A senior investment advisor says the recent SpaceX initial public offering sparked such a wave of selling on the Jamaican stock market as to make investors move to secure shares in the Elon Musk led company.
Christopher Thomas of Mayberry Investments, observed that many investors sold Jamaican stocks to participate in the SpaceX IPO, despite the company reporting losses of US$4.9 billion last year, and $5 billion during the 1st quarter of this year.
Mr. Thomas, speaking Monday on Radio Jamaica’s Real Business, said his office received numerous calls from clients seeking to liquidate local investments in order to buy into SpaceX
He noted that investor demand remains strong and SpaceX shares rose from an opening price of US$135 to close at $165.65 last week.
Mr. Thomas said the rush by investors to exit local positions contributed to significant volatility on Jamaica Stock Exchange. According to him, Exchange was forced to trigger a circuit breaker mechanism 22 times last week, with most trading holds occurring after stock prices fell by 15 per cent.
Under JSE rules, trading in a stock is suspended for one hour when its price rises or falls by 15 per cent.
Monday's stock market performance
Meanwhile, the JSCE Index declined by 1,549 points on Monday while the Junior Market declined by 39 points.
There was trading in 115 stocks, of which 35 advanced, 57 declined and 23 treated firm.
Kintyre Holdings was the volume lead, with 33 per cent of total volume.
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