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Level 3: Advanced

Shares and the Trinidad and Tobago Stock Exchange

7 min read · Before you start: Lessons on investing, risk and unit trusts · Updated 31 October 2026

Key terms in this lesson: earnings per share · mutual fund · dividend · market capitalisation · broker-dealer · spread · dividend yield · price-to-earnings ratio (all defined in the glossary)

A share is a piece of ownership in a company. If you own one share of a company with a million shares, you own one millionth of it. That is the whole idea. Everything else — prices, brokers, dividends, indices — is machinery built around it. This lesson explains how that machinery works locally, so the words on a broker's statement stop being a foreign language.

What owning a share actually gives you

• A claim on profits. When a company decides to pay out part of its profit, that payment is a dividend. Dividends are decided by the board; they are not promised and can be cut or skipped.
• A claim on what is left. If the company is wound up, shareholders are paid after lenders, suppliers and preference shareholders. Ordinary shareholders are last in line.
• A vote. Ordinary shares usually carry a vote at the annual meeting, on directors and major decisions.
• Nothing guaranteed. A share has no maturity date and no promised return. Its price is whatever another buyer will pay that day.

Two ways the money comes back

Returns on shares arrive in two forms, and they behave differently. Dividend income is cash paid to you while you hold. Capital gain is the difference between what you paid and what you later sell for, and it only becomes real when you sell. A share can pay a steady dividend while its price falls, or pay nothing while its price climbs. Looking at only one of the two gives half the picture.

The Trinidad and Tobago Stock Exchange

The TTSE was established in 1981 under the Securities Industry Act and sits in Port of Spain. It is the place where shares in listed local companies change hands. The Trinidad and Tobago Securities and Exchange Commission (TTSEC) regulates the exchange and its member firms under the Securities Industry Act.

Compared with large overseas markets, the local market is small and trades thinly. A few dozen companies are listed, concentrated in banking, manufacturing, energy-related holdings and conglomerates. Thin trading has practical effects: the gap between the buying and selling price can be wide, a large order can move the price on its own, and selling quickly at the price you last saw is not always possible.

Market capitalisation

Multiply the share price by the number of shares in issue and you get market capitalisation — what the market says the whole company is worth. It is how companies are compared by size. A TT$2 share is not cheaper than a TT$20 share in any meaningful sense until you know how many shares exist and what the company earns.

How a person buys shares

Shares on the TTSE are not bought directly from the exchange or from the company. The TTSEC explains that an investor needs the services of a registered broker-dealer. In broad terms the steps are:

1. Choose a registered broker. The TTSE publishes the list of equity brokers and bond brokers on its website. The TTSEC register is where registration can be confirmed.
2. Open an account. Brokers ask for identification and address documents under anti-money-laundering rules, and a bank account for settlement.
3. Place an order. A market order buys at whatever the current price is. A limit order sets the most you will pay or the least you will accept, and waits.
4. Settlement and registration. The trade settles after a set number of days and your holding is recorded in the central depository rather than as a paper certificate.

Costs

Trading is not free. The exchange has charged member firms a transaction fee calculated as a percentage of the value traded — reported by Oxford Business Group at 0.18 per cent — and brokers add their own commission on top, often with a minimum charge per trade. A minimum commission matters most on small orders: a fixed TT$100 charge on a TT$1,000 purchase is ten per cent gone before the price moves at all. Lesson 30 works through what fees do over time.

Reading a price quote

A daily quote usually shows the last traded price, the bid (the highest price a buyer is offering), the offer or ask (the lowest price a seller will accept), the volume traded, and the change on the day. The gap between bid and offer is the spread, and it is a real cost: buying at the offer and selling at the bid loses the spread even if nothing else changes.

Two other numbers appear often. The dividend yield is the dividend per share divided by the price, expressed as a percentage — useful for comparing income, though it rises automatically when a price falls, which is not always good news. The price-to-earnings ratio is the price divided by earnings per share, a rough measure of how much the market is paying for each dollar of profit.

Other ways to hold shares

Buying individual shares is one route. A mutual fund or unit trust holds many shares at once and is covered in lesson 25. Some local funds hold regional and international shares, which is one way exposure outside Trinidad and Tobago is obtained without a foreign brokerage account. Each route carries its own fees, risks and restrictions.

Questions to ask before a first trade

1. Is this broker registered with the TTSEC, and what is the full fee schedule including the minimum commission?
2. How long must the money stay invested, and what happens if it is needed sooner?
3. How much of the total has gone into one company or one industry?
4. Where do the company's published results and annual report live, and have they been read?

Run your own figures with the fee calculator on the tools page.

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Not financial advice. This lesson is general education only. See our editorial policy and disclaimer.