Earnings or Dividends: Which had More Predictive Power?

This paper reviews two important investment strategies employed by value investors; the Price to Earnings Ratio (“PER”) and Dividends yield (“DY”) strategy. In this paper, I review the performance of 16 portfolios formed on listed equity instruments on the Nigerian stock exchange (“NSE”) which were divided into quartiles within the period 2003 and 2014. I utilise various measures; “Jensen Alpha” measure and Sharpe ratio, to assess which portfolio would have earned Nigerian investors above market returns in the period. The evidence from this study indicates that a portfolio formed using a market capitalization weighted approach for the highest quartile of dividend yielding stocks overall outperforms a buy-the-market and-hold policy. Also, equal weighted and market capitalization weighted portfolios based on earnings yield have been unable to outperform the NSE All Share Index in the review period. Put differently, the PER has no predictive power but dividends yields do. The limitations of the study are also discussed. Keywords: Price to Earnings Ratio, Dividends yield, Nigeria, Jensen’s alpha, Sharpe ratio, Risk adjusted returns, Value investin

Can Nigerian RSA’s Beat Inflation?

This paper aims to review and replicate the performance of the funds managed under the 2004 Pension reform act (“Old Act”) of Nigeria and its subsequent repeal. I utilise Ordinary Least Squares (“OLS”) regression analysis in an attempt to replicate the returns on Net Asset Values (“NAV”) published by some of the Licensed Pension Fund Administrators (“PFA”). The Old Act allows for active fund management of both equity and ?xed income instruments on Nigerian assets. I attempt to replicate the published NAV results using four Nigerian ?nancial instruments to ascertain if passive alternatives to active management by the PFA’s at lower cost and transaction fees can be created. The performance of 10 Nigerian PFA’s run by fund managers in the period December 2006 to December 2014 is reviewed and presented.The evidence from this study indicates that the performance of the 10 PFA’s cannot be replicated using four simple financial instruments. Since the Old Act allows for an allocation of up to 80% of assets in bonds, a simple t test is performed to ascertain whether PFA’s mark to market their portfolio’s adequately. Keywords: Pension Funds, Nigeria, PFA’s, T Test, Out-Performance

The Performance of Nigerian Mutual Funds in the Period 2011 - 2014

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A review of the major gaps in the arbitration and conciliation act

The Arbitration and Conciliation Act governs both domestic and foreign arbitration in Nigeria. As the mandatory law of arbitration in the country, its provisions have a lot of implications for how arbitration is conducted in Nigeria. It is therefore in the interest of the parties and the nation at large that the provisions of the Act are reflective of the modern thinking in the realm of arbitration. Since its promulgation as a decree about 23 years ago, major trends have emerged in the realm of arbitration that has made some of the provisions of the Act obsolete. This paper, therefore, identifies the possible gaps in the Arbitration and Conciliation Act. The aim is to recommend probable actions that will close such gaps and make the Act a useful tool in dispute resolution and not a stumbling block. It adopts a doctrinal research approach with emphasis on the review of case law, literature, internet sources, conventions, rules, reports, and legislations which are considered essential in giving effect to the paper. It found that certain provisions of the Act especially as it relates to international commercial arbitration are not adequate in terms of what they provide for and therefore recommend necessary amendments to the identified provisions of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act Cap. A18 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria

The January and Monday effect or the lack thereof

This paper assesses the existence of calendar anomalies on 167 stocks listed on the Nigerian stock exchange (“NSE”) between the period 2004 and 2014. These stocks, at different times, also constituted part of the all share index within the review period. The approach taken in this paper differs slightly from most papers where the review has been on indices rather than individual stocks. The simple Ordinary Least Squares (“OLS”) estimation technique and the Generalised Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (“GARCH”) model were utilized to test for day of the week effects and any other monthly calendar anomaly that has been reported at different times on the Nigerian Stock Exchange. The evidence from this study indicates that for the Nigerian Stock Exchange All Share Index (“NSE ASI”), and majority of the listed equity instruments, there was no statistically significant day of the week or month of the year effect. There is no evidence of a January effect or any other monthly effects. The constituents of the NSE ASI were employed because as at December 2014, a single stock on the NSE ASI, accounted for over 20% of the index composition. This has been the case since the year 2010. Keywords: Calendar anomalies, Nigeria, January effect, Day of the week effect, OLS, GARCH

