Investing in Morocco: Stock Market (Bourse de Casablanca)

If you want to invest in the stock market, and want to know how you can buy stocks in Morocco, this post is for you!

If you’re looking for other investing approaches, see our page about investing in Morocco.

Returns

Shares price changes

Like any stock market, it’s hard to quantify if your shares will be worth more in the next few years. If the returns for Compte sur Carnet are always positive, in the stock market they can be positive or negative. In the end, you may lose your money, so keep this in mind.

In general, the returns are greater than the Compte sur Carnet (if positive).

Dividends

Other than betting on your shares to be worth more in the future, you’ll also win some money each year via dividends. I explained what dividends mean before, but as a reminder, they are profits distributed to shareholders by the company board.

Usually, companies distribute 1-6 MAD per share per year. So count this as a return too.

How to create a stocks account so you can buy stocks in Morocco

Welcome to 1999. Bad news, you need to use your phone and actually call. Or, pay for an overpriced subscription to an online bank app.

For seasoned traders, or people wanting to pursue this as a day job, paying that extra is probably a good idea. For people wanting to use it once a month, it’s certainly not. So stick with the phone 🙂

Any Moroccan can invest in the stock market, all you need to do is head to your bank and ask for a “stock holding bank account”. It’s like a normal bank account but used for stocking your shares instead of your money. And one thing to remember, this account usually comes free of charge. So negotiate with your bank if they want to charge you for it (banks will try to charge you for everything).

How to buy stocks in Morocco

Now, it’s time for the buying order.

You’ll call your bank and say I want to buy X shares from company X. Watchout, remember to define the price you want to buy with. If you don’t specify the price, they are assuming you’ll pay whatever the market price is. Which is dangerous, here’s why.

You’ll see that a share is 100 MAD, so you might tell yourself, I can buy it at that price. You set your buying order, but actually, no one is selling that share, everyone is holding it. Given there isn’t enough offer, someone is offering to sell that share but asking for 120 MAD. As soon as someone accepts to buy these shares for 120 MAD, the new market price is 120 MAD. This means you’ll end up buying them for 120 MAD or more because you didn’t set the price in your order.

How to sell stocks in Morocco

Now, the selling order.

Let’s imagine you want to sell your stocks now. As explained before, you’ll call your bank and tell them you want to sell some stocks, but now you know about the price, so you’ll also tell them the price you want to sell with. But I have something you need to add too: order duration.

By default, your order will stay for a month. This means, your shares will be presented to buyers, with the price you asked for, for up to one month. If you want to change that, reducing it to a day or week, then make sure to specify that.

Taxation & price

You’ll pay 15% tax on everything you make. So that’s 15% on dividends, and 15% if you sell your shares more than what you bought them for.

For prices, there are things you need to pay for your bank, and others for the stock market itself. This varies for each operation, but in general, it’s less than 2% per order.

Thoughts

Only long-term

Only invest in the stock market if you want to hold long-term. The Moroccan stock market is so slow and stagnant that no changes happen in a day/week.

If you’re used to international markets where prices change every second, that’s not the case here. Prices rarely change, and it’s near impossible to trade (only possible for full-time traders maybe). So only invest long-term as the market will definitely go upwards (unless a new COVID is here).

Diversification

I consider this to be a drawback of investing directly in the stock market because it’s expensive to have a diversified portfolio. Shares in Morocco are expensive and you can only buy whole shares (in other stock markets, you can buy half shares…).

This means you’ll need a lot of money just to start, which is not ideal.

Extra money on IPOs

IPOs are a good moment to win some extra money and are considered to be the best opportunities in Morocco. They don’t happen often (one in 2021, 0 in 2020, and one in 2019), so when they happen, buy some stocks 🙂