According to the monthly report released by the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), activities on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) slowed down in the first month of 2022, as both the stock and the debt markets witnessed significant drop in volumes traded.

Both the equity and debt market recorded decline in volumes and values traded, as the market started the year on a very slow note compared to last year.

According to the January 2022 Monthly Summary Report by the Exchange, only few stocks recorded gains, while majority of major stocks lost heavily in the first month of the new year. In the month of January this year, MTN Ghana and Fan Milk Limited were the front losers.

For the equity market, the month of January closed with 34.58 million shares valued at GH¢38.8 million changed hands. Meanwhile, in 2021 last year, the total volume of shares traded in January was at 98.73 million valued at GH¢69.71 million. Comparatively, this represented a 64.98 percent and 45.09 percent decrease in volumes and values traded respectively over the same period last year.

The month of January saw the year to date dipped in the negative territory, whilst January last year, the Ghanaian equities market was cruising in the positive.

Year-to-date Returns

The stock market retuned negative 0.81 percent for investors in the first month of 2022, however, last year January 2021, the Exchange recorded a gain of 4.41 percent. The bond market on the other hand, started with a traded volume of GH¢16.68 billion, indicating a decline of 8 percent, over the previous year.

However, the market capitalization which shows the total value of all a company’s shares, closed the month of January at GH¢64.49 billion, which is an increase in the previous market capitalization of GH¢55.33 billion.

It can be recalled that the Ghana Stock Exchange ended last year as Africa’s 2nd best performing stock market, in both dollar and cedi terms.

In dollar term, the exchange recorded 38.59 percent return for investors, whilst investors enjoyed 43.66 percent gain in local term.

The Lusaka Securities Exchange was however, the best performing stock market in Africa, registering 93.2 percent gain in dollar and 52.21 percent in local term for investors.

On the other hand, the Malawi Stock Exchange was 3rd, with a return of 32.24 percent and 40.05 percent in dollar and local term respectively.

The impressive performance of GSE last year ended the Ghana stock market’s 3-year run of negative returns. That notwithstanding, it seems the market is back to default. However, analysts have warned it is early days yet, as the market may bounce back in the subsequent months ahead.

Over 800% Improvement in Previous Trading Day

At the end of Thursday’s trading session on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), a total of 1,048,852 shares, corresponding to a market value of GHS 1,153,430.68, were traded. Compared with the previous GSE trading day (Wednesday, February 9), Thursday’s data showed 805% improvement in volume.

Nine GSE equities participated in trading, ending with one loser, namely Access Bank Ghana, with 9.69% share price depreciation.

MTN Ghana recorded the highest volume of 1.03 million traded shares, followed by Societe Generale Ghana (10,800), Ghana Oil Company (5,000) and Ecobank Ghana (2,000).