Johannesburg - The JSE closed flat on Friday with gold miners the biggest gainers because of the weaker rand after the Fitch downgrade.
“The rand downgrade yesterday put pressure on our local currency and caused negativity in the rest of the market. Resources suffered today as a result causing a sell-off of riskier assets such as commodities. There was a general sell-off across the market‚ with commodities dipping the most as they form the biggest part of our economy. The JSE traded slightly in the red the whole day‚” a local trader said.
Rating agency Fitch overnight downgraded SA’s long-term foreign currency credit rating by one notch to BBB‚ while reducing the long-term local currency rating from A to BBB+.
At 17:00‚ the All Share
[JSE:J203] index was down 0.05% at 40 281.14 points‚ with resources the main laggards down 0.88% and gold stocks adding 1.49%.
Leading European shares were mostly flat with London’s FTSE 100 last seen 0.07% higher‚ while the Dow Jones Industrial index was down 0.21% at 13 443.42 points at 4:58.
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