Jamaican stocks continue recovery after pandemic battering
Published:Wednesday | July 7, 2021 | 12:08 AM
The Combined Index of the Jamaica Stock Exchange is up 8.6 per cent year to date.
At half-year ending June, the market closed at 427,845 points, but has since fallen back to 426,259 as of Tuesday.
Four local stocks doubled in value between January and June: Salada Foods gained 154 per cent, Lumber Depot was up 117 per cent, Jamaican Teas gained 110 per cent, and Fosrich Company rose 102 per cent. Many other stocks racked up double-digit gains, including 26 on the junior market, 16 on the main market, and two on the US dollar market.
Some large stocks continue to lag their pre-pandemic levels, however, including NCB Financial Group, which still trades at or near its COVID lows of $135 per share. NCBFG, whose market capitalisation accounts for nearly one-quarter of the total market, hit a high of $249 in 2019. It closed at $140 on Tuesday.
Based on the performance of the JSE Combined Index up to Monday, the Jamaica Stock Exchange ranked at 57 among 87 exchanges, based on data from Country economy, an open-source data centre, that was cross-referenced with JSE data. It’s an improvement from a year ago when the JSE Combined Index was among the top 10 worst performers.
Year to date, the best performing exchange was the ADX Abu Dhabi, which gained 38.5 per cent; followed by the Merval in Argentina, up 26.6 per cent; and TASI in Saudi Arabia up 26.3 per cent. The Venezuelan Caracas Index usually leads the world, but that performance tends to be discounted due to the country’s hyperinflation. Year to date, however, the Caracas index was the worst performer in the world.
JSE has twice topped the world, in years 2015 and 2018, based on Bloomberg data.