Ghana Equity Watch | 23 July 2015: The Bull visited the Ghanaian Stock Exchange on Thursday, market cap gains US$38 million

Accra, Ghana (Capital Markets in Africa):- The Bull visited the Ghanaian Stock Exchange (GSE) on Thursday. Therefore, the benchmark composite index climbed by 22.77 points or 1.01 percent to close the day at 2,273.91 points, representing a year- to- date performance 0f 0.57 percent. The financial Index also gained 31.49 points or 1.38 percent to trade at 2,320.37 with a year-to-date return of 3.42 percent.

The market capitalization added GHS 124 million to close at GHS 63,852 million relative to market capitalization of GHS 63,728 recorded at previous trading session.

From the market activity perspective, the total volume was 414,579  (a deduction of about 18 percent from yesterday’s total volume of 414,579 shares) and total traded value was GHS 1.32 million (a reduction of about 1417.25 percent compared with previous trading session value of GHS 86,986). Ecobank Ghana had 140,407 shares (almost 41.30 percent of the total volume) to value at GHS 1.192 million (about 90.34 percent of the total value traded). Other most actively traded stocks were ALUWORKS Ghana (recorded 70,400 shares at GHS 4,224), Ghana oil (recorded a volume of 60,770 shares valued at GHS 91,762), UT Bank (registered 12,700 shares valued at GHS 6,306) and SIC Insurance (traded 17,527 shares with total value of GHS 2,629). The top five most actively traded stocks by volume accounted for almost 96 percent of the total volume and about 98 percent of the total value traded.

Looking at the price movers and shakers, out of the 16 traded securities via 173 transactions, one gainer and two laggards were recorded, so the market breath/sentiment ends negative. Ecobank Ghana surge to GHS 8.49 by gaining GHS 0.48 or 5.99 percent. The losers were Ghana Commercial Bank dropped to  GHS 4.55 from GHS 4.60 resulting to 1.09  percent drops and UT Bank went down by 5.88 percent to end at GHS 0.16.

On the foreign exchange market front, the Ghanaian Cedi continued to drop against major trading currencies. The Cedi traded against the US dollar at GHS 3.2866 by depreciating by 0.26 percent and traded at GHS 3.6064 against the Euro by falling by 0.96 percent. The Cedi also lost value against British pound and Swiss franc by setting at GHS 5.1047 and GHS 3.4294 by losing 0.30 percent and 0.52 percent respectively. Similarly, the Ghanaian currency dropped  by 0.04 percent to close at GHS 0.2665 against South Africa rand.