The Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) performance has recorded a sharp decline by the close of trading session on Wednesday July 7, 2021. Following a dead cat bounce of market activity on Tuesday July 6, Wednesday’s market activity dipped by 67 percent.

At the end of Wednesday’s trading session on Ghana’s equities market, a total of 374,177 shares, corresponding to a market value of GHc45,193.58, were traded. Compared with the previous GSE trading day (Tuesday, July 6), the volume of shares traded by close of market was 1,125,077 shares.

According to Wednesday’s market report, a total of fourteen GSE listed equities participated in trading. The market however ended with all the fourteen major stocks that participated in the market, trading flat. This means that the opening stock price of these equities have neither increased nor decreased. It also means that the opening share price was the same as the closing price of shares for these equities.

Meanwhile, some of the top movers were ETI, SOGEGH, MTN GH, and GOIL. Ecobank Transnational Incorporated (ETI) however opened the session with a stock price of GHc 0.06 while Societe Generale Ghana (SOGEGH) also opened the market with a stock price of GHc0.93. MTN GH and GOIL on the other hand, opened the trading session with the stock price of GHc 1.20 and GHc 1.55 respectively.

Furthermore, Ecobank Transnational Incorporated recorded the highest volume of shares traded. At the end of market activity, Ecobank Transnational Incorporated accounted for 353,483 volume of shares traded. This was followed by Societe Generale Ghana which also accounted for 7,882 volume of shares traded. In addition, MTN Ghana and Ghana Oil Company followed in that order with total volume of shares traded totalling 6,040 shares and 3,417 shares respectively.

Moreover, regarding the performance of GSE market indices, the benchmark GSE Composite Index (GSE-CI) did not see any change, closing at the same mark as it opened at 2,650.91, representing a 1-week gain of 0.27%, a 4-week loss of 2.22%.

However, there was an overall year-to-date gain of 36.53%. This index is computed based on the volume weighted average closing price of all listed stocks.

Similarly, the GSE Financial Stocks Index (GSE-FSI) maintained its value at 1,888.15 points, making it a 1-week gain of 0.89%, a 4-week loss of 0.37%, and a year-to-date gain of 5.91%. This index constitutes stocks from the financial sector including banking and insurance sector stocks.

In addition, the market capitalization which captures the total market value of all outstanding shares on the local bourse currently stands at GHc 61.54 billion.

However, Analysts predict the market to pick up in the coming days as a result of increase in demand for bargain stocks.

Meanwhile, a comparative analysis of the performance of the Ghana Stock Exchange for the first-half year with its African peers such as; Nairobi Security Exchange (NSE Kenya), Nigerian Stock Market (NGX) and the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) has seen the Accra bourse emerged as the best performing stock market on the African continent with 36.13 percent on annual returns to investors in dollar terms.