The Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) witnessed a marginal drop in its Equities Market in the month of August, 2022 compared to the preceding month, July, 2022.

According to the monthly report released by the Ghana Stock Exchange, the Composite Index ended the month of August at Year-To-Date returns of -10.05 percent. However, in the previous month, July 2022, the Ghana Stock Exchange Equities index was -9.70 percent. This reflected a marginal decline of 0.35 percent.

Similarly, the Ghana Stock Exchange Financial Index (GSE-FI) for the month of August also saw a slight decline of 1.1 percent. The GSE ended August with Year-to-date return financial index of -3.3 percent. In the previous month, July, 2922 the GSE Financial Index was -2.24 percent.

Increase in Market Activity

However, the month of August witnessed a significant jump in trading activities as volume, value, and the number of transactions all increased over the previous month.

The volume traded for August 2022, stood at 77,249,447 traded shares. In the preceding month, July 2022, the Ghana Stock Exchange recorded 64,332,881 traded shares. This represents 20.07 percent increase.

In similar vein, the value of transactions also went up from GHS 61,493,287.83 recorded in July to the current value of GHS114,171,744.82. This represents an increase of 85.67 percent in August 2022.

According to the GSE report, Access Bank PLC and Asante Gold were among the biggest gainers on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) in the month of August 2022.

Access Bank PLC gained 42.35 percent on its share price while Asante Gold also gained 12.76 percent on its share price. Other gainers in the month of August were Benso Oil Palm Plantation (BOPP) with 5.67 percent jump in its share price; Societe Generale with 2.83 percent gain in share price; CalBank with 2.70 percent share price appreciation. Total Petroleum Ghana was also among the biggest gainers in August with share price appreciation of 1.95 percent.

The Ghana Fixed Income Market

Meanwhile, the Ghana Fixed Income Market (GFIM) also ended the month of August with GH¢15.71 billion in volume traded, which represents a 13.09 percent rise from the previous value of GH¢13.89 billion traded.

The total value traded between January and August 2022 was 158.94 billion, which is 12.87 percent larger than the 140.82 billion traded during the same period in the previous year.

The year-on-year market capitalization of the Ghana Stock Exchange also increase in the month of August, moving from 64.3 billion in July to 64 .5 billion in August.