Mr Ekow Afedzi, GSE MD
TRADING ON the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) in the last quarter of 2020 witnessed encouraging results which overlapped into the first month of this year.
The local bourse reaped a gain of 4.3 per cent to investors in January 2021, the first to be recorded in the first month since 2018.
Records of the local bourse for 2018 and 2019 indicated it returned negative 0.5 per cent and 12.25 per cent respectively.
The trend continued for the first three quarters of 2020 with investors getting a return of negative 17.8 per cent on listed equities from January to September.
However, the last quarter of 2020 saw a reversal of fortunes as the consistent quarterly losses in the year was halted, with the fourth quarter seeing the local bourse rebound by as much as 5.2 per cent, with many onlookers attributing the turn in fortune to the development of multiple vaccines which lessened the negative sentiments for equities and triggered a gradual shift from fixed-income investments back to the equities market.
Back in January 2018, the GSE returned to investors a gain of 19 per cent in January, while in 2019 and 2020 investors got -3.3 per cent and -2 per cent respectively.
General Manager of UMB Stockbrokers, Ben Ackah, highlighted the ongoing recovery and urged investors to take advantage of the low pricing of stocks on the bourse.
“When you look at the values of transactions traded especially in the last quarter of 2020, it suggests clearly that there has been an increase in investments in the market. This point to a recovery on the market. Currently a lot of the stocks on the market are undervalued. There are opportunities to invest at very low prices for the benefit of the investors,” he stated.
– Citibusiness