Reward Allocation For Maximizing Energy Savings In A Transportation System

Transportation has a major impact on our society and environment, contributing 70% of U.S petroleum use, 28% of U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, over 34,000 fatalities and 2.2 million injuries in 2013. Punitive approaches to used to tackle environmental issues in the transportation sector, such as congestion pricing have been well documented, although the use of incentives or rewards lags behind in comparison. In addition to the use of more fuel-efficient, alternate energy vehicles and various other energy reduction strategies; energy consumption can be lowered through incentivizing alternative modes of transportation. This paper focused on modifying travelers’ behavior by providing rewards to enable shifts to more energy-efficient modes, (e.g., from auto to either bus or bicycles). Optimization conditions are formulated for the problem to understand solution properties, and numerical tests are carried out to study the effects of system parameters (e.g., token budget and coefficient of tokens) on the optimal solutions (i.e., energy savings). The multinomial logit model is used to formulate the full problem, comprised of an objective function and constraint of a token budget ranging from $5,000-$10,000. Comparably, the full problem is computationally reduced by various parameterization strategies, in that the number of tokens assigned to all travelers’ is parameterized and proportional to the expected energy savings. An optimization solution algorithm is applied with a global and local solver to solve a lagrangian sub-problem and a duo of heuristic solution algorithms of the original problem. These were determined necessary to attain an optimal and feasible solution. Input data necessary for this analysis is obtained for the Town of Amherst, MA from the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission (PVPC). The results demonstrated strong evidence to conclude a positive correlation between the system’s energy savings and the aforementioned system parameters. The local and global solvers solution algorithm reduced the average energy consumption by 11.48% - 19.91% and12.79% – 21.09% consecutively for the identified token budget range from a base case scenario with no tokens assigned. The duo of lagrangian heuristic algorithms improved the full problems solution i.e., higher energy savings, when optimized over a local solver, while the parameterized problem formulations resulted in higher energy savings when compared to the full problems’ formulation solution over local solver, but higher energy savings compared over the global solver. The Computational run-time for the global and local solvers solution algorithm for the full problem formulation required 43 hours and 24 minutes consecutively, while the local solver for the lagrangian heuristics and parameterized problem solution algorithm took 13 minutes and 7 minutes consecutively. Future research on this paper will be comprised of a bi-level optimization problem formulation where a high level optimization aims at maximizing system-wide energy savings, while a low-level consumer surplus maximization problem is solved for each system user

Novel DNA ligases from the Red Sea brine pools: Cloning, expression, in silico characterization and comparative thermostability

Extreme physicochemical conditions such as high temperature, salinity, and the presence of heavy metal are characteristics of some of the Red Sea brine pools environment. We screened two Red Sea Brine pools (Atlantis II(AT-II), and Discovery Deeps (DD), and one interface layer (Kebrit Deep) to identify novel DNA ligases with potential extreme biochemical properties. Furthermore, we did an in silico comparative thermostability study by examining the stability role of proline and arginine residues at the loop conformations and exposed regions of ligase sequences from metagenomic assemblies of different extreme environments, including the Red Sea metagenomes. A sequence-based metagenomics approach was used to identify the putative DNA ligase sequences from the Red Sea brine pools and interface layer metagenomes downloaded from the NCBI database. 6, 148, 453 metagenomic reads were assembled using MEGAHIT, which generated 783,176 contigs. A concatenated HMM model built from raw HMM models of ATP and NAD+ ligases domains available from the Pfam database was used to scan predicted ORFs from contigs. A total of 18 ORFs were identified, and two of the ORFs, LigATL1 ATP type), from AT-II and LigKDU4 (NAD+ type) from KB, were selected for synthesis, phylogenetic study, and further preliminary characterizations. LigATL1 was cloned, expressed, and partially purified. Additionally, ligase sequences from psychrophilic, mesophilic, thermophilic, and hyperthermophilic environments were retrieved from the NCBI database for comparative thermostability study with some of the putative Red Sea ligase sequences. The retrieved 22 ligase sequences were divided into five different closest taxonomic groups. ConSurf and DisEMBL servers were used to analyze Proline (Pro) and Arginine (Arg) residues in the exposed/buried regions and the loop and hot loops regions of the putative ligases (retrieved + Red Sea), respectively. A putative LigATL1 showed a 38% identity to ATP-Dependent DNA ligase from Erysipelotrichaceae bacterium, while LigKDU4 has a 60% identity to NAD+ Dependent DNA ligase from Candidatus Marinimicrobia bacterium. The phylogenetic analysis suggests that LigATL1 belongs to the LigD(ATP type) family, while LigKDU4 is amongst the LigA family,(NAD+ type). LigATL1 has 100% confidence modeling using bound-adenylated nicked human DNA ligase as a template, and is superimposed with the highest similarity (Template modeling ™ score =1.0) to thermostable DNA ligase from S.solfataricus. LigKDU4 modeled with 100% confidence using bound-adenylated nicked E.coli DNA ligase, and also superimposed with the highest similarity(TM score= 1.0) to thermostable t2 filiform DNA ligase. In vitro, functional assay and biochemical characterization are still required to confirm both enzyme activity and thermostability. For the comparative thermostability analysis, many Ligase sequences from thermophilic or hyper thermophilic environments had higher Pro and Arg residues both at the exposed and the hot loops regions than those from other mesophilic and psychrophilic environments. The highest buried Pro and Arg residues were reported for ligase sequences from psychrophilic environments at almost all the groups. Two out of five putative ligase sequences selected for the thermophilic AT-II environment had more hot loops and less buried Pro and Arg residues than other pairs in their respective groups. In the case of LigKDU4(MLK), it has the highest hot loop and exposed Arg residues than its pairs in its group which is unusual when compared to Arg analysis in other groups. This comparative study can give an insight into improving the thermal stability of enzymes generally

Female genital cutting among the Hausa community in Sagamu

Context: Female genital cutting is a prevalent practice in many parts of Nigeria but anecdotal evidence shows that Sagamu indigenes do not practice it. This study examined the awareness, attitude and practice of female genital cutting among the Hausas who reside in Sagamu. Methodology: A cross-sectional study was carried out in Sabo, Sagamu, in the months of May/June 2002. Multi-staged sampling technique was used to choose 245 respondents from the study area. Results: One hundred and seventy seven females and 68 males were interviewed. The males had a higher level of education compared with the females (