Johannesburg - The JSE ended 86 points higher on
Monday, holding on in the black despite weaker European markets and a
negative opening on Wall Street.
The bourse announced earlier that it would not extend trading hours.
This came after it had to delay the opening of the equity market for 50
minutes due to technical problems.
At 17:00 the JSE all share index had collected 0.32%, with resources
edging up 0.24%. However, gold miners declined 0.81% and platinum producers
were flat, down 0.04%.
Banks were off 0.13% but financials were up 0.22% and industrials moved
0.47% higher.
The rand was bid at 7.38 to the dollar, from 7.46 when the JSE closed on
Friday. Gold was quoted at $1 176.25 a troy ounce from $1 163.85/oz at
the JSE's last close, and platinum was at $1 454.50/oz, from
$1 436.50/oz the bourse's previous close.
"The JSE would like to sincerely apologise for the disruption to Equity
Market trading this morning in which the Market Open was delayed by 50
minutes," it said.
"To resolve a previous network routing issue experienced by the JSE,
router software upgrades were implemented on the JSE's routers over the
weekend. These upgrades were unsuccessful and the changes were rolled back
late on Saturday afternoon. As a precaution, customers were advised by the
JSE on Sunday (29 November) to be on-site early on 30 November 2009 to
confirm receipt of data from the JSE.
"This morning, the JSE determined that the rollback was not fully
successful and hence made the decision to delay the market open to ensure
that customer connectivity was stable and that all customers had received
and processed start-of-day reference data. Further corrective actions were
taken by the JSE to ensure the equity market could be opened as soon as
possible, which then opened at 09:50," it explained.
Said a local trader: "We ended slightly higher on the market today, we
held up quite nicely considering that European markets were down. US markets
are down.
"A lot of market participants are still calling the market too high.
There is uncertainty as to where the market will go.
"We will probably see a sideways movement for the next month or two," he
said.
"The gold index is negative. The weaker dollar is supporting the other
commodities more than gold," he added.
Dow Jones newswires reported that US stocks fell slightly on Monday, as
investors were disappointed by mixed Black Friday sales results and a Dubai
government official's statement that Dubai World's debt isn't guaranteed by
the government.
The Djia was down 15 points, or 0.2%, to 10 294 recently, led by Boeing,
which dropped 0.7%. United Technologies and General Electric were also weak,
down 0.6% each. The declines were held in check by financial components Bank
of America and JP Morgan Chase, which jumped more than 1.8% each, rebounding
from their Friday declines as the Dubai official said the markets shouldn't
worry about banks.
The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite slipped 0.3%. The Standard &
Poor's 500 index fell 0.1%. The energy and industrials sectors led the S&P
500's drop, with energy stocks including Chesapeake Energy and Valero Energy
being weighed down by a decline in crude-oil futures.
In other markets, gold futures also fell, while the dollar moved lower
against the euro but was higher against the yen. Treasuries declined, with
the 10-year note recently off 8/32 to yield 3.236%.
The small declines in stocks Monday came after Abdulrahman Al Saleh,
director general of Dubai's Department of Finance, told state-run Dubai TV
on Monday that Dubai World's debt isn't guaranteed by the Dubai government
and that markets need to differentiate between the holding company and the
state.
Dubai World's debt problems were revealed late on Wednesday, when the
city-state's largest corporate entity asked creditors for a six-month stay
on repayment of its $60bn in debts. Stocks slumped Friday in reaction.
When the JSE closed, the Djia was last down 0.08%.
- I-Net Bridge