ABSTRACT

A stock market is a market where suppliers and buyers (users) and long term loan able funds trades on. It is seen as a market for medium and long term funds. The primary purpose of the stock market is the efficiently transfer of finds between lenders and borrows. In many economies, the efficient allocation of capital resources is vital for increasing growth rate of the economy. Thus, this work aimed at investigating the extent to which the stock market has achieve desired objective towards enhancing its growth and performance and also to the extant to which it has contributed to the economy. The operation of the Nigerian stbck market, its activities, policies, bond performance has been carefully examined in relation to Nigerian present economic environment so as to achieve the aim and purpose of the study. This study proved that the growth and performance is quite impressive and will improve in the near future if more attention is given to it. In order to efficiently appraise the growth and performance of the Nigerian stock' market, efficient market indicators such as market capitalization, market turn-over, all-share index, daily volume traded, growth in the value of public hew issue, etc are used as a yardstick in the analysis and computation of results. Against the finding of this study limitations based on the effectiveness of the market, recommendation was made which would take care of the short comings and enhance the growth in the market