Speculators seem to be winning again as of this week but there must be some lingering worries in their minds regarding what could happen if the government manages to find US Dollars to supply the market suddenly. 

This fear is good for the market as these people will be the first ones to jump out once Naira strengthens because they have no business holding Dollars but have been forced to get into this practice by the wrong policies of the CBN over the past 8 years. 

Some of those wrong policies included crashing the savings rate on Naira, crashing the Nigeria treasury bills rate on Naira, crashing the key benchmark rate very sharply below the inflation rate forcing people to not invest in Naira, adopting various schemes that limit bank transfers of Naira. The CBN basically made the Naira a very unattractive investment for people who had to choose various other investment ideas which include cryptocurrencies, forex and even some ponzi schemes lime mmm. We have witnessed all this in the past 8 years. These set of people may be patriotic Nigerians at the end of the day but have been forced into this as a means of survival by keeping up with inflation at the very least. 

A trip the market recently revealed that a 400 gms sachet of milk is almost N 3000 under a black Friday deal. This same pack was below 1000 not that long ago. A trip to a pizza restaurant revealed that price of a pizza was now close to N 9000 while this used to be N 2000 six to seven years ago. Our analyst chose to not eat there because we needed at least 4 pizzas which was going to be almost 40k with some soft drinks, we went to eat noodles, rice, fish and amala. So these are the problems we are facing. Even the energy drink that used to be N 300 just 5 yrs ago is now N 1,300 so water is a real option now days, even better for health purposes. Have a nice weekend. 

reporting for easykobo.com on Friday, Nov 10 2023 from Lagos, Nigeria