Head of Marketing and Public Relations at the Ghana Stock Exchange, Jerry Boachie-Danquah, has urged investors and potential ones to have confidence in the stock market as trading is picking up.
The unstable economic conditions due to rising inflation, policy rate hike and depreciation of the local currency are some factors experts argued are affecting the stock market’s performance. However, Mr. Boachie-Danquah said the stock market is bouncing back and so investors must be hopeful.
“People should have confidence in the market. A lot more companies have begun to release their results and we believe that once that happens, a lot more people will want to put their money in the various equities.
“This year has started slowly and that has always been the case, it starts slowly and picks up in the second quarter. We have seen that it is picking up. So, we are very optimistic that once the economy picks up, the stock market will also pick up fully. And as we also step up our educational efforts, a lot more people will get to know about the opportunities at the Exchange,” he said.
His encouragement comes on the back of the March 2022 Monthly Summary Report which indicated that the Ghana Stock Exchange Composite Index (GSE-CI) ended March 2022 with a loss of 1.67 percent compared to the previous month’s loss of 3.33 percent.
Also, per the latest data released by the GSE, the local bourse traded volume and value were GH¢214.97million and GH¢237.14million, up 272.59 percent and 389.35 percent respectively, compared to what was traded same period last year. The volume and value traded were the highest monthly traded since August 2019.
Mr. Boachie-Danquah, who was speaking at the Young Investors Network tour at the University of Ghana, Legon, noted that his outfit has realised low participation of local folks due to inadequate knowledge on the stock market, hence, managers of the Exchange are employing measures to educate the citizenry.
“The whole idea with the collaboration with the Youth Network is to enhance financial education and to embed savings and investment culture among people in the country.
“As an exchange, this is one of our strategies to ensure that we enhance financial literacy and get people to invest in the exchange, and beyond that, make investment part and parcel of their life.
“We are starting a journey where we think awareness and visibility of what the GSE does, and for that matter the capital market as a whole, is important. I think a lot more Ghanaians need to know more about what we do and the opportunities that the stock exchange provides,” he noted.
Financial education
President of the Young Investors Network (YIN), the financial education organisation committed to educating the youth in financial literacy, business skills and preparing the next generation of investors, Joshua Mensah, noted that his outfit will continue the tour to other universities in the quest of raising awareness about the Ghana Stock Exchange and financial literacy.
He said they have so far impacted over 100,000 students from Junior High Schools to tertiary institutions, and with the support of the GSE, a lot more projects have been done and are in line to widen the scope on stock market and financial literacy.
“We want to do practical finance training; we want to bring industry to the classroom. We will soon launch the Junior Investors Club for the Junior High Schools to help the younger folks easily know about the stock exchange, the financial market and financial literacy from a young age. And our next tertiary tour will be at UPSA,” he said.
