The stock of Kodak, a film photography pioneer, rose so fast that it tripped 20 circuit breakers in a single day. The U.S. government has announced the company will be transformed into a pharmaceutical producer under the Defense Production Act. Just like that, the stock went from $2.41 to close to $50. Now, why do we not have the same trajectory in Nigeria? Largely, the Nigerian Stock Exchange is not moved by news that spontaneously. GTBank declares record profits, the next day, the stock goes down! Dangote was mistakenly appointed by APC as part of a presidential campaign team, the stocks did not move (trading hours), despite the obvious risk. What is going on in NSE? The latency between events and when stocks begin to correlate in NSE surprises me.
Kodak begins a new era, moving into pharmaceuticals with massive government loans. Yes, go into generic drugs and leave cameras for Samsung, Apple and others.
Thanks to a $765 million government loan under the Defense Production Act, Kodak is moving into drug production. The former film leader is going to make a bunch of generic drugs, such as the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine, to reduce the U.S.’s dependence on countries such as China and India. President Trump: “It’s a breakthrough in bringing pharmaceutical manufacturing back to the United States.” Fujifilm made a similar pivot, and health care and material solutions now makes up 43% of that company’s total revenues (Fortune)
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Our Stock Exchange is like a static website, nothing happens until you go to the codes and alter them.
Every sector here is decoupled and broken, anything happening in one doesn’t really affect the other, they are all silos.
If the president says he has done his best on security, the market is immune to such statement, and if he decides to be mute for six months, the market still won’t notice.
What could collapse a government will happen in Nigeria, and the best you can get is yawn from the public, so the Stock Exchange has as remained alien to whatever that is happening in the mainstream market.
Kodak has been given a chance to live again, and it appears it’s grabbing the opportunity with both hands.