Are inexperienced investors copying Ndindi Nyoro when buying shares?

On Thursday, the Kenya Airways shares were the biggest gainers at the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE). The shares closed the day at a trading price of Sh5.48 per share. This was a gain of 9.82 percent from the previous day’s trading price of Sh4.99 per share.

This counter recorded a low of Sh5.20 per share within the day, and moved a volume of 762,292 shares by the end of trading.

Incidentally, these gains came following revelations that popular investor and Kiharu Member of Parliament Ndindi Nyoro is now the second-largest individual shareholder at Kenya Airways. He is also the seventh largest shareholder at Kenya Airways.

According to regulatory filings for the month of February 2026, Nyoro had acquired 10,396,251 shares. This means that as of Wednesday, these shares were worth Sh51.9 million. A day later, following the rise in price, the shares were worth Sh57 million.

Ndindi Nyoro: This is how I would invest a lumpsum of Sh20 million

The Kenya Airways shares rallied despite the national carrier announcing a mega net loss of Sh17.2 billion for the full year 2025.

This loss was a reverse shift from the record profit of Sh5.4 billion that the national carrier posted in the full year 2024. The national carrier blamed this heavy loss on the grounding of its wide body Dreamliner planes that were due for engine overhauls.

“Overall performance and operations in the year 2025 were severely impacted primarily by the temporary grounding of three of the wide body fleet, Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner aircraft. This was driven by the global supply chain constraints and limited engine availability,” Kenya Airways had said in a statement.

Nyoro’s investment in Kenya Airways has been widely interpreted as the strategic taking of position ahead of a possible takeover of the national airline by a foreign investor. In February 2026, the Cabinet Secretary for the National Treasury John Mbadi announced that President William Ruto and his government had decided to sell off Kenya Airways.

According to the Cabinet Secretary, the government will hand over the national carrier to foreigners who will pump in between Sh154.8 billion and Sh258 billion.

Mbadi claimed that the government will float an international expression of interest (EOI) in a bid to get an investor.

“The new investor is expected to inject a minimum of Sh154.8 billion and up to Sh258 billion into the business. We shall be rolling out an international expression of interest to search for a strategic partner,” said CS Mbadi. The CS, however, did not announce when this bid will be opened.

“The government took up Sh63.1 billion which it is now servicing. The government then signed an on-lent agreement with KQ. This amount can be converted to equity once we firm up the onboarding of a strategic investor.”

Although Nyoro has not revealed if this potential takeover is behind his purchase of Kenya Airways shares, inexperienced retail investors have taken note and are rushing to get a pie of the stock, which might explain why the counter experienced increased enthusiasm on the same day Nyoro’s interests were revealed.

Previously, the Member of Parliament has purchased counters such as Kenya Power on the low and reaped big following their gains. For example, in late 2025, Nyoro revealed that he had purchased Kenya Power shares over a four-year period starting from 2023 at an average of Sh1.89 per share.

Although he has since sold off chunks of this counter, a spot check shows that over this time, the counter has increased in price and is currently trading at Sh16.80 per share. Over the past 52 weeks, this counter has risen from a low of Sh5.70 per share.

With Nyoro’s moves at the NSE going public, novice investors have now taken to following in his footsteps by acquiring counters that he is interested in. The big question, though, is on whether these inexperienced investors are buying when he is selling or buying when he is buying.