The maximum daily price movement on the Exchange is 10% either way, according to Nairametrics. A stock can trade anywhere inside that band during the session, but a trade that would push the published price past it will not print at that level. Only a move that actually reaches that boundary qualifies as limit-bound. A stock up 8% on the day has had a strong session. It has not hit the limit, and calling it "near-limit" overstates what happened.
The second control matters more for how a reader should treat any given day's chart. Not every trade changes the published price. Under the existing framework, the minimum volume needed to move a stock's quoted price is broadly uniform at 100,000 units, according to Nairametrics. A transaction smaller than that is treated as a small trade and leaves the last published price untouched, regardless of how much money changed hands below that line.
Current pricing itself still runs on three bands, per Nairametrics: ₦100 and above, ₦5.00 up to below ₦100, and below ₦5.00. The bands sound tiered, but the detail that actually governs whether a trade can move the price, the 100,000-unit threshold, does not vary by band. The same unit count applies whether the stock trades at ₦2 or at ₦2,000.
Run the arithmetic and the gap shows plainly. 100,000 units of a stock priced at ₦5 costs ₦500,000 to transact. The same 100,000 units in a stock priced at ₦1,000 costs ₦100 million. Both trades carry identical weight in the eyes of the pricing engine: either is enough to move the published price, and a single unit fewer is not enough for either. A trader with half a million naira can move a cheap stock's quoted price for the day. Moving a premium name such as Seplat Energy, Dangote Cement or Airtel Africa, the type of stock Nairametrics named as a target of the stalled reform, takes a transaction two orders of magnitude larger.
A fix had actually been approved. On 16 June 2026, the Securities and Exchange Commission signed off on an amendment to Rule 15.29 of the Exchange's Trading License Holders' Rules, grouping equities into three tiers by price. Group A covers shares priced at ₦1,000 or above, with a 10,000-unit threshold and a 10-kobo tick size. Group B covers ₦500 up to below ₦1,000, with a 50,000-unit threshold and a 5-kobo tick. Group C covers everything below ₦500, with the current 100,000-unit threshold and a 1-kobo tick. The ±10% daily limit stays the same across all three groups.
That framework has not taken effect. It was due to launch on Monday, 17 August 2026, and NGX postponed it the day before, on 16 August. NGX's Clifford Akpolo told Nairametrics the launch was "postponed; not shelved," with a new date to be communicated later. By 10 September 2026, no date had been set. Nairametrics reported, citing market participants, that the Securities and Exchange Commission had directed the Exchange to run roughly three months of further stakeholder consultation, with market participants pointing to the ongoing move to T+1 settlement and the ₦2.15 trillion Dangote Refinery IPO, then due to open on 14 September, as reasons to hold off on another change. Rule 15.29's tiers are a proposed, postponed framework. They are not what governs a trade on the NGX today.
That postponement matters for how a reader should treat the size of a daily move right now. A stock sitting at a 9% gain on modest turnover has not hit the limit, and the gain alone does not tell you where real demand sits, because turnover under 100,000 units would not have moved the published price at all. A low-priced stock can clear that threshold on half a million naira. A premium-priced one needs far more money changing hands for the same signal to register. That gap does not show up in the percentage change on a ticker. It only shows up once the volume column is checked against what it actually cost to trade.
Until NGX communicates a new date, the flat 100,000-unit threshold and the current three pricing bands remain the rules a trade has to satisfy to move a published price.
The lesson sits in the mechanism, not in any single day's close. A percentage move only means what the volume behind it allows it to mean, and a flat volume rule does not treat every stock the same way in money terms even when it looks even-handed on paper. Reading a daily chart without checking what actually traded, and whether enough of it traded to count, is reading half the picture.
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