The Ghanaian equity market has placed its internal strength on display to end the week on Friday, January 21, as it consolidated and ended on a flat note for the second day running.

The GSE market saw a tepid opening on the expected lines and traded flat in a narrow range in the first half of Friday’s trading session. The blue chip stocks stayed range-bound, and showed no directional bias till the market closed.

According to market report, six major GSE equities participated in trading. All the major blue chip stocks that participated in Friday’s trading session closed without a gain or a loss, albeit, with an improved market activity.

The market displayed some resoluteness as the volume and value of traded stocks swelled up considerably.

At the end of the last weekday of trading on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), a total of 134,565 shares, corresponding to a market value of GHS 643,078.58, were traded. Compared with the previous GSE trading day (Thursday, January 20), Friday’s data showed 88 percent improvement in volume and 332 percent improvement in turnover.

Top Movers

Despite the major stocks trading flat, the banking sector and telecommunication stocks led the market trading activities. GCB Bank PLC recorded the highest volume of shares traded. It was followed closely by the telecommunication giant Scancom PLC (MTNGH). Ecobank Transnational Incorporated also joined the list of top movers on the summit with AngloGold Ashanti Depositary Shares completing the list.

GCB Bank PLC closed the session as a leader with the highest volume of 120,100 traded shares. MTN Ghana also secured 9,831 traded shares, whereas Ecobank Transnational Incorporated recorded 3,300 traded shares. AngloGold Ashanti Depositary Shares manged to squeeze into the list of top traders by volume with 1,000 traded shares.

Benchmark Composite Indices

Taking into cognizant the performance of GSE market indices, the benchmark GSE Composite Index (GSE-CI) did not also see any change, closing at the same mark as it opened at 2,789.52 points. This resulted in a 1-week gain of 1 percent. However, on a month on month basis, the composite index recorded a 4-week loss of 1.04 percent, nonetheless a marginal gain of overall year-to-date of 0.01 percent.

In a similar vein, the GSE Financial Stocks Index (GSE-FSI) further maintained its value at 2,154.03 points, making it a 1-week gain of 0.34 percent, a 4-week gain of 3.07 percent, and a year-to-date gain of 0.1 percent.

In the intervening time, 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 remained at GHS 64 billion.

However, some strategists see the market heading into a volatile period in which there could be a deeper pullback.

On the other hand, other analysts predict that there is going to be a rebound in stock prices as the week draws to a close, coupled with an improvement in investor confidence through the high demand in bargain stocks.