The final week of October was marked by several choppy sessions of trading as investors await November budget reading, ending a lacklustre week on a negative note.
The losses suffered on Friday pushed all major indices into the red zone territory. The downturn in these stocks and decline in sale of government bonds, highlighted how the market that outperformed in the first half of the year have been retreating lately.
At the end of the last weekday (Friday, October 29) of trading on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), a total of 237,102 shares, corresponding to a market value of GHS 103,938.24, were traded. Compared with the previous GSE trading day (Thursday, October 28), Friday’s data show 55 percent decline in volume and 84 percent decline in turnover.
The wild Friday saw nine(9) GSE equities participated in trading, ending with one loser, namely MTN Ghana (MTNGH), with 2.42 percent share price depreciation.
MTNGH closed its trading day (Friday, October 29, 2021) at 1.21 GHS per share on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), suffering a 2.43 percent lost from its previous closing price of GHS1.24. MTN began the year with a share price of GHS0.64 and has since gained 89.1 percent on that price valuation, ranking it fourth on the GSE in terms of year-to-date performance.
Despite the lacklustre performance to cap off the week, MTN Ghana remains the most traded stock on the Ghana Stock Exchange over the past three months (Aug 2 – Oct 29, 2021). MTNGH has traded a total volume of 50.7 million shares valued at GHS 61.9 million over the period, with an average of 805,293 traded shares per session. A volume high of 8.29 million was achieved on September 27, and a low of 1,330 on September 17, for the same period.
Fan Milk Ghana stock was the only weekly laggard that was sent into correction territory. In the week under review, Fan Milk Ghana stocks tumbled by 10.00% to end the week with a share price of GH¢4.50.
Analysts pointed to profit taking as a factor in Friday’s session and throughout the week following impressive records earlier in the month.
Ecobank Transnational led the charge for the total volume of traded shares. Ecobank Transnational recorded the highest volume of 160,908 traded shares. This was followed by MTN Ghana with 71,217 traded shares. Republic Bank Ghana also recorded 4,500 traded shares and Societe Generale Ghana completed the top movers list with 162 traded shares.
Performance of Major Indices
With regards to the performance of GSE market indices, the benchmark GSE Composite Index (GSE-CI) declined by 35.23 points, shedding 1.22 percent to close at 2,864.31 points. The decline inadvertently led to a 1-week gain of 0.53 percent and a 4-week gain of 0.21 percent. It also led to an overall year-to-date gain of 47.52 percent.
The GSE Financial Stocks Index (GSE-FSI) which measures stocks of financial sector and insurance, however, maintained its value at 2,082.12 points, making it a 1-week gain of 0.59 percent, a 4-week gain of 1.31 percent, and a year-to-date gain of 16.79 percent.
Experts predicted that though the market will witness some form of volatility going into the first week of November ahead of the presentation of the government of Ghana’s budget, there will be an increase in trading activity due to increase in demand for bargain stocks.
