This week on the Ghana Stock Exchange opened more quietly than last week, with turnover reaching 121,400 shares.

The heaviest trade was in Guinness Ghana Ltd, with a line of 99,600 shares traded at an unchanged 910 cedis. Neither Ghana Brewery Ltd (1900 cedis) nor Accra Brewery Ltd (650 cedis) were traded.

With trading worth over 90m cedis, GGL was not the most heavily traded stock by value. That honour was taken by the heavyweight Mobil Oil of Ghana which gave up Friday's gain of 200 cedis to close at 16,800 cedis on turnover of 6100 shares, worth over 102m cedis.

Unilever, where the Annual General Meeting, that may approve the share repurchase scheme, takes place on Wednesday 26th, fell 10 cedis to 1740, despite heavy demand for 418,400 shares. Trading was restricted to 3000 shares. A difficulty in Ghana is that there are no arbitrageurs, no individuals trading on their own account. This makes Ghana one of the most illiquid markets in the world - last year annual turnover amounted to just 4% of market capitalisation. Even the brokers are not in a position to sell short or buy in positions when orders for 400,000 shares or so emerge.

More signs of improvement in SSB Ltd as the share price ticked up 10 cedis to 1660 on turnover of 1500 shares with bids totalling 13,200 shares.

Ghana Commercial Bank and Standard Chartered Bank were traded at 1000 cedis and 24000 cedis respectively - both unchanged.

British American Tobacco of Ghana, the newly renamed Pioneer Tobacco Co, and UTC Estates brought the number of traded issues to 8, both closing unchanged at 380 cedis and 125 cedis respectively.

The "optimism index" rose to 5. GGL fell out as a constituent, but Aluworks Ltd and UTC_E moved in. Aggregate shares offered amounted to almost 2.1m, while shares bid amounted to 663,600.

There were no trades in the bond market.