Both London and Wall Street were closed for Public Holidays on Monday, but it was business as usual in Accra. Normal business that is for a Monday this year, with turnover struggling to 31,400 shares valued at just 34m cedis (less than USD15,000).

Guinness Ghana Ltd dominated trading, with 10,000 shares traded at 935 cedis, almost 32% of turnover by volume and 28% of turnover by value.

Neither Ghana Brewery Ltd nor Accra Brewery Ltd was traded at 1900 cedis and 650 cedis respectively.

Amongst the banks, SSB Ltd saw trades of 3900 shares at 1664 cedis, and Ghana Commercial Bank saw a line of 5000 shares at 1000 cedis pass through the market. Standard Chartered Bank was not traded at 23,900 cedis.

Fan Milk Ltd, with 7000 shares traded at 1250 cedis ran GGL close in terms of value and volume, and trading was completed with deals in Aluworks, British American Tobacco, Ghana, Unilever and UTC Estates.

One bright note was an improvement in the "optimism index" of issues where shares bid exceed shares offered, which doubled to 6, while bids matched offers in UTC_E. Bids for 500,000 Home Finance Co and 419,800 UNIL shares boosted the aggregate shares bid figure to 1.02m. Aggregate offers still exceed 2.2m, with blocks of 1.6m BAT shares and 250,000 GCB overhanging the market.

BAT Industries, the UK quoted parent of BAT Ghana is buying in minority shareholdings in some subsidiaries around the world - South Africa, Australia, Hong Kong, in preparation for its merger with fellow tobacco giant Rothmans, but there is no suggestion of similar action in Ghana.

There were no trades in the bond market.