By any se­ri­ous mea­sure, T&T’s stock mar­ket is in trou­ble. Not cycli­cal trou­ble. Not a short-term cor­rec­tion, but struc­tur­al trou­ble.

Over the last four years, lo­cal eq­ui­ty prices have moved in a down­ward di­rec­tion. Since 2022, the T&T Com­pos­ite In­dex and the All T&T In­dex have record­ed loss­es every sin­gle year. Cu­mu­la­tive­ly, the mar­ket has shed close to 40 per cent of its val­ue. That kind of de­cline is not noise. It is a sig­nal flare.

For­mer chair­man of the T&T Stock Ex­change, Richard Young, has framed the is­sue blunt­ly in a let­ter cir­cu­lat­ed to some list­ed com­pa­nies. This is not un­der­per­for­mance, it is sus­tained de­cline. His warn­ing mat­ters pre­cise­ly be­cause the fa­mil­iar ex­pla­na­tions no longer hold up. Glob­al un­cer­tain­ty, geopol­i­tics, com­mod­i­ty price volatil­i­ty and reg­u­la­to­ry drag are re­al, but they are now per­ma­nent fea­tures of the glob­al econ­o­my.

Mar­kets that func­tion well, adapt. Weak ones stag­nate.

The num­bers tell the sto­ry. In 2022, the Com­pos­ite In­dex fell by 11.01 per cent. In 2023, it slipped an­oth­er 8.87 per cent. In 2024, loss­es deep­ened to 11.60 per cent. In 2025, the in­dex de­clined by near­ly 12 per cent, while the All T&T In­dex dropped by more than 13 per cent. Four con­sec­u­tive years of loss­es is not a con­fi­dence prob­lem alone, it is an in­sti­tu­tion­al fail­ure, .

This ero­sion has been broad-based. In 2025, four of the five list­ed com­mer­cial banks record­ed price de­clines. All three con­glom­er­ates lost val­ue. Six of sev­en man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies end­ed the year low­er.

On­ly a hand­ful of trad­ing com­pa­nies de­liv­ered strong gains, with AS Bry­den stand­ing out af­ter its Au­gust list­ing, climb­ing more than 65 per cent. Those bright spots, how­ev­er, are ex­cep­tions in an oth­er­wise bleak land­scape.

In­sti­tu­tions

can­not stay silent

Young ar­gued that re­cov­ery will not hap­pen by chance. Strong mar­kets do not re­cov­er by chance. They re­cov­er be­cause in­sti­tu­tions act with ur­gency, clar­i­ty and con­vic­tion, Young said in the let­ter. In his view, two groups must step for­ward: the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change (TTSE) it­self and the com­pa­nies list­ed on it.

He said the first group that must step for­ward is the TTSE it­self:

“A stock ex­change can­not be a silent by­stander while con­fi­dence evap­o­rates. Ed­u­ca­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion must be­come its core mis­sion — par­tic­u­lar­ly for the or­di­nary cit­i­zen. In­vest­ing re­mains poor­ly un­der­stood, mis­trust­ed, and dis­tant from the ‘man in the street.’ This gap will not close on its own.

“The TTSE must ac­tive­ly ex­plain how in­vest­ing works, what risk re­al­ly means, and why long-term par­tic­i­pa­tion mat­ters. So­cial me­dia and mod­ern com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools must be ful­ly utilised. Trust can­not be re­built from be­hind closed doors.

“At their Oc­to­ber 2024 Mar­ket Con­fer­ence, the build­ing of an ‘in­vest­ment cul­ture’ was ac­cept­ed but not much has been seen oth­er than a chat-bot. Fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy is bandied about by many but it must not get the same stig­ma as “di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion”!

The sec­ond re­spon­si­bil­i­ty lies with list­ed com­pa­nies them­selves.

Young said:

List­ing is not a priv­i­lege; it is a pub­lic re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. A near 40 per cent mar­ket de­cline over four years can­not be shrugged off as “mar­ket noise”.

“Boards and CEOs must ac­cept that share price per­for­mance and in­vestor con­fi­dence mat­ter.

“List­ed com­pa­nies must com­mu­ni­cate — con­sis­tent­ly, hon­est­ly, and plain­ly. In­vestors de­serve to un­der­stand a com­pa­ny’s strat­e­gy, lead­er­ship, val­ues, re­sponse to dis­rup­tion, and fi­nan­cial re­silience.

“This does not re­quire re­veal­ing com­pet­i­tive se­crets. It re­quires con­vic­tion. Too of­ten, the lo­cal mar­ket is dis­missed as illiq­uid or un­re­al­is­tic. That ex­cuse has ex­pired. As the say­ing goes: you can’t play mas and ‘fraid’ pow­der.”

Con­fi­dence,

cap­i­tal and the

cost of in­ac­tion

The call for ac­tion is not lim­it­ed to mar­ket op­er­a­tors and cor­po­rate boards. Paul Tra­boulay, chief ex­ec­u­tive of the Joint Sec­re­tari­at Cor­po­ra­tion and the As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T In­sur­ance Com­pa­nies (AT­TIC), views the de­cline as the re­sult of mul­ti­ple re­in­forc­ing pres­sures.

