Equities market makes strong recovery

Jamaica's equities market has made a strong recovery amid the continuing decline in interest rates.

Data from the Bank of  Jamaica show all the Jamaica Stock Exchange (JSE) indices rose for the year ended June this year, except for the Cross Listed Index.

The JSE Main Index grew by 37.5 per cent during the 12 months in contrast to an 18.6 per cent decline in the previous year.

This increase was significantly better than the average growth of  3.9 per cent for the last five years.

The Bank of Jamaica, in its report, said the performance of  the equities market for the review period reflected improved investor sentiments. This was due to positive macro-economic developments including GDP growth, relatively low inflation, a reduction in the central bank’s policy rate, as well as Jamaica’s continued strong performance under the IMF programme.

It added that investments in equities provided a more attractive option relative to foreign currency and domestic money market investments.

Equities offered a return of  36.4 per cent for the review period, while capital gains on foreign currency investments were 3.4 per cent and interest rates in the 30-day money market declined by 2.8 percentage points.                                   

The value of  transactions, volume of  stocks traded and number of  transactions for the main JSE Index recorded growth rates of  6.4 per cent, 1.4 per cent and 6.2 per cent.
   
The advance-to-decline ratio was 28-to-3 for the year ended June,  an improvement over the  16-to-11 ratio for the year ended March this year.