The Ghana Stock Exchange recorded modest lost on the second day of the week with major indexes producing mixed results after witnessing some setbacks for two straight sessions.

The benchmark GSE-Composite index which is based on the volume weighted average closing price of all listed stocks dropped by 17.47 points, representing 0.61% to close at 2,854.74 points. This led to a gain of 47.03% year-to-date return following gains in oil and gas stocks particularly, Total Petroleum Ghana and Republic Bank of Ghana stocks. Total Petroleum Ghana led the gainers with 7.53% share price appreciation closing at GHS 5.00 per share, followed by Republic Bank Ghana (+6.38%) and Enterprise Group (+4.35%).

TOTAL Petroleum Ghana closed its trading day (Tuesday, October 12, 2021) at GHS5.00 per share on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), recording a 7.5% gain over its previous closing price of GHS4.65.

Republic Bank Ghana also closed its trading day at GHS0.50 per share on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), recording a 6.4% gain over its previous closing price of GHS0.47.

Enterprise Group Limited on the other, closed its trading day (Tuesday, October 12, 2021) at GHS2.40 per share on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), recording a 4.3% gain over its previous closing price of GHS2.30.

However, the two losers on the day were CAL Bank (-3.9%) and MTN Ghana (-1.63%). MTN Ghana closed its trading day (Tuesday, October 12, 2021) at GHS1.21 per share on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), recording a 1.6% drop from its previous closing price of GHS1.23. MTN began the year with a share price of 0.64 GHS and has since gained 89.1% on that price valuation, ranking it fourth on the GSE in terms of year-to-date performance.

CAL also closed its trading day at GHS0.74 per share on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), recording a 3.9% drop from its previous closing price of GHS0.77.

In a similar vein, the market capitalization, which captures the total market value of all outstanding shares on the local bourse decreased from GHS 64.3 billion to settle at GHS 64.2 billion.

Jason Fernando, a Value Investing Specialist revealed that the market cap is used in determining the worth of various companies listed on the stock exchange. Also, it’s simple and effective for risk assessment and as such can be helpful to investors in deciding which stocks to purchase and ways to diversify various portfolio with companies of different sizes.

Conversely, the GSE Financial Stock index which constitutes only listed stocks from the financial sector including banking and insurance sector stocks, closed at 2,062.36, increasing by 0.2 percent. Thus, making it a 1-week gain of 0.35%, a 4-week gain of 4.25%, and a year-to-date gain of 15.68%.

At the end of Tuesday’s trading session on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), a total of 321,059 shares changed hands, corresponding to a market value of GHS 894,420.54. Compared with the previous GSE trading day (Monday, October 11), Tuesday’s data show 53% decline in volume but 4% improvement in turnover.

Fan Milk dominated the total shares traded. It recorded the highest volume of 117,396 traded shares, followed by CAL Bank (110,200), MTN Ghana (53,367) and Total Petroleum Ghana (19,092).

However, analysts expect performance to pick up due to demand in bargain stocks.