After a balanced trading session, the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) benchmark index closed on Thursday virtually unchanged, with a dead heat between winners and losers and the majority of stocks seeing their early gains vanish by the bell.

In the early hours into the trading session, the Ghanaian Equities market halted its corrective decline as the market staged a strong pullback but unable to cross the line, ending on a flat base.

The benchmark GSE-Composite index which is based on the volume weighted average closing price of all listed stocks, did not see any change, closing at the same mark as it opened at 2,551.74 points. This led to a week on week gain of 0.03 percent and a month on month loss of 0.39 percent. Moreover, Thursday’s trading session had an overall year-to-date loss of 8.52 percent to investors.

Similarly, the Ghana Stock Exchange Financial Stocks Index (GSE-FSI) which constitutes only listed stocks from the financial sector including banking and insurance sector stocks, also maintained its value at 2,187.03 points, making it a week on week gain of 0.06 percent, a month on month loss of 0.86 percent, and a year-to-date gain of 1.63 percent.

According to the market report, 10 GSE listed equities participated in trading. All the ten major stocks that participated in Thursday’s market closed the trading session without a gain or a loss.

Some major equities share prices that remained unchanged are as follows: MTN Ghana started and ended the day with a share price of GHS0.90; Produce Buying Company maintained GHS0.02; Total also opened and closed at GHS4.10; Ecobank Ghana PLC moreover, opened and closed at GH¢7.60; Societe Generale Ghana PLC closed the session at GHS1.19. Tullow Oil Company also did not see any change in share price of GHS11.92. Ecobank Transnational Incorporated (ETI) also opened and closed at GH¢0.18.

Trading By Volume

At the end of Thursday’s trading session on the local bourse, a total of 60,149 shares, corresponding to a market value of GHS 42,421.70, were traded.

MTN Ghana recorded the highest volume of 42,164 traded shares, followed by SIC Insurance Company with to total of 13,767 traded shares. Cocoa Processing Company also managed to secure 2,000 traded shares, while Produce Buying Company (PBC) also secured 1,400 traded.

The market capitalization which captures the total market value of all outstanding shares hence determining the worth of various companies listed on the local bourse also maintained its value at GH¢62.2 billion.

Analysts hold that the market cap is simple and effective tool for risk assessment and as such can be helpful to investors in determining which stocks to purchase and ways to diversify various portfolio with companies of different size.

As demand for bargain stock increases, experts believe the stock market is likely to pick up on the final day of the week and into the subsequent days.