The Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) signed up 333,043 new investors in the first nine months of 2026, more than three times the number it added over the same period last year, as fresh listings and a rally in share prices drew Kenyans back to the stock market.

Capital Markets Authority (CMA) data cited by Business Daily show the investor base reached 2.36 million at the end of September, up from about 2.03 million at the start of the year. The market added only 98,063 investors in the first nine months of 2025.

This year's intake is already well above the 174,400 investors who joined in the whole of 2025, and is close to the 346,616 who joined over the four years to December 2025, a period that included a long bear market.

New listings bring new faces

Analysts attribute the surge largely to the return of initial public offerings after nearly a decade. In March, the government sold a 65 per cent stake in Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC) through an IPO of 11.81 billion shares at Sh9 each, the first major listing in 11 years. Family Bank joined the bourse by introduction in June with 1.66 billion shares at Sh18 each, while Centum's Trific Green I-REIT and Africa Logistics Properties' ALP I-REIT added dollar-denominated real estate investment trusts. Retailer Quickmart is also in the middle of its IPO.

Returns have helped. Equities have delivered average returns of more than 33 per cent this year, making them the best-performing asset class, while bank deposits averaged 6.94 per cent and Treasury bills paid less than 10 per cent, Business Daily reported.

Men still dominate the market, holding 1.593 million accounts, or 67.5 per cent of retail investors, against 767,472 held by women.

A windfall for brokers

The boom has been lucrative for market intermediaries. Shares worth Sh395 billion changed hands in the nine months to September, according to the CMA, more than double the Sh145 billion traded in the whole of 2025. More than 11.4 billion shares were traded.

Business Daily estimates that stockbrokers could have earned up to Sh14 billion in commissions over the period, compared with about Sh3.64 billion in the same period last year. The paper said the upper-end estimate assumes the maximum brokerage rate of 1.78 per cent was charged on both sides of every trade, and includes earnings from bond trading. In practice, large trades attract lower rates, as low as 1.12 per cent.

Brokers reported a 73 per cent rise in commissions to Sh2.76 billion in the first half of the year alone. Stockbrokers and investment banks booked combined revenues of Sh9.88 billion in the six months to June, up from Sh3.7 billion a year earlier, helped by listing and fund management fees.

The exchange itself has also benefited. NSE's income doubled to Sh1.2 billion in the first half, already above its full-year 2025 income of Sh1.08 billion, as its equity transaction levy jumped 475 per cent to Sh770.5 million. Much of the activity came from a block trade of 6.01 billion Safaricom shares worth Sh204.3 billion, which followed the government's sale of a 15 per cent stake in the telco to South Africa's Vodacom.

Record value, thinner trading

The market's total value reached a record Sh4.12 trillion at the end of September, up from Sh2.94 trillion at the end of 2025, according to the CMA's third-quarter bulletin. CMA chief executive Wyckliffe Shamiah said the milestone showed confidence and resilience in the capital markets.

However, trading slowed sharply in the third quarter after the busy April-June period, and foreign investors were net sellers, The Star reported. The NSE opened this week at about Sh3.94 trillion, a sign that prices have cooled slightly from September's peak.

The test for the market now is whether the new investors stay once the excitement of the IPOs fades, particularly as the country heads into the 2027 election year, when investors have historically turned cautious. The Quickmart offer will be an early gauge of how much appetite remains.

Photos: Business Daily / Nation Media Group