Eight of the nine indices advanced

Durrant Pate/Contributor

Jamaica’s stock market is beginning to show some vibrancy with eight of the nine indices advancing last week.

The main advancer last week was the Jamaica Stock Exchange (JSE) Main Market Index, which went up by 4.73 per cent, followed by the JSE Combined Index with a 4.64 per cent increase. The increase in the Main Market Index and the Combined Index was due to an 18.44 per cent and 15 per cent increase in the stock prices of PanJam Investments Limited and Guardian Holding Limited, respectively.

Interestingly, there was no news or market intelligence to support these movements but could, therefore, be attributable to the typical market volatility being exhibited since the onset of COVID-19. The only index to decline was the JSE USD Equities Index, which fell marginally by 0.17 per cent and was primarily driven by a 10 per cent decline in the stock price of Sterling Investments Limited.

Overall market activity

However, there was no news or market intelligence to support this fall-off in share price. Market activity resulted from trading in 124 stocks of which 76 advanced, 37 declined, and 11 traded firm.

Market volume amounted to 159,952,922 units valued at over J$881. 88 million. The volume leaders were Wigton Windfarm Limited Ordinary Shares with 39,323,529 units (23.77%), Trans Jamaican Highway (TJH) with 24,373,144 units (14.73%), and One Great Studio Company (1GS) with 9,024,614 units (5.45%).

While there was no new information to support the large volumes of the Wigton shares that were traded, the announcement of TJH’s dividend created some buzz in the market last week. The company declared that it will be paying dividends of $0.1866 per share to its shareholders on October 25.

This amount represents 99 per cent of its last 12 months’ earnings per share and a dividend yield of 6.64 per cent as of September 29, 2023, which is higher than the average yield over last three years (6.31%). This has led to large volumes being traded, as investors try to acquire shares before the record date of October 10.

Notably, the large volume of 1GS share traded could be attributable to the fact that traders are now realizing their gains from the shares they acquired during the IPO. This is supported by the large volume being traded and fall-off of 9.2 per cent in its share price over the week.