The Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) volume of shares traded by close of trading activities on the local bourse on Monday, August 17, 2021, has declined by 61%.

At the end of Monday’s trading session on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), a total of 652,880 shares, corresponding to a market value of GHc1,262,077.13, were traded. Compared with the previous GSE trading day (Friday, August, 13), the volume of shares traded by close of market was 1,683,573 shares.

According to Monday’s market report, a total of seven GSE listed equities participated in trading. The market however, ended with only two gainers, namely Unilever Ghana (+9.93%) and Enterprise Group (+0.51%).

Meanwhile, the other five major stocks which participated in the market traded flat. This means that the opening stock price of these equities neither increased nor decreased. It also means that the opening share price was the same as the closing price of shares for these equities.

Market Volume

Furthermore, Enterprise Group recorded the highest volume of shares traded. At the end of market activity, Enterprise Group accounted for 615,893 volume of shares traded. This was followed by MTN Ghana which also accounted for 32,190 volume of shares traded. In addition, Ecobank Transnational and Unilever Ghana followed in that order with total volume of shares traded totaling 2,060 shares and 2,000 shares respectively.

GSE Market Indices

Moreover, regarding the performance of GSE market indices, the benchmark GSE- Composite index inched up 0.1 points to close at 2,746.15 points, representing a 1-week gain of 0.08%, a 4-week gain of 3.18%, and an overall year-to-date gain of 41.44%. Compared to the previous trading session, the benchmark GSE- Composite index on August 13, stood at 2,744.25 points.

In addition, the trading session closed with an overall investor’s year-to-date gain of 41.44% as against 41.13% recorded last week. This index is computed based on the volume weighted average closing price of all listed stocks.

Likewise, the GSE financial Stock index’s (GSE-CI) performance increased its value by 0.02 per cent to close at 1,909.91 points, making it a 1-week gain of 0.05%, a 4-week gain of 1.02%, and a year-to-date gain of 7.13%. This gain, however, according to some experts was as a result of the gain by the two major stocks. This index constitutes stocks from the financial sector including banking and insurance sector stocks.

Furthermore, current market capitalization of the Ghana Stock Exchange is GHc 62.7 billion. This value represents a slight increase compared to the GHc62.6 billion that was formerly recorded after close of trade on the GSE on August 13. The Market capitalization captures the total market value of all outstanding shares on the local bourse. Also, investors can use it to determine the worth of various companies listed on the stock exchange.

Meanwhile, the performance of the Ghana Stock Exchange has been inconsistent throughout last week after starting the week strongly. This led to some experts suggesting that it could be a symptom of a bigger problem of the market not being very active and inefficient.

However, some experts suggested that the market may pick up in the rest of the days of the week.