GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

The T&T Stock Mar­ket (TTSE) con­tin­ues to make no­table strides, says its chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Eva Mitchell.

Speak­ing at the TTSE’s 2023 cap­i­tal mar­kets con­fer­ence held at the Hy­att Re­gency yes­ter­day, Mitchell said, “The on­go­ing dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of our lo­cal cap­i­tal mar­kets and the fi­nan­cial in­dus­try is read­i­ly ap­par­ent when we con­sid­er these en­cour­ag­ing achieve­ments in 2023. Al­though our trad­ing vol­ume has shown a year-on-year de­cline, what tru­ly ex­cites us is the surge in re­tail par­tic­i­pa­tion.

“From the be­gin­ning of the pan­dem­ic to the end of 2022 we not­ed a 50 per cent in­crease in the ex­e­cut­ed trades by our re­tail in­vestors and we ex­pect that group to con­tin­ue to grow as we draw to the end of 2023.”

Mitchell fur­ther ex­plained that the pow­er­ful com­bi­na­tion of so­cial me­dia and im­proved ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty to the stock mar­ket via the TTSE’s dig­i­tal trad­ing plat­forms not on­ly in­tro­duced new re­tail in­vestors, but al­so con­nect­ed and reen­gaged the at­ten­tion of many who may have been dor­mant.

“To put some num­bers to this, as at Sep­tem­ber 2023, our TTSE on­line trad­ing plat­form has as­sert­ed its po­si­tion as a cor­ner­stone of our stock mar­ket land­scape, fa­cil­i­tat­ing an im­pres­sive 30 per cent of the to­tal mar­ket trades for the month.

“This is up from an av­er­age of less than five. This sta­tis­tic is not mere­ly a re­flec­tion of num­bers; it is an af­fir­ma­tion of the grow­ing in­vestor con­fi­dence in our dig­i­tal plat­forms, un­der­lin­ing their re­li­a­bil­i­ty and ef­fec­tive­ness,” Mitchell added.

Dur­ing 2023 she fur­ther not­ed that the or­gan­i­sa­tion em­barked on an ar­ray of in­no­v­a­tive mar­ket­ing strate­gies, de­signed to em­pow­er and in­form its stake­hold­ers.

“This com­pre­hen­sive ap­proach in­cludes an ag­gres­sive ros­ter of 22 we­bi­na­rs and out­reach ses­sions, where we en­gaged in in­sight­ful con­ver­sa­tions, shared ex­per­tise, and pro­vid­ed guid­ance to in­vestors. We al­so made our pres­ence known at var­i­ous trade shows and ex­pos, cre­at­ing tan­gi­ble con­nec­tions with in­dus­try pro­fes­sion­als and en­thu­si­asts. We strate­gi­cal­ly part­nered with oth­er plat­form providers to bring this aware­ness to schools in a dig­i­tal way,” Mitchell said.

She not­ed that the im­pact of these ini­tia­tives has been noth­ing short of re­mark­able, am­pli­fy­ing aware­ness and catalysing height­ened trad­ing ac­tiv­i­ties and cre­ation of new ac­counts, em­pha­sis­ing that this un­der­lines the TTSE’s com­mit­ment to not on­ly adapt to change but to ac­tive­ly dri­ve the dig­i­tal evo­lu­tion of its fi­nan­cial land­scape.

The theme of the con­fer­ence was “Cap­i­tal Mar­kets Dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion: Trends and Trans­for­ma­tions.”

Ac­cord­ing to Mitchell, this res­onates deeply with the TTSE’s strate­gic pil­lars and its ded­i­ca­tion to pro­vid­ing the best op­por­tu­ni­ties, knowl­edge, and re­sources for its stake­hold­ers, bridg­ing the gap be­tween tra­di­tion and in­no­va­tion.