net change
Net change is how much a stock or index moved from one closing price to the next, shown as a plain number or a percentage.
In plain English
Remember the woman at the market who sells pepper at ₦500 today and ₦550 tomorrow. You do not need a lecture to know she has gone up by ₦50. That simple comparison, today against yesterday, is exactly what net change means on the stock exchange.
Every evening when the Nigerian Exchange closes trading, each listed company gets a new closing price. Net change simply compares that new closing price to the previous day's closing price. If Dangote Cement closed at ₦450 yesterday and closes at ₦465 today, the net change is ₦15 up. If it had closed at ₦430, the net change would be ₦20 down.
You will see this number written with a plus or minus sign right beside a share price on financial websites and apps, sometimes as a raw figure in naira, sometimes as a percentage. Both are telling you the same story from slightly different angles. The percentage matters more when you are comparing two shares of very different prices, because ₦15 means something different on a ₦50 stock than on a ₦450 one.
In London, someone tracking a FTSE 100 company on their phone during a lunch break sees the same kind of figure, just in pounds instead of naira. And for a Nigerian in Manchester keeping half an eye on shares back home while sending money to family in Lagos, net change is the quickest way to know if the news is good before reading a single headline.
It is a small number, but it carries mood. A string of positive net changes over days tells you a share is gaining favour. A string of negative ones tells you sentiment has turned. Either way, it is only the beginning of the story, never the whole of it.
A stock closes at ₦82 on Monday and ₦88 on Tuesday. The net change is ₦6, or about 7.3 percent, and this is the figure you will see displayed as +6 or +7.3% beside the ticker.
Questions people ask
Is net change the same as percentage change?
No. Net change is the actual amount the price moved, in naira. Percentage change expresses that same movement as a share of the previous price, which makes it easier to compare stocks that trade at very different prices.
Does net change include dividends paid out?
Usually not. Net change compares closing prices only. If a company pays a dividend, the share price often adjusts downward on the day it goes ex dividend, and that adjustment shows up in the net change even though your total return, including the dividend received, may still be positive.
Can net change be misleading?
It can, if you look at it alone. A big net change on a day with very few shares traded may mean little, while the same move on a heavily traded day tells a stronger story. Always glance at trading volume alongside it.
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