Accra (Greater Accra) 20 March 2000
The market index of the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) on Friday edged up again and brokers attributed the encouraging performance of the bourse to confidence in the financial equities. Four equities made gains during trading and brokers at Data Bank said the recent upsurge in share prices, especially the financial stocks, was due to very impressive end of year results released by Home Finance Company Limited (HFC), SSB Bank (SSB), Ghana Commercial Bank (GCB) and Standard Chartered Bank (SCB).
SCB, GCB and SSB Bank have led a revitalisation of the bourse, which had flagging fortunes last year when the main market index ended the year with negative 15 per cent.
Mr. David Abbey, a broker with Data Bank, told reporters that his outfit in collaboration with the GSE has embarked on some educational campaigns that they expect will help sustain recent interest shown by investors.
He said if the trend continues it would indicate that Ghanaian investors have understood and are responding to the fundamentals of investing on the capital market.
The All-Share Index, the main market indicator, gained 1.67 points to close the week at 757.08 points from 755.41 points. The change in the year to date went up by 0.23 per cent to 2.84 per cent.
Meanwhile activities on the bourse were active with market indicators recording significant gains.
Total shares traded surged from 16,200 to 107,500 shares with Fan Milk Limited (FML) selling a total of 90,400 shares at 945 cedis.
Total bids fixed at 250,000 from 50,700 cedis while offers closed the week higher at 1.2 million shares compared with 467,630 shares posted on Wednesday.
Market capitalisation closed up at 3,238.35 billion cedis from 3.235.71 billion cedis.
In the broader market, there were four price changes - all gains.
Accra Brewery Limited (ABL) and FML gained 10 cedis each to close the week at 480 cedis and 945 cedis respectively.
GCB ended the day richer at 860 cedis with a nine-cedi gain with HFC making eight cedis at 770 cedis.
The following are the last prices of listed equities in cedis:
ABL 480 +10
AGC 18,700
ALW 2,487
BAT 460
CFAO 40
EIC 1,880
FML 945 +10
GBL 1,450
GCB 860 +9
GGL 974
HFC 770 +8
MGL 200
MLC 150
MOGL 14,500
PAF 294
PZ 800
SCB 19,500
SPPC 150
SSB 1,998
UNIL 1,848
UTC-E 125
CMLT 421
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