The Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) recouped most of its morning losses to end flat on Thursday, March 3, 2022, making it a two consecutive days of forming an indecisive candlestick as investors avoid making big bets ahead of the weekend.
The Ghana stock market entered consolidation phase, where blue chip stocks on the domestic market showed no directional bias and was between gains and losses, tracking volatile global markets in the wake of surge in domestic inflation, owing to the rise in prices of crude petroleum and petroleum products in the midst of the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war.
In total, 11 GSE listed equities participated in trading. There were no gainers nor losers. As a result, major stocks such as: MTN Ghana, Enterprise Group Limited, Aluworks and Access Bank Ghana did not hit the market’s likely path in the way a bullish or bearish pin bar does.
MTN Ghana opened the market at GH¢1.08 price per share and closed the market exactly same without any change. Enterprise Group Limited also closed the trading day as it opened at a share price of GH¢3.30. Similarly, Access Bank moreover, formed resistance formation and ended the session at GH¢2.0 with no change between opening stock price and the closing one.
However, on the face of the foregoing, buying interest in telecommunication sector stocks and financial stocks outweighed food and consumer sector stocks as evidenced by the high demand in the bargain stocks of the above listed stocks.
Trading Activity Went Down
A barrage of bad news ranging from inflation, depreciation, high fuel prices and Ukrainian crises during the week has made the market mood rather despondent compared to the previous trading day.
At the end of Thursday’s trading session on the Ghana Stock Exchange, a total of 3,939,402 shares changed hands. This corresponds to a market value of GH¢ 4,545,350.74. Compared with the previous GSE trading day (Wednesday, March 2), Thursday’s data showed 78 percent decline in volume and 76 percent decline in turnover.
MTN Ghana was the most active on the day, leading the trade by volume chart. It recorded the highest volume of 3.8 million traded shares, followed by Enterprise Group (131,187), Aluworks (5,116) and Access Bank Ghana (1,911).
Major Indices Remain Flat
With regards to the performance of GSE market indices, the benchmark GSE Composite Index (GSE-CI) followed the path of the major stocks. It also did not see any change, closing at the same mark as it opened at 2,731.68 points. Nonetheless, this led to a week on week gain of 1.38 percent, a month on month gain of 0.09 percent, but an overall year-to-date loss of 2.07 percent.
Similarly, the GSE Financial Stocks Index (GSE-FSI) also maintained its value at 2,118.96 points, leading to a week on week gain of 0.16 percent, a month on month loss of 0.42 percent, and a year-to-date loss of 1.53 percent.
However, the market capitalization jumped from GHS 62.9 billion to the current position of GH¢ 63.3 billion.
Clearly, market participants on the local bourse are not in a risk-off mood as yet. How long this trend will continue is tough to predict at this point in time as the situation is too fluid and the negative factors clearly outweigh the positive factors.
READ ALSO: Much Hasn’t Been Done To Confront Housing Issues- Sammy Amegayibor
