The Jamaica Stock Exchange Limited (JSE) is seeking to move to phase two in commercialising its library of data as it gears up to launch its Data Shop later this quarter.

The JSE upgraded its primary website in early 2022, as it sought to improve the user experience while looking to eventually commercialise its 55 years of data. The JSE’s data was available to the public prior to the website upgrade which restricted public users to one year of data and users of its
MYJSE Portfolio to five years of data. People were asked to contact its marketing department to access data beyond that period of time.

“The JSE has long been planning to expand the offering from its library and make available its repository of data dating back to 1969 in an electronic format. The creation of the Data Shop will make this possibility a reality by offering our customers individual data products and monthly subscriptions for the purpose of research, journalism, and academic work. This new offering will be made available to the public by the second quarter of 2024,” said the JSE’s 2023 annual report.

The move for the Data Shop comes amidst different technological developments by the JSE for 2024. Apart from discontinuing its
MYJSE Portfolio and migrating users to the Jamaica Central Securities Depository (JCSD) portal, the JSE withdrew its mobile application from both app stores as it seeks to take the next two months to redesign it and improve the user experience.

The JSE is also looking to introduce shorting to the market during this quarter after undergoing extensive testing with different brokers during the fourth quarter of 2023. This would allow investors to make money on stocks in both directions rather than only in the upwards direction. Short selling allows an investor to sell a stock at a high price and buy it back at a lower price while keeping the difference as their profit. This is enabled by ‘borrowing’ shares from a broker.

These Q2 developments take place at the same time the JSE extended its trading hours from three hours and 30 minutes to five hours on May 27 when trading will take place between 9:00 am to 2:00 pm. This extension in trading hours will also coincide with the introduction of the T+1 settlement time, which means investors will receive their cash in a shorter time frame than the current T+2.

The JSE will also be moving into phase two of direct market access (DMA) during the second to third quarter. DMA allows investors to purchase international securities through their local brokers and would allow for the reciprocation by international investors seeking to invest in domestic Jamaican securities.

The JSE has also set the fourth quarter of 2024 as the timeline for the trading of government bonds, GOJ domestic securities, on a JSE platform. .

These domestic initiatives by the JSE are also being complemented by the work with other international stock exchanges to develop more harmonious partnerships. The JSE hosted its first Regional Investment and Capital Markets Conference in Guyana in October 2023 and had its executive team meet with Guyanese President Dr Irfaan Ali on Shiv Chanderpaul Drive in Guyana on Tuesday. This was focused on exploring collaboration opportunities aimed at advancing Guyana’s financial architecture which has a stock exchange that only trades once per week.

The JSE is also investing more into the Caribbean Business Exchange (CBX) television channel, which now has trading results and tickers from the Ghana, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, and Caribbean Exchange Index mentioned daily. The JSE also signed a memorandum of understanding with the Latin American Stock Exchange (Latinex) and Nairobi Securities Exchange during 2023.

Despite the relatively hard market environment in 2023, the JSE’s annual report noted that there was a 75 per cent increase in new accounts, created from 24,365 to 42,690 people. There was also $7.6 billion and US$1.22 million in value traded online during 2023, a sharp reduction from the $15.2 billion and US$2.60 million in 2022. The JSE also noted that there was $18.7 billion in capital raised during 2023 from the listing of securities, a considerable step up from the $6.8 billion raised in 2022.

The JSE has switched to Amazon Web Services (AWS) to store and host the quarterly reports and any other files submitted by companies which are published on its website. This move took place on May 3, with investors noticing the URL mentioning amazonaws.com now. This is the second major international partnership following the seven-year agreement with Nasdaq in April 2019.

However, investors still have to contend with occasional disruptions as evidenced by the May 8 disruption in which no data was fed to the market for over an hour. Trades still took place, but there was no way of knowing the volume traded, value traded, or price ranges. The JSE’s
Jtraderpro platform also experienced a disruption on Tuesday close to market close whereby there was doubling of information in the trading queues and reverting to pre-market information.

The JSE’s first quarter saw consolidated income up 17 per cent to $633.81 million as fee income from its trustee services and JCSD services grew 19 per cent to $485.68 million. Despite a 19 per cent rise in total expenses to $492.94 million from higher staff costs and impairment provisions, profit before tax improved 12 per cent to $153.20 million. Net profit increased six per cent to $92.52 million, with earnings per share at $0.13.

However, the segment report revealed that despite the exchange operations seeing a 12 per cent to $247.69 million, it had an increase in its loss before tax from $8.89 million to $24.59 million. JCSD Services recorded a 144 per cent rise in profit before tax to $81.77 million while trustee services recorded a 14 per cent decline to $96.03 million.

Total assets increased 14 per cent during the first quarter to $3.48 billion as the JSE invested more into government securities and certificates of deposit. Total liabilities and shareholder’s equity were $781.15 million and $2.70 billion, respectively. The JSE’s stock price declined seven per cent on Tuesday to $9.96, which left it with a market capitalisation of $6.98 billion.