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Johannesburg - South African stocks eked out gains on Friday, snapping a four-day losing streak, as technical factors and a recovery in European shares gave the market a late lift after it spent the bulk of the session in the red.
The market is still under pressure and the benchmark Top-40 index clocked up its biggest weekly decline since June last year and is on course for its steepest quarterly fall since the third quarter of 2011.
The index is down 3.1% this quarter, which ends on Tuesday, the biggest fall since the same quarter in 2011 when it fell more than 7%.
In Friday's session mining companies such as platinum producer Lonmin stumbled in the face of retreating commodity prices.
Lonmin, the world's third-largest platinum producer, closed 2.5% lower as the precious metal fell 0.4% to $1 300.49 an ounce, not far from a 15-month low hit on Thursday.
But overall, charts helped the wider market rally after momentum indicators showed Johannesburg's main indices had strayed into oversold territory on Thursday, a signal that a rebound was on the cards.
Looking ahead, the market - which has scaled a number of record peaks this year, the last in July - is expected to put in further gains, with a Reuters poll of traders and analysts seeing the Top-40 index 4% higher by the end of the year.
But they are less optimistic about the index's future performance than in a similar survey taken a year ago, when markets were awash in cash from the US Federal Reserve.
That party is coming to an end as the US Fed is widely expected to start tightening soon. Slowing growth in China is also taking some of the shine off resource and mining shares and emerging markets in general.
"The slowdown in Chinese growth and the impact of the US interest rates going up, will be the deciding factor in the emerging market space," said Owen Nkomo, executive partner at Inkunzi Investments.
On Friday, the Top-40 finished 0.37% higher at 44 507. The wider All-share index added 0.32% to 44 663.
According to preliminary market data, there were 181 advancers and 138 decliners while trade was average with 185 million shares swapping hands.
