Ghana's stock exchange bucks trend

Vendors hawking handbags and fruit along downtown Accra's Liberia Road are busier than the traders five stories upstairs on the Ghana Stock Exchange.

An offshore-oil discovery, rising commodity prices and government spending on roads and other projects drove the market to a 64 percent gain this year, making it the world's best-performing bourse.

Then volume on the market fell to 23,875 shares daily over the last four weeks, a 20th of the average for the past six months. This left investors unable to flee even as stocks in nearby Nigeria declined 41 percent since March 5. On some days, almost no shares have changed hands in the Cedi House Building. "It's hard to call it a stock market because of the liquidity levels," said Don Elefson, an emerging-markets specialist at Harding Loevner Management in Somerville, New Jersey. "Ghana's a little market that gets forgotten."