The difficult macroeconomic conditions facing the economy dampened trading activities on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) in the month of January.

The Accra bourse recorded bearish performance reflecting investor sentiments in Ghanaian economy.

“The GSE markets’ per­formance in January reflected investor sentiments in the general macroeconomic environment and the Domestic Debt Exchange programme,” the GSE said in the summary of January 2023 market activities copied to the Ghanaian Times.

It said on the equities market, the GSE composite and financial stock indices recorded negative returns of 3.68 percent and 0.81 percent respectively.

It said the thin trading resulted in a dip in the number of transac­tions to 1,249, a decline of 16.12 percent compared to the same period 2022.

“The month closed with 1.55 million shares traded valued at GH¢ 6. 67 million. The figures recorded represent a 95.52 per cent and 82.58 per cent decrease in volume and value traded respec­tively over the same period last year,” the GSE stated.

It said the top price gainers were Benso Oil Palm which saw its shares rising by 15.03 percent, NewGold ETF saw an apprecia­tion of its shares by 11.66 percent and TotalEnergies shares rose by 1.50 percent.

On the fixed-income market, the total volume traded was GH¢ 10.09 billion, a decline from the GH¢ 11.40 billion traded in the previous month and a drop of 39.86 percent compared to the GH¢ 16.50 billion traded in Janu­ary 2022.

“Volume traded on the debt market closed the month at GH¢10. 09 billion, which was 39.98 percent lower than the same period last year” the GSE said.

The GSE explained that the number of trades during the month was 51,273, which was 50.05 percent more than the same period last year.

It said the total market cap­italisation in January 2023 sat at GH¢ 63, 706.71 million, a decline of negative 1.22 percent of the GH¢64,495.20 million in January 2022.