11 stocks down, 1 up on GSE

Trading on the Ghana Stock exchange for the week ending May 2, continued the decline that has been evident ever since the country’s currency came under added pressure and interest rates were pushed further upwards. In the past week the market reversed the moderate gain experienced in the prior week by shedding the prices of 11 stocks and facilitating only one price gain.
At the close of the week, the market continues to show signs of weakness while the two indices declined with the GSE Composite Index closing at 2,255.20 compared with 2,276.12 at the end of the previous week’s trading. The GSE Financial Stocks index closed at 1,913.11 compared with 1,934.75 on the April 17, leaving the index up 7 percent for the year to date.
The level of trading for the week picked strongly from the 1.5 million shares traded for the previous week, as 9.8 million shares changed hands for the holiday shortened week. Cal Bank accounted for 7,119,700 shares on Tuesday, and on Wednesday 2,186,100 shares of the total traded, while losing 14 percent of its value by week end, to end at GH¢2.50. Except for these two trades, the volume of stocks traded was very low.
Sic Insurance Company lost 5 percent to close at GH¢0.40 and Societe Generale Ghana lost 6 percent to close at GH¢0.66 were the stocks that suffered the greatest loss. At the end of the week there was still signs of weakness with only 15 stocks having bids and 29 offers compared to 18 to 29 at the end of the week before.