The Ghana Stock Exchange ( GSE) major indices maintained an upward trend on Friday, August 06, with the market capitalization growing further by GHc96.77 million amid sluggish interest in blue chip stocks.

According to the market report, the market capitalization which opened at GHc62.5 billion, rose by 96.77 billion to close at GHc 62.6 billion.

The market reported a positive breadth as 1 gainer emerged namely, Ecobank Ghana. Meanwhile, there were no losers.

Ecobank Ghana closed its last trading day (Friday, August 6, 2021) at GHc7.30 per share on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), recording a 4.3% gain over its previous closing price of GHc7.00. Ecobank began the year with a share price of 7.20 GHS and has since gained 1.39% on that price valuation.

Similarly, all the key market performance indicators also improved in the last trading session. The benchmark GSE Composite Index (GSE-CI) climbed 9.25 points to close at 2,741.65 points, which represents 0.34 per cent gain. It also shows a 1-week gain of 1.08 per cent, a 4-week gain of 3.42 per cent, and an overall year-to-date gain of 41.21 per cent.

Moreover, the GSE Financial Stocks Index (GSE-FSI) also increased by 0.89 per cent to reach 1,911.39 points, making it a 1-week gain of 1.12 per cent, a 4-week gain of 1.23 per cent, and a year-to-date gain of 7.22 per cent.

However, the market activity saw a slight dip in last trading day. At the end of the last weekday of trading on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), a total of 27,018 shares, corresponding to a market value of GHS 25,905.33, were traded. This is way below the previous day trading activity on Thursday August 5.

Comparatively, Thursday’s session registered a total of 3,384,733 shares, corresponding to a market value of GHc 4,361,644.95.

Meanwhile, in all, eight GSE equities participated in trading. Cocoa Processing Company recorded the highest volume of 14,589 traded shares, This was followed by Enterprise Group with 5,000. MTN Ghana also traded 5,000 despite trading over 3million in Thursday trading session. In addition, Ecobank Ghana also registered a total of 1,000 traded shares.

However, an analyst Geoffrey Maison, the CEO of FINCAP Securities Limited speaking to the Vaultz news, noted that he expects the market to experience an upward trend movement in the coming weeks.

“I would say perhaps we are expecting more output in the next quarter and I expect the market to continue to move upwards, because so far, the numbers that have started coming in suggest they [companies] are doing well.

“It looks like most of them recently are recovering well from the COVID-19. When you look at Fan Milk for example, they were one of the companies impacted heavily by the COVID-19 but they’ve recovered this year.”
Geoffrey Maison

Meanwhile, Mr Maison also expect the blue chip stocks especially MTN Ghana to pick in the coming weeks.

“I expect that MTN Ghana will continue to dominate. I believe that a lot of interest is going to come into Fan Milk and other banks in the financial sector. My conviction is that the market is going to pick up.”
Geoffrey Maison