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Investors’ attitudes were severely altered by the Covid-19 crisis, which had an intolerable effect on volatile returns in Nigerian stock market and other stock markets worldwide. Psychological trauma was experienced by stock investors due to the inability to foresee returns following the worldwide shock of Covid-19 and the subsequent drop in stock investments brought on by the unpredictability of macroeconomic behavior. This study analyzed the link effect of investor psyche on stock returns in Nigeria between March 2019 and December 2022. For this research, Sentiment Index (SMI) model was employed for the connection between investors psyche and returns on the Nigerian stock market. It was found that, investors psyche during Covid-19 pandemic negatively affected stock returns, resulting from negative concerns about their survival and financial security than the stock market, thus triggered sharp decline in stock investment. Thus, study concluded that Covid-19 outbreak impacted stock returns negatively. The research recommends that the Nigerian stock exchange commission should increase disclosure of market information, which is related to the magnitude and potentials of stock returns and degree of volatility at all times. The concerned volatility and potentials during the Covid-19 era were also influential to enhance investors’ confidence.

The efficiency of securities market has generated a lot of controversy over four decades in finance and economic discussions leading to some people accepting or rejecting the efficient market hypothesis. Hence this paper examines the growing body of empirical research on efficient market hypothesis on the Nigerian capital market for the past twelve years (2010-2021). The paper particularly surveys empirical research and specialized literature as it relates to the Nigerian capital market. The paper is purely empirical research that have been published in various academic journals on the Nigerian capital market. Findings from the empirical research show that there has been no consensus on the efficiency of the Nigerian capital market. However, the market seems to be efficient in the weak-form. The conclusion of this paper is that there are inherent difficulties in testing for market efficiency in developing countries capital market due to certain market imperfections that could affect the informational efficiency of the market.

Purpose Very little is known about the effect of dividend announcements on stock prices in Nigeria, despite the country’s unique institutional environment. The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to provide empirical evidence on this issue by investigating the stock price reaction to cash dividends by companies listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange. Design/methodology/approach Standard event study methodology, using the market model, is employed to determine the abnormal returns surrounding the cash dividend announcement date. Abnormal returns are also calculated employing the market-adjusted return model as a robustness check and to test the sensitivity of the results to β estimation. The authors also examine the interaction between cash dividends and earnings by estimating a regression model where announcement abnormal returns are a function of both dividend changes and earnings changes relative to stock price. Findings The study find support for the signaling hypothesis: dividend increases are associated with positive stock price reaction, while dividend decreases are associated with negative stock price reaction. Companies that do not change their dividends experience insignificant positive abnormal returns. The results also suggest that both dividends and earnings are informative, but dividends contain information beyond that contained in earnings. Research limitations/implications The sample for the study includes only cash dividend announcements occurring without other corporate events (such as interim dividends, stock splits, stock dividends, and mergers and acquisitions) during the event study period. The small firm-year observations may limit the validity of generalizations from these conclusions. Practical implications The findings are useful to researchers, practitioners and investors interested in companies listed on the Nigerian stock market for their proper strategic decision making. In particular, the results can be used to encourage transparency and good governance practices in the Nigerian stock market. Originality/value This paper adds to the very limited research on the stock market reaction to cash dividend announcements in Nigeria; it is the first of its kind employing a unique cash dividends data.

Stock trading, used to predict the direction of future stock prices, is a dynamic business primarily based on human intuition. This involves analyzing some non-linear fundamental and technical stock variables which are recorded periodically. This study presents the development of an ANN-based prediction model for forecasting closing price in the stock markets. The major steps taken are identification of technical variables used for prediction of stock prices, collection and pre-processing of stock data, and formulation of the ANN-based predictive model. Stock data of periods between 2010 and 2014 were collected from the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) and stored in a database. The data collected were classified into training and test data, where the training data was used to learn non-linear patterns that exist in the dataset; and test data was used to validate the prediction accuracy of the model. Evaluation results obtained from WEKA shows that discrepancies between actual and predicted values are insignificant.

