Ekow Afedzie, Managing Director of the Ghana Stock Exchange
The Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) ended the first-half of 2021 with a negative year-to-date return of 24.13 per cent in dollar term for investors.
This places the country 12th out of the 15 top stock exchanges on the African continent.
This position is two places better than the 14th position recorded in the first quarter of this year.
The Ghanaian stock market was hit hard by the rapid depreciation of the cedi in the first-half of this year, however, by the first quarter, the market had returned a negative 16 per cent in dollar terms to investors, compared to 1.6 per cent in cedi term.
In cedi term, the Accra bourse lost 8.7% return in the first six months of 2022.
At that time, the cedi had lost about 15 per cent in value to the US dollar. This performance is in sharp contrast to that of last year.
But the market has not been left out of the challenging economic environment.
For the Financial Stock Index, the market achieved a return of 0.52 per cent for investors.
The market capitalization, at the end of June 2022, stood at GH¢64.84 billion in June 2022, compared with GH¢64.029 billion on March 31st, 2022.
According to the trading results, 11 stocks on both the main and SME Market lost value, as against six gainers.
SIC Insurance (32 pesewas) was the best performing stock so far this year, gaining 46% return for investors.
The worst performing stock was, however, Produce Buying Company (2 pesewas), which lost value by 33%.
A business desk report