• ↓Over­all con­fi­dence in the econ­o­my – glob­al un­cer­tain­ty – con­ta­gion – un­cer­tain com­mod­i­ty prices, lim­it­ed clar­i­ty on a wider pub­lic au­di­ence ba­sis on the strate­gic plans of the pub­licly list­ed firms, lim­it­ed fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy;

• ↓In­sti­tu­tion­al and oth­er an­chor in­vestors have been al­most at their in­ter­nal risk ap­petite and reg­u­la­to­ry lim­its. Non-an­chor in­vestors who are seek­ing wealth op­ti­mi­sa­tion and have the op­por­tu­ni­ty on in­ter­na­tion­al plat­forms to in­vest in for­eign ex­changes have been do­ing that as an al­ter­na­tive;

• ↓The cross list­ing of shares across the T&T and Ja­maica mar­kets of­fers ar­bi­trage al­ter­na­tives to ob­tain for­eign ex­change; and

• ↓Low-mar­ket ef­fi­cien­cy and the pub­lic per­cep­tion of high in­for­ma­tion asym­me­try have not helped con­fi­dence

On wealth cre­ation, Tra­boulay sees wider do­mes­tic par­tic­i­pa­tion as es­sen­tial. A func­tion­ing lo­cal eq­ui­ty mar­ket should be one of the pri­ma­ry mech­a­nisms through which na­tion­als build long-term wealth. That out­come de­pends on stim­u­lat­ing de­mand and al­low­ing cap­i­tal ap­pre­ci­a­tion to re­flect gen­uine busi­ness per­for­mance and long-term prospects.

On the need for a na­tion­al ef­fort to re­store con­fi­dence, his po­si­tion is un­equiv­o­cal. Re­viv­ing trust in lo­cal eq­ui­ties can­not be left to chance.

In­sti­tu­tion­al frame­works, in­clud­ing reg­u­la­tors, have a role to play by pub­lish­ing con­sis­tent, com­pa­ra­ble mea­sures of busi­ness per­for­mance growth, prof­itabil­i­ty, re­turns on in­vest­ed cap­i­tal and tax con­tri­bu­tions.

He al­so points to the need for stronger, more open pub­lic com­mu­ni­ca­tion as a base­line re­quire­ment for all list­ed com­pa­nies. En­vi­ron­men­tal, so­cial and gov­er­nance dis­clo­sures can help, but on­ly if they are clear and rel­e­vant. Pub­lic com­men­tary must be frank and dis­pas­sion­ate, with­out in­tim­i­dat­ing less so­phis­ti­cat­ed read­ers or re­flect­ing hid­den agen­das.

Si­lence from ma­jor mar­ket play­ers does lit­tle to im­prove con­fi­dence. The Busi­ness Guardian con­tact­ed Na­tion­al Flour Mills, Agos­ti­ni Ltd and the Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion, all of which de­clined to en­gage. Re­pub­lic Bank, Guardian Hold­ings, Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd, CIBC Caribbean and Wit­co did not re­spond in a time­ly fash­ion to emailed ques­tions.

Op­ti­mism has been voiced be­fore. In ear­ly 2025, TTSE chief ex­ec­u­tive Eva Mitchell ex­pressed con­fi­dence that the mar­ket was near­ing a turn­ing point and en­cour­aged in­vestors to seize emerg­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties. The year end­ed with an­oth­er de­cline.

There have al­so been reg­u­la­to­ry de­lays. In June, Agos­ti­ni an­nounced that its pro­posed to make a takeover bid for 100 per cent of the 62,513,002 com­mon shares of Pres­tige Hold­ings Ltd (PHL), which holds the fran­chis­es for a num­ber of Amer­i­can quick ser­vice restau­rants, in­clud­ing KFC and Piz­za Hut.

The takeover bid by Agos­ti­ni was most­ly a non-cash of­fer, via a share swap of 4.8 Pres­tige Hold­ings shares in ex­change for every one Agos­ti­ni share.

The bid pro­posed the is­sue of 13,022,334 new com­mon Agos­ti­ni shares as con­sid­er­a­tion for the ac­qui­si­tion of 100 per cent of the com­pa­ny.

In ex­plain­ing the strate­gic ra­tio­nale of the pro­posed trans­ac­tion, Agos­ti­ni said, “The pro­posed ac­qui­si­tion of Pres­tige Hold­ings is a strate­gic mile­stone in Agos­ti­ni Ltd’s long-term strat­e­gy to build a more di­ver­si­fied, re­silient, and con­sumer-ori­ent­ed busi­ness that con­tin­ues its pur­suit of growth and en­hanced prof­itabil­i­ty.

“As the op­er­at­ing en­vi­ron­ment across the Caribbean con­tin­ues to evolve, Agos­ti­ni is fo­cused on deep­en­ing its reach in­to sec­tors char­ac­terised by ro­bust and grow­ing con­sumer de­mand, brand-dri­ven loy­al­ty and re­cur­ring cash flows.”

That takeover bid has been ex­tend­ed on six oc­ca­sions, with the last time to March 6, as the com­pa­nies await all the re­quired reg­u­la­to­ry ap­provals in­clud­ing the ap­proval of the merg­er ap­pli­ca­tion made to the T&T Fair Trade Com­mis­sion.