Efficient financial management in the corporate world has become topical in the last two decades as a result of series of financial scandals that happened both at national and international levels. This has generated continual debates on the capacity of auditing firms globally and raised concern on the role of an external auditor in providing security against financial fraud and deliberate misrepresentation of financial reports. Prominentamong issues that are of concern in the public domain has been the incessant problems that have bedeviled the public companies in Nigeria in spite of the annual independent audit exercises. This study examined the effect of Auditors Independence on financial reporting quality of listed manufacturing firms in Nigeria. This objective was achieved by examining the effect of audit fee, audit firm’s size, provision of non-audit services and audit tenure on financial reporting quality of the listed manufacturing company in Nigeria. Ex-post facto research design was employed with the population consisting of Forty-Three (43) listed firms on the Nigeria stock exchange, out of which a sample size is Thirty-Nine (39) was selected. Descriptive and inferential statistic (random effect regression analysis with Panel least square) were employed in the analysis of the secondary data collected from the annual reports and accounts of the sample companies for the period of six years (2013-2018).The result of the study shows that: audit fee and audit firm size have a significant positive effect related to the quality of financial reporting practice of listed manufacturing companies in Nigeria at 5% significant level (t-value of 9.029 and 5.784 with p-value of 0.007 and 0.004 respectively). This implies that increase in audit fee and firm size will lead to an increase in quality of financial reporting. However, non-audit services have significant and negatively effect on quality of financial reporting (t-value of -3.107 with p-value of 0.0142). This implies that increase in non-audit service will reduce the quality of financial reporting, while audit tenure has insignificant influence on quality of financial report (t-value of -0.169 with p-value 0.866). The study thereby concluded that audit fee and audit firm size have a significant impact on financial reporting of listed manufacturing companies in Nigeria. Therefore, the study recommended that audit fee should be sustained current level so as to encourage higher level of quality financial reporting and management should make use of Big 4 audit firms to audit their financial statement.

This study is the first attempt to empirically analyse stock market manipulation on the Nigerian Stock Exchange and its consequences on economic performance. The empirical investigation employs a broad data set of 186 actual manipulation cases indicted by the Nigerian Security and Exchange Commission between 2002 and 2016. We embrace market microstructure analysis and the event study method to understand how various manipulation techniques impact on market measures, and the Error Correction Model to evaluate their economic effects. Manipulation is found to distort market efficiency measures (such as market capitalization, value traded ratio and All-Share Index) and genuine traders are forced to exit the market to avoid possible trading with a manipulator. Such huge divestment and the subsequent financial risk weaken the ability of the Stock Exchange market to improve economic performance, creating negative consequences at the post-manipulation period. Essentially, economic variables (such as the GDP) react negatively to manipulative trading. This finding is insightful and a prompt to the Securities and Exchange Commission to design policy responses towards deterring and prosecuting unfair trading practices or other activities that contravene the market rules.

The study aims to examine the effects of unclaimed dividends with in-house and non-in-house registrars in Nigeria. The study employed the use of sampled mean T-test and stochastic dominance to examine the effect of unclaimed dividends on in-house and non-in-house registrars from 2012-2019. The results revealed that in-house registrars set up by large companies in the Nigerian capital market have first-order stochastic dominance over the non-in-house registrars. This implies that in-house registrars can compromise the dividend policies of supervising authorities to create more unclaimed dividends in the system. The study recommends that the Securities and Exchange Commission should ensure stringent compliance with dividend-paying procedures by in-house registrars to reduce investors’ pains and ensure transparency and accountability in the market.

The extant literature links manageress incentives to earnings management. It has globally accounted for the collapse of some well-known, established firms, since it depicts a low financial reporting quality. This study employed data from the 77 nonfinancial firms listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange for the period 2013-2019 in order to examine the determinants of earnings management. The result showed strong evidence of an incentive to manage earnings. Profitability (Return on Assets - ROA) and the size of a firm have a strong positive impact on earnings management, while the non-debt tax shield and operating cash flows have a strong negative influence on earnings management. The study suggests that external stakeholders should observe a firm's factors influencing its assets, non-debt tax shield and operating cash flows (such as accelerating/delaying cash receipts/payment through the use of credit sales and granting discounts), these being the crucial factors influencing earnings management even when the firm is increasing in size. Management should minimally use the above-mentioned factors of a firm as an earnings management instrument

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to assess how telecommunications companies in Nigeria leverage intellectual capital as a strategic resource for creating competitive advantage.Design methodology approach - A previously published research instrument was administered and survey data were collected from 320 managers in 29 telecommunications companies.Findings - Hypotheses related to the relationship of human, structural and customer capital and its influence on business performance were tested. Results show that Nigerian telecommunications companies have mostly emphasized the use of customer capital, exemplified by market research and customer relationship management to boost their business performance.Practical implications - The over-emphasis on customer capital to the detriment of other intellectual capital components is found to be undermining the productivity of Nigerian telecommunications companies.Originality value - This is the first published study of intellectual capital development in Nigeria.

Understanding the impact of financial liberalization on stock market is important for decision making by investors. The neo-classical economists believe that financial liberalization reduces stock market volatility while the post-Keynesian economists argue that financial liberalization increases volatility of the stock market. This study investigates the effect of financial liberalization on the volatility of an emerging stock market in Africa, with particular focus on the Nigerian stock market. The estimation results reveal that financial liberalization has a significant positive impact on return volatility, thus indicating that it increases stock market volatility. Also, the study finds no evidence of asymmetry in the stock market.