JSE managing director charts listings surge, tech upgrades and investor outlook on Bloomberg TV

Marlene Street Forrest, managing director of the Jamaica Stock Exchange for more than twenty years, sat down in Bloomberg’s New York studio to walk through how the bourse widened its product set and deepened participation since she took the helm, as regional investor David Mullings of Blue Maho Capital opened the segment by urging Wall Street to look harder at Caribbean growth stories including Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas and Guyana, citing capital from the diaspora and abroad already sniffing opportunities.

Street Forrest said the exchange moved from roughly twenty equities to more than one hundred, adding a bond platform and a US-dollar segment while subscriber numbers climbed sharply. She expects momentum to hold after her tenure because foundations are laid, ordinary Jamaicans stay engaged with equities and outreach targets younger cohorts entering the market, gains she linked to earlier fiscal choices that she said left Jamaica economically stronger than several neighbours.

On current conditions she described the economy as stable, with inflation and unemployment both low. She noted the main index was up about one percent in Jamaican dollars over the trailing year but off some three percent this year, a move she placed broadly in line with the S&P 500 when viewed in local currency. Asked about US trade tensions, she argued issuers would still seek listings and could lean more on equity as “patient capital” when bank debt demands rigid principal and interest schedules.

While domestic investors still dominate trading, she said roadshows aim to widen the base and overseas interest in Jamaica’s wider growth story remains steady. Private-market activity, she added, has ballooned, lifting the exchange group’s depository and trustee arm that safeguards client assets.

Technology, she stressed, anchored confidence through dependable trade and settlement engines, bolstered cyber-security and data protection, introduced online dealing that pulled in youth and rolled out a customer portal so holders could track holdings. Electronic market surveillance tightened oversight, and artificial intelligence now feeds a new primary-school competition meant to teach children how markets work.

Closing banter among anchors recalled an earlier field report from Jamaica when the local market ranked among the world’s top performers for multiple years after debt restructuring and fiscal tightening.