On the final day of the week, Friday, March 18, 2022, Ghanaian stock market concluded a lethargic day with modest gains, as advances in financial and banking equities offsetted early losses.

The expected rebalancing of the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) index, coupled with a shift in one stock, sent turnover and volume traded soaring in the closing trading sessions on Friday. This boosted the benchmark to the extent that it pared all earlier losses and ended up in the green at the end of the week with marginal gains.

Overall, thirteen (13) stocks participated in trade. One recorded gains, while none endured losses as 12 remained unchanged. Again, SIC Insurance Company PLC led the gainers table as it built on its impressive performance for the past weeks, with 5.26 per cent share price appreciation.

SIC Insurance Company closed its trading day (Friday, March 18, 2022) at GHS0.20 per share on the Ghana Stock Exchange, recording a pesewa gain over its previous closing price of GHS0.19. Meanwhile, SIC began the year with a share price of GHS0.08 and has since gained 150 per cent on that price valuation, ranking it first on the GSE in terms of year-to-date performance. Shareholders can be optimistic about SIC knowing the stock has accrued an outstanding 122 per cent over the past four-week period alone- best on GSE.

In the intervening time, SIC Insurance Company is the second most traded stock on the Ghana Stock Exchange over the past three months (Dec 15, 2021 – Mar 18, 2022). SIC has traded a total volume of 11.3 million shares valued at GHS 1.37 million over the period, with an average of 179,578 traded shares per session. A volume high of 3 million was achieved on February 23, 2022 for the same period.

GSE Composite Index

Among sectoral gauges, SIC Insurance Company played a role in the general benchmark index growth. Regarding the performance of GSE market indices, the benchmark GSE Composite Index (GSE-CI) inched up 0.19 points to close at 2,738.63 points, representing 0.01 per cent. Unfortunately, this led to a week on week loss of 0.2 per cent, but a month on month gain of 1.58 per cent, and an overall year-to-date loss of 1.82 per cent.

Similarly, the GSE Financial Stocks Index (GSE-FSI) also increased by 0.02 per cent to reach 2,167.29 points, making it a week on week gain of 1.19 percent, a 4-week gain of 2.33 per cent, and a year-to-date gain of 0.72 per cent.

At the end of the final weekday of trading on the local bourse, a total of 10,989,751 shares, corresponding to a market value of GHS 11,708,506.42, changed hands. Compared with the previous GSE trading day (Thursday, March 17), Friday’s data showed 358 per cent improvement in volume and 288 per cent improvement in turnover.

MTN Ghana Leads Trade By Volume

MTN Ghana recorded the highest volume of 10.8 million traded shares, followed by Societe Generale Ghana (67,941), SIC Insurance Company (31,500) and Ecobank Transnational (29,458).

The market capitalization of the Ghana Stock Exchange remained at GHS 64 billion.

Meanwhile, as the economy continues to weaken, analysts predict volatility to be the main feature of the stock market going into the new week as investors continue to remain jittery amid inflation, depreciation and spike in commodity prices, especially crude oil.