JSE winners and losers 2009

Johannesburg - Betting against prevailing sentiment on stocks has paid off for brave investors in 2009, after the JSE's All-share index climbed more than 50% since its low in March.

The JSE's recovery - in line with global stock markets which rose way ahead of an improvement in the real economy - was led by resource shares, spurred by higher commodity prices and a weak dollar.

"As 2009 dawned, all platinum producers were trading at very low levels but car demand has since picked up, especially in Asia, bringing an improvement in the price," said Vestact CEO Paul Theron.

The JSE's platinum index rose 47.98% to 78 points for the year to date. The Res 20 index has so far risen by 30.48% to 50 246 in 2009, while the Top 40 index had a 26.9% increase to 24 674 points.

The JSE's top five performing stocks for the year were Capitec Bank (up 163.8%), African Eagle (160%), Jubilee Platinum (128%), Cipla Medpro (121.7%) and Aspen Pharmacare (115.8%).

"Capitec Bank was not as badly affected by monetary tightening because its client base is not interest rate-sensitive," said Neville Chester, an analyst at Coronation Fund Managers. This resulted in the strongest set of results of all the banks.

African Dawn and Blue backlash

Chester said Capitec has successfully grown its deposit base and branch network, positioning itself for strong growth of its customer base. He added the bank is on a high rating now as investors expect it to maintain this elevated growth level.

"Aspen did very well, thanks to two well-timed deals with GlaxoSmithKline," said Theron.

Abdul Davids, head of research at Kagiso Asset Management also mentioned Naspers, Kumba Iron Ore and Lonmin in the JSE Top 40 as other best-performing stocks this year.

The worst-performing index was the AltX, which lost a whopping 54.05% of its value to 1 071 points for the year to date.

"The AltX did poorly due mostly to one or two bigger AltX index constituents' weak showing, especially Blue Financial and African Dawn Capital," said Theron. He said he would expect a moderately better performance next year.

The five worst-performing stocks were Blue Financial Services with an 89.7% decline, Faritec Holdings (84.6%), Pinnacle Point Group (84.6%), African Dawn Capital (84.1%) and John Daniel Holdings (84%).

According to Davids, the most liquid companies were British American Tobacco, Anglo American, MTN, BHP and Sasol. Davids foresees a repeat performance for these firms in 2010, due to their size.

- Fin24.com