De­spite three years of de­cline in the lo­cal stock mar­ket, there is sup­port for the state­ment made by CEO of the T&T Stock Ex­change Eva Mitchell that the time to in­vest in the mar­ket is now.

Gen­er­al man­ag­er of JMMB In­vest­ments, Je­re­my Lal­la, ex­plained that there is a lot of val­ue in the TTSE cur­rent­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly as sev­er­al lo­cal com­pa­nies have been mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ments abroad.

He said, “Lo­cal­ly, com­pa­nies like An­gos­tu­ra and Massy ex­pand­ed their foot­print in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. An­gos­tu­ra has mar­ket­ed its prod­ucts glob­al­ly and has reached over 170 mar­kets across Eu­rope, North Amer­i­ca, and Latin Amer­i­ca.

“Massy has al­so been able to en­ter the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket with op­er­a­tions now in Jack­sonville, Flori­da. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, com­pa­nies like the ANSA McAL Group, in­clud­ing ANSA Mer­chant Bank have been grow­ing in­or­gan­i­cal­ly through merg­ers and ac­qui­si­tions. Through­out 2024, the ANSA McAL group an­nounced var­i­ous merg­ers and ac­qui­si­tions, which al­so pro­vides them with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­ter in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets. “

Lal­la says the re­cent­ly re­brand­ed Agos­ti­ni Group had made some no­table moves that would im­press po­ten­tial in­vestors.

“Agos­ti­ni is an­oth­er en­ti­ty that has al­so been able to grow through ac­qui­si­tions, re­cent­ly ac­quir­ing Massy Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals Trinidad and is now in the process of do­ing the same in Ja­maica, grow­ing its foot­print re­gion­al­ly,” he said.

The bank­ing sec­tor al­so could pro­vide good val­ue giv­en con­tin­ued growth in its fi­nan­cial per­for­mance, Lal­la said.

“As such, the lo­cal stock ex­change can be con­sid­ered well di­ver­si­fied and pro­vides a range of sec­tors/stocks that can as­sist in prop­er as­set al­lo­ca­tion and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion,” said the in­vest­ment ex­ec­u­tive.

He al­so stressed that in­deed there was no bet­ter time than now to in­vest in the mar­ket, as it had shown sev­er­al pos­i­tive in­di­ca­tors fol­low­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“While mar­ket fluc­tu­a­tions over the past three years, dri­ven by glob­al events such as the pan­dem­ic and geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions, have cre­at­ed pe­ri­ods of volatil­i­ty and de­clin­ing share prices, these con­di­tions can al­so present at­trac­tive en­try points for in­vestors. If a com­pa­ny’s fun­da­men­tals re­main strong, tem­po­rary mar­ket down­turns may of­fer op­por­tu­ni­ties to buy stocks at a low­er price, po­si­tion­ing in­vestors for po­ten­tial long-term gains. There is no right or wrong time to in­vest in the stock mar­ket but it is im­por­tant to con­sid­er the rea­son why you want the ex­po­sure to this as­set class,” Lal­la told Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian.

He al­so not­ed that re­cent mar­ket trends have left some sig­nif­i­cant stocks un­der­val­ued and as such could serve up a bar­gain for savvy in­vestors.

Lal­la ex­plained, “De­spite lo­cal com­pa­nies’ strong fun­da­men­tals, their price-to-earn­ings (P/E) ra­tios, have been trad­ing at his­tor­i­cal­ly low lev­els. For 2024, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change (TTSE) com­pos­ite in­dex P/E ra­tio was 10.3x, com­pared to the ten-year av­er­age of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 14.8x. Since the TTSE Com­pos­ite In­dex fell by 11.6 per cent in 2024, stocks are cheap rel­a­tive to their earn­ings and are un­der­val­ued. As such, it pro­vides an at­trac­tive val­u­a­tion en­try in­to un­der­val­ued stocks with strong growth po­ten­tial for 2025.”

Mitchell ex­plained that the de­cline had been due to a de­cline in in­sti­tu­tion­al in­vest­ments as a re­sult of sev­er­al macro­eco­nom­ic fac­tors and mar­ket-spe­cif­ic fac­tors.

Lal­la agrees.

“The gen­er­al de­cline in per­for­mance of the stock mar­ket was dri­ven pri­mar­i­ly by com­pa­ny-spe­cif­ic chal­lenges and ma­jor glob­al macro­eco­nom­ic is­sues that af­fect­ed economies, in­clud­ing the Unit­ed States Fed­er­al Re­serve’s high in­ter­est rate en­vi­ron­ment in the first half of 2024, which aimed to com­bat in­fla­tion­ary pres­sures, po­ten­tial­ly slow­ing eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, and im­pact­ing in­vest­ment de­ci­sions.”

“Lo­cal­ly, this im­pact­ed the eq­ui­ty stock mar­ket, as in­vestors favoured in­vest­ing in high-yield­ing bonds dur­ing the high-in­ter­est rate en­vi­ron­ment in 2024,” Lal­la said.

