By Rawle Lucas
Trading Frequency
In the month of August, seven stocks were active. Figure 1 below shows that the most active stocks were those of BTI, DIH and RBL which traded in each of the five trading periods during the month. The stocks of DDL traded four times during the month while those of DTC traded three times. DBL traded twice and SPL once. CBI and CCI continued to lag in trading activity with zero trades.
Trading Volume
A total of 522,384 shares were traded in August 2021. The stocks of DDL were the most active with 242,673 or 46.455 percent shares changing hands. Following DDL was DIH with 185,289 or 35.47% of its shares traded. Figure 2 shows that 79,253 or 15.171 percent of shares that changed hands in the month of August belonged to RBL. A much lower volume of 6,232 or 1.193% of all trades was exhibited by BTI, even though it traded in all five sessions in August. In contrast to BTI which traded in all sessions and DTC, which traded 1,800 shares in three sessions, 7,000 of DBL’s shares were traded and accounted for 1.34% of the shares, despite only trading twice in the review period. Bringing up the rear in trades was SPL which traded 137 shares once.
Liquidity
The liquidity generated in the month of August amounted to G$94.771 million and was spread among seven companies as could be seen in Figure 3. RBL, DDL and DIH accounted for 90.72 percent of the liquidity gotten from the stock trades. Sellers of RBL would have gotten 43.04 percent of the liquidity while sellers of DDL stocks would have garnered 32.27 percent. The liquidity gotten from the sale of DIH shares was 15.41 percent of the total for the month. The shares of the remaining four companies, BTI, DBL, DTC and SPL, contributed 9.28 percent of the liquidity generated. The shares of BTI accounted for 5.25 percent while the shares of DTC contributed 2.52 percent. DBL accounted for 1.47 percent and SPL added 0.04 percent.
Growth in Market Capitalisation
Four stocks in the Lucas Stock Index (LSI) traded this first period of August 2021 with one of them registering gains and three of them registering no gain. The stock price of DTC climbed 11.111 percent to reach G$1,500 and produced an increase of G$3.510 billion in market capitalization. With the stock prices of BTI, DIH and RBL remaining unmoved, the market capitalization of the nine stocks in the LSI rose to G$540.088 billion this week. The value of the active and inactive stocks of the manufacturing companies remained at G$224.176 billion or 41.507 percent of the market cap. The value of the active and inactive stocks of the commercial banks also remained constant at G$280.812 or 51.994 percent of the market value.
Stocks in the index are now being classified by the size of their market capitalization and are displayed in tabular form below. With the addition of DIH to the large-cap stocks category, this group of stocks has assumed the dominant share of market value with 50.099 percent of the share. The share of the mid-cap stocks has dropped to 34.712 percent. The small-cap stocks now contribute 12.424 percent of the value of the LSI while the micro-cap stocks account for 2.766 percent.
Tax Advantage of Stock Trades
Four stocks traded in the first trading period of September 2021. A total of 54,009 stocks in the Lucas Stock Index traded this week as against 18,537 last week. The higher trade volume resulted in investors enjoying tax benefits of G$1.824 million this week. The stocks of DIH accounted for 65.239 percent of the tax gain while those of RBL generated gains of 14.415 percent. BTI stocks accounted for 12.495 percent of the benefits and those of DTC accounted for 7.851 percent of the tax benefits. With 36 weeks of trading gone, the tax gains for investors have amounted to an estimated G$279.694 million.
