As noted by Investdata Consulting over time, the lingering flight to safety driven primarily by foreign investors, as left many stocks on the Nigerian bourse significantly selling at a huge discount to their intrinsic/book value.
It is a well-known fact that value investing is as old at the stock market, and margin of safety in equity investment helps investors buy value, while at the same time protecting them from poor decisions and a market downturn.
Value investing has capital preservation as its number one rule. It requires that investors look at companies with low market Price to Earnings and Price to Book ratios.
It requires that investors analyze the financial statements of target companies to identify and understand if there are hidden values, or assets that are potentially unknown to the market which when noticed will attract due attention.
The simple interpretation of margin of safety is buying a stock at a discount to its current market price. These are stocks selling below their Book or Intrinsic value.
Every investor wants to buy cheap stocks with value and potential to appreciate depending on risk appetite, and effectively mean paying Kobo for a Naira stocks.
Every good trader wants to buy low and sell high, thereby maximizing his/her profit margin or returns on investment. Note that speculating is an integral part of the stock market at any given time. Speculation is when you believe, for example that Fidelity Bank would offer a worthwhile interim dividend when it releases its audited financials for half year ended June 30, 2018 and you take position. If the directors propose the dividend and the market is happy with it, its price rallies and you make robust returns, but if not, you leak your wound, cut your loss and move.
We have therefore put together in the table above stocks that are selling at a discount and have strong fundamentals and good prospects.