Friday, 24th May 2013  | Gains from National Commercial Bank up $1.16, Carreras up $1, Pan Jamaican Investment Trust up 99 cents and JMMB up 30 cents were strong enough to overcome the $1.54 decline in Jamaica Producers, 33 cents fall in the price of Sagicor Life and $1.13 in Scotia Group to help the main indices post positive gains on Friday.

Junior market | The junior market saw AMG Packaging climbing 50 cents to $4.50 a new 52 weeks high with 58,512 shares trading, Cargo Handlers picked up 17 cents in trading 10,000 units. Lasco Distributor gained 29 cents. The stock traded only traded 3,080 shares but the bid closed above the last selling price with 55,344 units on the bid, at the end of trading. Lasco Financial traded at an all time high of $8.25 up 14 cents on the day. New junior market listed Caribbean Creams traded 650,473 units to close at $1.09 having traded as high as $1.12 on the day. Grace was one of three stocks that traded at 52 weeks high.

Level of trade | Investors poured $20 million into 19 stocks with 1.6 million units changing hands, on a day when advancing stocks again outnumbered declining ones 9 to 6. All of the market’s indices continue to move up on Friday with the exception of the index for cross listed stocks and the US dollar index. In both cases, no stocks were traded.

Indices gain | The all Jamaica composite gained 2,023 points for the week or just over twice the gains of the prior week closing at 86,596.66 points. The junior market gained 15 points less than the 24 points picked up in the previous week, to close at 667.61 points.

Bids above last price | 9 stocks closed with bids that were higher than the last traded price and none closed with offers that were less than the last traded price, an indication that price gains are likely to continue into the coming week.

Stocks to watch | Stocks to watch this coming week include Scotia Group that reported better 6 months results than last year’s half year profit. Others to watch are Grace Kennedy, Blue Power, Lasco Financial, Desnoes & Geddes and JMMB and Sagicor Life.

JSE flashes a strong bull signal  | When the Jamaica stock market closed there were 12 stocks which had bids higher than the last selling price with no offers below the last selling price, a strong bull signal. Additionally 3 stocks traded at 52 weeks high and the advance/decline ratio was 3 to 1 with 13 stocks gaining and 4 down.

The all Jamaica index closed up 1,025 points ending the day at 86,150 and the main market index was up 582 points closing at 86,275.28.  The all Jamaica index is just below the February 6th level of 87,430 points. The most telling bullish sign is that the market index has decisively broken through the upper resistance level of the major downward slopping channel that goes back to 2004. There is one short-term resistance level to break through and this should happen in a day or two as the all Jamaica index is just touching that line. With the positive number of stocks that can’t get orders filled at current levels, the break will happen soon.

Newly listed Caribbean Cream traded as high as $1.20 but closed at $1.1 as over 861,000 shares traded. The offer closed at $1.10 with a bid of $1.07. Carreras closed up $2.48 trading over 86,000 units to close at $60. D&G was up 30 cents closing at $4.90 on very small volume. Grace gained 50 cents closing at $60.50 with only 2,000 shares trading. Junior Market Honey Bun lost 50 cents closing at $3.50 but only 1,000 shares changed hands. Lasco Manufacturing posted a $1.19 gain trading at $12.50 with just 6,000 of the stock traded. Pan Jam lost $3.59 to close down at $54.01 and 11,619 shares traded. Scotia group gained $1.39 closing at $$21.60 and Scotia Investments is up $3 to close at $26.50 with 246,800 units by one buy order on the bid at the last selling price.

Trading took place in 2,700,407 shares with a value of $20,978,749.

Pan Jamaica Investment Trust stock jumped $4.08 today to close at $57.60 back to the level it traded at prior to the NDX debt exchange of Government of Jamaica bonds in February this year. Pan Jamaican traded 75,651 units valued at $44.1 million. Grace Kennedy followed up with a gain of $1.75 with the stock getting back to its recent high of $60 while trading just 5,861 shares.

The Jamaican stock market put in a splendid performance today with 27 stocks trading valued $112,141,197 as 21.8 million shares changed hands. Sagicor Investments, accounted for 5.378 million units with a value of $83.55 million, all of the shares were sold and bought within Pan Caribbean brokerage house. Consolidated Bakeries traded over 12.3 million units worth $11.94 million. NCB Capital markets bought 12.11 million units at 90 cents for clients. Mayberry Investments traded 2.068 million units valued at $4.18 million on a day when the number of advancing stocks were in excess of declining ones, almost 3 to 1 as 15 advanced versus 6 declining.

At the end of trading, 8 stocks closed the day with bids higher than the last selling price. There were none with offers lower than the last sale price. One stock made 52-week high as Caribbean Cream, the new listing on the junior market, gained 14 cents to close at $1.15 up 15 percent on the IPO price with 60,000 units trading today. At the end of trading, there were more than 400,000 units on the bid between 94 cents and $1.06 and 265,000 on offer at $1.15 to $1.20.

Other stocks that had noticeable price movements were, Access Financial down 50 cents to $7.50, Blue Power off 55 cents to $6.05, Carreras down 38 cents to $57.52. JMMB climbed 45 cents to $7.50, NCBJ up 35 cents to close at $18.89 as 130,191 shares traded having traded as high as $19. Seprod shed 48 cents and closed at $14.52 on very small volume of 1,500 units.

At the end of trade, the main market index put on 297.88 points closing at 85,693.25 and the All Jamaica Composite closed over the 85,000 mark the first time since early February when it closed at 85,325, today it closed at 85,125. The main market index closed at the highest point today, since it closed at 85,693 on March 6^th this year.

The positive advance decline ratio coupled with the number of stocks with bids above last selling price are two factors that say this market is heading higher.