The Ghana Stock Exchange, (GSE) was the best performing stock market among seven African stock markets in local currency term at the end of the first quarter of 2018.

The GSE returned 30.51 percent in cedi term for investors to end the first quarter of 2018 on a blissful note.

Egypt CASE 30 followed suite with a return of 13.2 percent and the Nigerian ASI with a year-to-date return of 9.3 percent for investors.

Kenya NASI gave investors 6.8 percent return, whilst Morroco’s MASI and Mauritius SEMDEX recorded 6.7 and 4.8 percent respectively.

South Africa’s Johannesburg Stock Exchange however registered a negative 0.88 percent.

The GSE Financial Stock Index which measures the performance of financial stocks also gained 32.10 percent in value between January 1, 2018 and March 29, 2018.

The market capitalization inched up by 9.48 percent to GHc64.35 billion at the end of March 2018. It began the year 2018 with GHc58.80 billion market capitalization.

Gainers

In all, there were 16 gainers as against seven losers at the end of March 2018.

SIC and Soceite Generale were the biggest gainers, gaining 280 and 181.71 percent to close the first quarter period with a share price of 38 pesewas and GH¢2.31 respectively.

GOIL, Mechanical Lloyd and PZC were the other big gainers, achieving 85.50, 85.00 and 66.77 percent in value to close the period at GH¢4.99, 37 pesewas and 10 pesewas respectively per share respectively.

Others are Total (47.59 percent), Enterprise Ghana (46.71 percent), Camelot (45.45 percent) and CAL (40.74 percent). They ended the first quarter with share prices of GH¢5.21, GH¢4.82, 16 pesewas and GH¢1.52 correspondingly.

Losers

For the losers, PBC and Aluworks were the biggest losers of -33.33 percent and -31.25 percent respectively. They traded on March 29, 2018 at 4 pesewas and 11 pesewas per share correspondingly.

Other losers were Trust Bank Gambia (-14.29 percent), Access (-11.11 percent), HFC (-7.19 percent), Fanmilk (-1.36 percent) and Tullow (-0.06 percent) correspondingly.

As many as six banking stocks recorded gains compared with two losers. They were Societe Generale (181.71 percent), CAL (40.74 percent), Stanchart (39.01 percent), Ecobank Ghana (30.27 percent), GCB (20.20 percent) and ADB (1.88 percent). 

In 2017, 18 other companies posted return compared with nine laggards.

Some listed companies that recorded negative results for the 2017 year were Mechanical Lloyd Company Limited (-60.00 percent), Tullow Oil Plc (-36.2 percent), SIC Insurance Company Limited (-16.67 percent) and Ayrton Drugs Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (-16.67 percent).