On yet another sluggish day, largely owing to the introduction of a new Tax called Electronic Transaction Levy, MTN Ghana stocks responded to the E-levy tax and ended on a negative note, despite staying resilient for most parts of the trading day.

In the wake of the budget presentation on the floor of Parliament by the Finance Minister and cues of new taxes, the markets opened slower; however, it soon managed to crawl into the positive territory as it gathered momentum and demonstrated some strength. MTN Ghana marked its high point when it briefly climbed into the positive territory. Then the Finance Minister broke the news of government of Ghana’s intention to introduce new electronic transactions levy of 1.75 percent, which will particularly affect mobile money transactions. This news unsettled investors on the GSE, and subsequently sent the headline index and MTN Ghana stocks nose-diving into the negative territory again, but remained in a defined and narrow trajectory. Weakness intensified in the last hour and Enterprise Group Ghana joined MTN Ghana as losers of Wednesday’s trading session.

MTN Ghana closed its trading day (Wednesday, November 17, 2021) at GHS1.32 per share on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), recording a 0.8 percent drop from its previous closing price of GHS1.33. MTN began the year with a share price of GHS0.64 and has since gained 106 percent on that price valuation.

Enterprise Group Ghana Limited (EGL) also closed its trading day at GHS2.53 per share on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), recording a 0.4 percent drop from its previous closing price of GHS2.54. Enterprise Group started the year with a share price of GHS1.40 and has over the period gained 80.7% on the initial value.

Nonetheless, Cal Bank was the only stock to mildly gain at the close of Wednesday’s session.
CAL ended its trading day with a gain of GHS0.02 to close at GHS0.85 per share on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE). This represents a 2.4 percent gain over its previous closing price of GHS0.83.

The Benchmark Index

The benchmark index also lost more grounds to end the day with a loss.

The benchmark GSE Composite Index (GSE-CI) shed 10.71 points (-0.36%) to close at 3,000.03 points. This led to a 1-week gain of 1.45 percent, a 4-week gain of 5.34 percent, and an overall year-to-date gain of 54.51 percent.

The GSE Financial Stocks Index (GSE-FSI), on the other hand, mildly increased by 0.09 percent to reach 2,076.72 points, making it a week on week gain of 0.16 percent, a monthly gain of 0.32 percent, and a year-to-date gain of 16.49 percent.

At the end of Wednesday’s trading session on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), a total of 790,310 shares, corresponding to a market value of GHS 1,121,454.86, were traded.

MTN Ghana recorded the highest volume of 678,224 traded shares, followed by CAL Bank (55,014), Republic Bank Ghana (22,568) and Benso Oil Palm Plantation (20,027).

The current market capitalization of the Ghana Stock Exchange stands at GHS 65.7 billion.

Considering the strong upmove in last two sessions, experts advise traders to avoid fresh buying in the index.