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JSE inches down

Johannesburg - The JSE edged lower during its opening session on Monday in tentative trade.

The local bourse shed 2% last week, with general mining shares the hardest hit amid global growth concerns.

Viv Govender, market analyst at Vunani Private Clients Services, said: "It is probably the market consolidation given that we are still 15% up since the start of October last year."

At 09:18 local time, the JSE All Share [JSE:J203] index was down 0.15% to 33 522.89 points, with platinum miners falling 0.72%, gold miners dipping 0.15%, but resources up a marginal 0.09%.

Industrials slipped 0.09%, banks lost 1.52% and financials were down 0.59%.

The rand was trading at R7.68 to the US dollar, from R7.70 at the JSE's close on Friday. Gold was quoted at $1 664.37 a troy ounce from $1 663.32/oz at the JSE's previous close, while platinum was at $1 637.70/oz from $1 621/oz.

In Asia, stock markets were mixed on Monday despite modest gains on Wall Street on Friday, as global growth concerns continued to keep many buyers at bay, Dow Jones Newswires reported.

European stocks opened higher on Monday in a rebound from last week's selloff, but lingering concerns about global growth prospects are likely to keep a cap on gains.

Last week saw European stocks post their biggest weekly declines so far this year.

The FTSE 100 was up 0.36% to 5 875.80 points at about 09:00 local time.

At the same time, weekend press reports that Germany would not stand in the way of allowing the European Financial Stability Facility and the European Stability Mechanism bailout funds to be combined to boost the region's "firewall", and prevent the crisis in the periphery from spreading, were expected to underpin sentiment.

On the data front, all eyes will be on the release of the German Ifo survey later in the day.

Newedge expected to see another slight uptick in the index in March, to 110 from 109.6 in February.

"Should our forecast materialise, this would be the fifth consecutive increase in the survey indicator that - at the current stage - points to a modest recovery in activity," said Newedge.

"However, the breakdown of the report is expected to show a mixed bag, with the current conditions index falling slightly versus another small uptick in the expectations indicator," it added.

Also on the agenda, US pending home sales will shed some light on the development of housing activity in February. The median forecast is for pending home sales to have risen by 1% month-on-month, said Newedge.

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Rand - Dollar
19.08
+0.4%
Rand - Pound
23.60
+0.9%
Rand - Euro
20.32
+0.3%
Rand - Aus dollar
12.24
+0.5%
Rand - Yen
0.12
+0.4%
Platinum
942.50
-0.8%
Palladium
1,028.50
-0.1%
Gold
2,392.04
+0.5%
Silver
28.74
+1.8%
Brent Crude
87.11
-0.2%
Top 40
67,314
+0.2%
All Share
73,364
+0.1%
Resource 10
63,285
-0.0%
Industrial 25
98,701
+0.3%
Financial 15
15,499
+0.1%
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