The year 2015 was a magnificent year for the Jamaica Stock Exchange and the Jamaican business environment. Including being recognized once again as the best place to do business in the Caribbean, the year ended with Bloomberg recognizing the JSE as the #1 Performing Stock Exchange in the world.

Of worthy mention is the Junior Market of the JSE, which saw an uptick in trading during the year in mention. According to the Junior Markets Report, since its initial launch in 2009 with 100 points, its index has increased by 1,691.05 points to close at 1791.05 points as at December 2015. This represented a 160.34% increase over 2014, which closed at 687.96 points.

Trading Activity
The year 2015 reported 7,754 trades compared to 4,374 in 2014. Meanwhile, Market Volume increased by 118.85% over 2014 to close off at 1, 295, 714, 331 units. Market value of trades made a 270.95% jump to $7.43 billion compared to $2 billion at the end of the previous year.

Market Capitalisation at the end of the period amounted to 67.9 billion, up from 26.097 billion in 2014.

Dolphin Cove Limited was the value leader having traded $3.706 billion. Meanwhile, Lasco Financia Services Limited was the volume leader with 296,716,610 units traded.

Vote of Confidence
It is expected that the Junior Market will continue to see added growth with the recent vote of confidence from the newly installed government.

Following his move to restore the tax incentive for the junior market, Finance Minister Audley Shaw lauded the operations of the Junior Market whose 29 listed companies have raised over $5.1 billion dollars.

He says ‘data on the junior market has conclusively shown that the tax incentive has encouraged growth and has been positive for taxes’ and that under this tax incentive, in the 10 year timeframe, Jamaica has a real chance of having increased number of strongly capitalized company with stronger tax-paying capabilities.