By INDERIA SAUNDERS, Guardian Business Desk, Inderia@nasguard.com

BISX seemed to work harder for less gain last quarter with a newly released report indicating its all share index closed down 5 percent despite a trade volume that more than doubled from the same period a year earlier.

From January to March of this year, trading volume came in at 1,196,953 shares, totaling a trade value of over $7 million. This would normally have been good news for BISX if the exchange had not experienced a trade value of over $9 million for the same first three months of 2007. Then, approximately 434,202 fewer shares traded hands despite the bigger dollar amount.

The change in fortune from last year to this has something to do with the poor performance of several BISX players. Among those topping its list of companies realizing a decrease in share value were Consolidated Water and ICD Utilities.

Their declines have recently been followed by other, normally buoyant players like Commonwealth Bank and FirstCaribbean - both of which suffered share value declines over the last month.

That rough patch runs counter to their first quarter results for this year when their names appeared alongside Cable Bahamas, Focol and Doctors Hospital on the list of the top five share value leaders on BISX.

Some of them also appear on the BISX list of the most actively traded stocks. Those companies were Commonwealth Bank, Doctors Hospital, Focol, Abaco Markets and FirstCaribbean.

The bump-up in associated trader traffic compared to last year suggests a more active yet volatile BISX has begun to emerge, likely owing to investor worries about the global economy and its effect on the bottom lines of Bahamian firms.

That anxiety has been encouraged by the U.S. slowdown and its effects on our tourism industry as well as the incomes of Bahamians.

On Monday, BISX offered those investors no explanation for the value declines in its All Share Index, although the performance of some of its listed companies has very little to do with this jurisdiction and its economy, still expected to see a real GDP growth despite stagnant U.S. and Canadian economies.

Consolidated Water BDRs, for example, dropped value because of concerns mounting among NYSE investors, the company's home exchange. They're still parsing over the implications of Consolidated dispute with the British Virgin Islands over ownership of a water treatment plant in that territory. Still, the company's growing conflict with the Bahamian government over when exactly it met water reduction targets threatens to exacerbate those investor worries. If those U.S. shareholders continue to sell up at a loss, they could indirectly drive down the All Share Index on BISX.