For yet another day, the Ghana stock market proved a bull trap on Thursday, July 7, as it once again started off with gains, boosted by the strong showing of markets on the continent, but as the day went on, the gains gave way to losses, with the benchmark eventually yielding significant ground.

The banking stocks led the decline, with Societe Generale Ghana PLC one of the two blue chips that sunk at the end of the trading session.

In all, 15 GSE listed equities participated in trading, ending with disappointingly two losers, namely, Ecobank Transnational Incorporated (-5.88%) and Societe Generale Ghana (-0.85%), while there were no gainers as the rest of the stocks traded flat.

Ecobank Transnational Incorporated (ETI) closed its trading day (Thursday, July 7, 2022) at GHS0.16 per share on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), recording a pesewa drop from its previous closing price of GHS0.17. Ecobank began the year with a share price of GHS 0.14 and has since gained 14.3% on that price valuation, ranking it sixth on the GSE in terms of year-to-date performance. That notwithstanding, investors may, however, take a cue of ETI’s recent poor performance, having lost 11% of its value in the past four weeks.

The other loser on the day is Societe Generale Ghana (SOGEGH). The bank closed its trading day at GHS1.17 per share on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), recording 1 pesewa drop from its previous closing price of 1.18 GHS. Societe Generale began the year with a share price of 1.20 GHS but has since lost 2.5% off that price valuation, ranking it 29th on the GSE in terms of year-to-date performance.

Societe Generale Ghana is the 11th most traded stock on the Ghana Stock Exchange over the past three months (Apr 6 – Jul 7, 2022). SOGEGH has traded a total volume of 139,809 shares valued at GHS 166,092 over the period, with an average of 2,219 traded shares per session. A volume high of 26,803 was achieved on April 6th for the same period.

Benchmark at Ghana Stock Exchange

The benchmark at Ghana Stock Exchange has dropped by 7.12 points close to the 2,538.53 points, due mainly to pressure on banks. This led to 1-week loss of 0.27 percent, a 4-week loss of 0.52 percent, and an overall year-to-date loss of 8.99 percent.

The GSE Financial Stocks Index (GSE-FSI) also decreased by 0.66 percent to 2,163.03 points, making it a week on week loss of 0.64 percent, a month on month loss of 1.1 per cent, and a year-to-date gain of 0.52 percent.

At the end of Thursday’s trading session on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), a total of 1,100,864 shares, corresponding to a market value of GHS 1,022,509.53, were traded. Compared with the previous GSE trading day (Wednesday, July 6), Thursday’s data showed 728% improvement in volume and 114% improvement in turnover.

MTN Ghana recorded the highest volume of 1.02 million traded shares. This was followed by SIC Insurance Company (47,000), Societe Generale Ghana (12,806) and GCB Bank (12,399).