Juniors 20% down from peak – Friday

The junior market has fallen to its lowest point since 2,357.20 points at the close on January 12 this year. To the end of Friday the market lost 19.95 percent as it suffered the third day of losses. The highlight of the day was Lasco Manufacturing that had another high volume traded to close unchanged as Mayberry was involved in a cross for most of the shares that traded buying 8 million units for in house purposes at $3.20.
On Thursday Mayberry sold 7.82 million units of the stock from in house inventory, at $3.50 or better, pocketing a profit of $2.3 million as a result of the two days of trading in the stock.
The slippage in the price of Lasco Manufacturing was the main contributor the fall in the market index over the two days. The market suffered a third day of fall by dropping 24.68 points fall on Wednesday to end at 1,886.97. With only 7 securities trading, none declining and 4 advancing.
The market ended with 8,492,562 units changing hands, valued at $27,397,677 but with the exception trades for the three Lasco companies, volume was extremely low.
The decline in the market seems over with IC bid offer indicator pointing to rising prices ahead on Monday. At the close, 1 security ended with no bid and only 6 securities had no stocks being offered for sale. There were 9 stocks closing with bids that were higher than their last selling prices and 4 ended with lower offers.
In trading, AMG Packaging rose 35 cents with only 1,500 units changing hands to close at $11.50, Caribbean Cream traded 5,911 as the price rose 83 cents to end at $4.10, Consolidated Bakeries traded just 700 units to end at $1.50, Jamaican Teas gained 50 cents in closing at $7.50 with 5,500 shares changing hands. Lasco Distributors closed with 44,507 units trading to end at $6, Lasco Financial gained 5 cents to end at $3.10 with 161,804 shares changing hands and Lasco Manufacturing ended with 8,272,640 shares changing hands to close at $3.50.