Week in Focus: How stocks performed on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE)

New week, new gains, new losses, the GSE did not show any clear direction. On Monday the Ghana Stock Exchange gained some ground as gains in CAL Bank and Mechanical Lloyd Company (MLC) offset losses in two other equities. The GSE-Composite Index closed at 1,036.48 points, from 1,035.97 points and the GSE-Financial Stock Index closed at 872.44 points, up 0.64 points from 871.80 points. A total of 0.35 million shares traded, a 51.39% decline from the 0.72 million shares traded at the previous session. The corresponding trade value was GHS0.10 million, 43.76% less than the previous session.

Focusing on the Banking sector of the Ghana Stock Exchange (Part I)

The financial sector on the Ghana Stock Exchange includes banking and non-banking stocks. There are seven (7) banks on the exchange, six of which operate in the country and one in Gambia, (Trust Bank ltd, TBL). The banks operating in Ghana include CAL Bank (CAL), Ecobank Ghana (EBG), Ghana Commercial Bank (GCB), HFC Bank (HFC), Standard Chartered Bank (SCB), and UT Bank (UTB).

Let us now look at the various facts & figures behind these banks and how they performed since January 2012 on the Stock market.
I would be concentrating on GCB & HFC in this post.

Ghana Commercial Bank (GCB);

GCB - Bloomberg Chart: Price movement from Dec 2011 to May 2012. 

With market capitalization of about GHS 506.15 million, GCB began the