Stock*Price Dec 31, 2025*Price May 26 2025* YTD % change

NGL*$2.64*$10.39*293.56%

NEL*$1.92*$5.20*170.83%

PLD*$4.60*$6.90*50%

NCBFG*$1.92*$2.60*35.41%

OCM*$1.33*$1.74*30.82%

By my cal­cu­la­tion, the Com­pos­ite In­dex of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change (TTSE) is up by 6.28 per cent for the year to Tues­day (May 26) and the All T&T In­dex in­creased by 5.50 per cent in that pe­ri­od.

It is par­tic­u­lar­ly note­wor­thy that four of the five top-per­form­ing stocks on the Com­pos­ite In­dex (see ta­ble) have sig­nif­i­cant share­hold­ing by Cor­po­ra­tion Sole, ei­ther di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly:

* NGL is the top-per­form­ing stock for the year, with its val­ue in­creas­ing by al­most four times. NGL’s largest share­hold­er is the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of T&T with 25 per cent. The NIB owns 19,728,342 shares in NGL and is the in­vest­ment hold­ing com­pa­ny’s sec­ond largest share­hold­er af­ter NGC, which is 100 per cent owned by Cor­po­ra­tion Sole;

* Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Ltd (NEL) has more than dou­bled in val­ue, for the year. NEL’s largest share­hold­er is Cor­po­ra­tion Sole and its sec­ond-largest share­hold­er is NGC;

* Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Port De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Plipde­co or PLD), which is up by 50 per cent, is 51 per cent owned by Cor­po­ra­tion Sole; and

* One Caribbean Me­dia’s largest share­hold­er is the Na­tion­al In­vest­ment Fund, which is 100 per cent owned by Cor­po­ra­tion Sole.

At the start of this year, I did not pre­dict that the Com­pos­ite In­dex would be high­er by more than six per cent. And nei­ther, it seems, did Richard Young, who served as the chair­man of the TTSE from 1999 to 2001, and as the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Sco­tia­bank T&T from 1997 to 2012.

The lead sto­ry in the Feb­ru­ary 5, 2026 edi­tion of the Busi­ness Guardian was based on a com­men­tary Mr Young, which was head­lined ‘Young calls for ac­tion to halt eq­ui­ty de­cline.’

In the com­men­tary, Mr Young ob­served that T&T’s stock mar­ket was not mere­ly un­der­per­form­ing; it was in sus­tained de­cline, hav­ing fall­en for the four years be­tween 2022 and 2025, by what he es­ti­mat­ed to be 39 per cent.

“This is not a blip, a cor­rec­tion, or a tem­po­rary loss of con­fi­dence. It is a warn­ing sig­nal...The usu­al ex­pla­na­tions are quick­ly of­fered: glob­al un­cer­tain­ty, geopol­i­tics, com­mod­i­ty prices, and reg­u­la­tions. All true—and all in­suf­fi­cient. These are now per­ma­nent fea­tures of the glob­al eco­nom­ic land­scape. Trinidad & To­ba­go is not unique or ex­empt.

“Strong mar­kets do not re­cov­er by chance. They re­cov­er be­cause in­sti­tu­tions act with ur­gency, clar­i­ty and con­vic­tion,” opined Mr Young, who chaired the TTSE from 1999 to 2001.

He called for two groups to step for­ward—the TTSE and the list­ed com­pa­nies them­selves.

Of the lo­cal stock ex­change, Mr Young ar­gued that it “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 lit­tle has been seen be­yond a chat­bot. Fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy is bandied about by many but it must not get the same stig­ma as di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion!”

And con­cern­ing list­ed com­pa­nies, Mr Young ob­served that list­ing is not a priv­i­lege, it is a pub­lic re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, point­ing out that a near 40 per cent mar­ket de­cline over four years can­not be shrugged off as ‘mar­ket noise’ and that 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.”

Re­cov­er­ing mar­ket

From what I can dis­cern, no ac­tion has been tak­en by the TTSE to re­verse the de­cline since Mr Young’s call to ac­tion was pub­lished. But what I am cer­tain of is that if there are peo­ple who are mak­ing huge prof­its from the lo­cal stock mar­ket, the con­fi­dence that evap­o­rat­ed in the four-year down­turn is sure to re­turn.

The oth­er is­sue is why are the com­pa­nies in which the state has share­hold­ings lead­ing the re­cov­ery?

As ar­gued in this space pre­vi­ous­ly, part of the ex­pla­na­tion is that the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion did the right thing in fa­cil­i­tat­ing the pay­ment of div­i­dends at NGL, lead­ing to the in­crease in share­hold­er val­ue at that com­pa­ny. It may be that NEL’s im­proved share price per­for­mance is due to its share­hold­ing in NGL.

Nar­ine’s take

The cur­rent chair­man of the TTSE, Ian Nar­ine, ad­dressed the per­for­mance of the lo­cal cap­i­tal mar­kets in his March 19 col­umn in the Busi­ness Guardian, which was head­lined ‘Is the NIB cen­tral to T&T’s in­vest­ing cri­sis?’