He added that on­go­ing con­flicts, such as the Rus­sia-Ukraine war and height­ened ten­sions in the Mid­dle East, led to un­cer­tain­ty in the glob­al mar­ket, im­pact­ing en­er­gy and com­mod­i­ty prices. Due to on­go­ing geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sion, the volatile en­er­gy and com­mod­i­ty prices neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed do­mes­tic com­pa­nies like TTNGL, NEL and NFM, Lal­la said.

He al­so not­ed that de­spite the de­clines over the past cou­ple years, there were sev­er­al ad­van­tages to in­vest­ing in the lo­cal mar­ket.

“In­vest­ing in the stock mar­ket of­fers sev­er­al key ad­van­tages. When you pur­chase shares in a com­pa­ny, you be­come a part-own­er, giv­ing you a stake in its suc­cess and, in some cas­es, vot­ing rights on cor­po­rate de­ci­sions.

“Ad­di­tion­al­ly, many com­pa­nies dis­trib­ute a por­tion of their prof­its as div­i­dends, pro­vid­ing in­vestors with a po­ten­tial source of pas­sive in­come. Be­yond this, stocks have the po­ten­tial to ap­pre­ci­ate over time, mean­ing that if a com­pa­ny per­forms well, its share price may rise, al­low­ing in­vestors to sell at a prof­it, “ he said, “These com­bined ben­e­fits—own­er­ship, div­i­dend in­come, and cap­i­tal growth—make the stock mar­ket a com­pelling op­tion for those look­ing to build wealth over the long term. Ex­cel­lent way to grow and build gen­er­a­tional wealth.”

Fol­low­ing the in­ter­view with Mitchell two weeks ago, sev­er­al mem­bers of the pub­lic said while they were in­ter­est­ed in in­vest­ing but were un­sure of how to get start­ed.

Lal­la of­fered some guid­ance in that re­gard.

“To gain ac­cess to the lo­cal stock mar­ket, you’ll need a bro­ker­age ac­count. Any of the eight lo­cal bro­kers can guide you through the process, and the spe­cif­ic re­quire­ments may dif­fer slight­ly,” he said, ex­plain­ing that to get start­ed in the process at JMMB, a bro­ker­age ac­count can be opened with one form of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion (pass­port or ID card), proof of in­come via a job let­ter or pay slip dat­ed with­in the last three months and proof of ad­dress.

He said, “While some bro­kers may re­quire a min­i­mum ini­tial in­vest­ment, JMMB en­sures that every­one has the chance to par­tic­i­pate in wealth cre­ation. Our founder, Joan Dun­can, had a sim­ple, am­bi­tious dream: to cre­ate a com­pa­ny where any­one could walk in off the street, in­vest a few hun­dred dol­lars, and be greet­ed by staff who tru­ly be­lieved in re­spect and love.”

How­ev­er he said prospec­tive in­vestors should do their re­search and say on top of var­i­ous mar­ket trends and key eco­nom­ic in­di­ca­tors.

“This con­sid­ers the macro­eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment in which busi­ness­es op­er­ate and in­clude fac­tors like GDP growth, in­fla­tion rates, con­sumer spend­ing and em­ploy­ment da­ta,” said Lal­la.

He con­tin­ued, “An­oth­er key point to con­sid­er is the in­dus­try in which these com­pa­nies op­er­ate, it can help in­vestors to un­der­stand the com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment and how well a com­pa­ny stacks up against its com­peti­tors.”

He stressed that in­vestors should as­sess com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cial health and per­for­mance by re­view­ing fi­nan­cial state­ments.

Lal­la and the JMMB team say con­tin­ued fi­nan­cial ed­u­ca­tion will en­cour­age the pub­lic to en­gage in more in­vest­ing.

He said JMMB In­vest­ments will of­fer fi­nan­cial ed­u­ca­tion we­bi­na­rs and ad­ver­tise­ments through­out the year to en­cour­age greater par­tic­i­pa­tion.

About Je­re­my Lal­la

At 38, Je­re­my Lal­la is an in­vest­ment man­ag­er and stock­bro­ker, who has been gen­er­al man­ag­er of JMMB In­vest­ments since Ju­ly last year. He start­ed work­ing for the JMMB Group in 2022, as port­fo­lio and liq­uid­i­ty man­ag­er; he was pro­mot­ed to cor­po­rate man­ag­er of port­fo­lio and liq­uid­i­ty in No­vem­ber 2023 and then in 2024 to his cur­rent po­si­tion.

In his ca­reer, he has worked at De­N­o­vo En­er­gy as an en­er­gy busi­ness an­a­lyst, at RBC Roy­al Bank as an in­vest­ment an­a­lyst and at West In­dies Stock­bro­kers (WISE) as a wealth man­ag­er.

He went to St Mary’s Col­lege and is a grad­u­ate of The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine.