Nairobi, April 13 -- The 18 NSE firms included on the Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) indices saw their dollarised returns fall behind their continental peers in the first quarter of the year, as their prices declined in March amid a selloff caused by jitters over the Iran war.

Market data from MSCI shows that the NSE's return in the period stood at 0.9 percent, trailing Nigeria, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Tunisia, Senegal, and Cote d'Ivoire, which had returns of between 9.6 and 44 percent during the same period.

Egypt, Morocco and Mauritius reported negative returns of -27.4 percent, -12.3 percent and -8.8 percent, largely on account of exchange losses for exiting investors.

In shilling terms, the overall return of the NSE as...