In that com­men­tary, Mr Nar­ine point­ed out that the deficit re­sult­ing from NIB’s ben­e­fit and ad­min­is­tra­tive ex­pen­di­ture ex­ceed­ing its con­tri­bu­tion and in­vest­ment in­come be­came ev­i­dent about a decade ago, but was ig­nored. He opined that the deficit has had a pro­found im­pact on the op­er­a­tion of the NIB, as the in­sti­tu­tion has had to make with­drawals from its in­vest­ment ac­counts and hold more cash to make ben­e­fit pay­ments.

The fi­nan­cial con­sul­tant ar­gued:

“The re­al­i­ty is that pen­sion fund crises usu­al­ly ar­rive in stages. First come the ac­tu­ar­i­al warn­ings that most peo­ple ig­nore. In a lo­cal con­text, that be­gan around 2012. Then come qui­et­ly ris­ing with­drawals from in­vest­ment ac­counts. Then, when the num­bers can no longer be ab­sorbed by rou­tine port­fo­lio man­age­ment, the in­sti­tu­tion that once an­chored the do­mes­tic cap­i­tal mar­ket be­comes one of its largest sources of sell­ing pres­sure, af­fect­ing the in­vest­ments of every cit­i­zen.

“T&T has been mov­ing through those stages for near­ly a decade, and the ev­i­dence is now plain­ly vis­i­ble in the fi­nan­cial ac­counts of the NIB. As of June 2024, NIB held a port­fo­lio of rough­ly $27 bil­lion, with 70 per cent in­vest­ed do­mes­ti­cal­ly and 63 per cent in eq­ui­ties. That makes it the largest sin­gle pool of long-term cap­i­tal in the lo­cal fi­nan­cial sys­tem, re­spon­si­ble for a mean­ing­ful share of the de­mand that holds bond yields down, keeps stock prices sup­port­ed, and gives mu­tu­al funds and pen­sion plans a sta­ble pric­ing en­vi­ron­ment.

“When an in­sti­tu­tion of that size shifts its pri­ma­ry ob­jec­tive from max­imis­ing long-term re­turns to en­sur­ing there is enough cash to pay cur­rent ben­e­fit claims, the en­tire mar­ket shifts with it. That shift has been un­der­way since at least 2017. By 2024 and 2025, it had be­come the dom­i­nant fact of NIB’s in­vest­ment be­hav­iour.

“The struc­tur­al pres­sure dri­ving this is not com­pli­cat­ed. Con­tri­bu­tions come in from em­ployed work­ers; ben­e­fits go out based on what the NIB in­sures. For the sys­tem to re­main sol­vent with­out draw­ing down its re­serves, con­tri­bu­tions plus in­vest­ment in­come must at least cov­er ben­e­fit ex­pen­di­ture.

“In 2015, ben­e­fit ex­pen­di­ture was ba­si­cal­ly matched by con­tri­bu­tion in­come. It was al­most asi­nine that no pol­i­cy in­ter­ven­tions took place at that time. By 2025, ben­e­fit ex­pen­di­ture and ad­min­is­tra­tive costs out­stripped con­tri­bu­tion in­come, leav­ing the ap­prox­i­mate­ly $2 bil­lion gap high­light­ed at the start of this col­umn.”

In the col­umn, Mr Nar­ine makes the point that NIB’s deficit im­pact­ed the lo­cal bond mar­ket, T&T’s mu­tu­al fund in­dus­try and that “its shift to­ward liq­uid­i­ty preser­va­tion re­moves one of the few con­sis­tent sources of lo­cal stock mar­ket de­mand in a shal­low mar­ket.”

He ar­gued that this “neg­a­tive feed­back loop” gets worse as it has even had an im­pact on the for­eign ex­change mar­ket.

“Once the ab­sence of buy­ing and even the sell­ing pres­sure be­gan on the lo­cal mar­kets, those mar­kets will un­der­per­form. We have seen this ef­fect on the lo­cal stock mar­ket. While this un­der­per­for­mance is tak­ing place, the US mar­kets have been out­per­form­ing. The lo­cal sell­ing pres­sure means that the struc­tur­al in­cen­tive across the in­vest­ment com­mu­ni­ty tilts to­wards US dol­lar in­vest­ments. This drains fur­ther liq­uid­i­ty from the lo­cal mar­kets, es­pe­cial­ly the stock mar­ket.”

I agree with Mr Nar­ine’s cen­tral the­sis that the ne­glect of the NIB’s grow­ing deficit has im­pact­ed the per­for­mance of the lo­cal stock mar­ket over the last four years...and more. But in agree­ing with the the­sis, there are a few points that need to be added:

* If, as he ar­gues, the shift in the NIB’s in­vest­ment pos­ture has been un­der­way since at least 2017, shouldn’t the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, which formed the gov­ern­ment from 2015 to 2025, be called out for ne­glect­ing the ac­tu­ar­i­al rec­om­men­da­tions dur­ing their tenure?

* What im­pact will the phased in­crease in con­tri­bu­tion rates, im­ple­ment­ed by the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion, have on the fi­nan­cial health of the NIB?

Dis­clo­sure: The au­thor of this com­men­tary owns shares in NGL and NEL