THE Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) has reported that for the June 2022 quarter returns on equity investments yielded stronger gains in comparison to other classes of investment.

Equities yielded a quarterly return of 0.8 per cent while the quarterly returns on foreign currency investments were 0.6 per cent for the June 2022 quarter, the BOJ said in its latest quarterly Monetary Policy Report.

Furthermore, the average quarterly yield on 30-day private money market instruments was 1.5 per cent for the June 2022 quarter, relative to 1.3 per cent for the previous quarter.

For the June 2022 quarter, three of the five major Jamaica Stock Exchange (JSE) indices recorded increases which ranged from 0.7 per cent to 2.2 per cent.

More specifically, the JSE main index increased by 0.8 per cent for the June 2022 quarter, compared to a decline of 1.7 per cent for the previous quarter.

In contrast, the Junior Market index declined by 0.5 per cent for the review quarter.

The annual performance of the stock market for the year ended June 2022 reflected a decline for all the major JSE indices, except for the JSE Junior Market Index.

The JSE Main Market index declined by 7.3 per cent for the review year, relative to a decline of 0.9 per cent for the corresponding period of the previous year.

Notably, the Junior Market index recorded growth of 24.7 per cent for the year ended June 2022, relative to growth of 41.6 per cent for the previous year.

Overall, the BOJ said, stock market activity indicators declined for the June 2022 quarter. In particular, the volume of stocks traded and the number of transactions decreased by 21.0 per cent and 9.7 per cent, respectively, in comparison to growth of 38.9 per cent and 40.8 per cent in the volume of stocks traded and the number of transactions, respectively, for the previous quarter.

However, the value of stocks traded increased by 23.3 per cent for the review quarter, relative to growth of 11.2 per cent in the value of stocks traded for the previous quarter.

Price performance of the stocks listed on the JSE, as measured by the advance-to-decline ratio, was 13:26 for the June 2022 quarter, with one stock trading firm.

This compares to an advance-to-decline ratio of 23:15 for the previous quarter.

The BOJ stated that stock price appreciation continued to be largely concentrated among the financial and other sectors. At the same time, most of the declining stocks were concentrated in the same sectors in the June 2022 quarter.