).

• The highest rate bidder for the day was NGN382.00/US$1 and the lowest was NGN197.00/US$1.

• 21 banks traded on Monday. These banks submitted bids to CBN for their matured foreign exchange obligations.

• In order to kick-start the interbank trading, the CBN conducted Special Secondary Market Intervention Sales (SMIS) to clear the over $4 billion backlog of matured foreign exchange obligations of banks.

• In the parallel market, the Naira appreciated and closed at N345/$1. A supply of Dollar in the market was high this because many people sold their Dollars out of panic yesterday.

• The honeymoon, which was enjoyed by the Nigerian Stock Exchange after the CBN announced the new exchange rate policy regime ended yesterday with NSE recording a loss of N164 billion.

• The market capitalisation dropped from N10.045 trillion to N9.881 trillion. The All Share Index lost 477.37 basis points to close at 28,769.90 points from 29,247.27 points.