The Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) for the month of January 2021, returned to investors gains of 4.3 per cent on their investments.
This is the first recorded gain in the month of January since January 2018 in which the GSE recorded a gain of 19 per cent.
January 2018 and January 2019 saw the local bourse returning negative -3.3 per cent and -2 per cent respectively.
The January 2021 performance of the local bourse comes on the back of a positive performance of the GSE in the fourth quarter of 2020. Investors for the first 3 quarters of 2020 earned negative returns of 17.8% on listed equities from January to September, 2020.
However, the last quarter of 2020 saw a reversal of fortunes as the consistent quarterly losses in the year was halted with the fourth quarter seeing the local bourse rebound by as much as 5.2 per cent, with many onlookers attributing the turn in fortune to the development of multiple vaccines which lessened the negative sentiments for equities and triggered a gradual shift from fixed-income investments back to the equities market.
In an interview, General Manager of Universal Merchant Bank (UMB) Stockbrokers, Ben Ackah, highlighted the ongoing recovery and urged investors to take advantage of the low pricing of stocks on the bourse.
“When you look at the values of transactions traded especially in the last quarter of 2020, it suggests clearly that there has been an increase in investments in the market. This points to a recovery on the market. Currently, a lot of the stocks on the market are undervalued. There are opportunities to invest at very low prices for the benefit of the investors,” he said.
