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Johannesburg - The All-share index on the JSE was again hovering around the 50 000 mark Friday morning, but lost momentum after a promising start.
The market initially received a boost from the drastic measures announced by the European Central Bank (ECB) on Thursday to counter the threat of deflation.
The local market did, however, not respond as much as elsewhere in the world where the Dow Jones and Standard & Poor indices in New York closed on new records.
Most of the action was in insurance markets, in particular in developing markets, with Sanlam [JSE:SLM] and Clientele Life [JSE:CLI] performing strongly.
By midday the All-share index was again 0.07% lower on 49 966. While the Top 40 was 0 06% weaker on 44 960. Most of the major indices were also marginally down, except for the financial index which gained 0.37%.
The ECB announced its deposit rate would be cut to -0.10%. This means banks will be charged for leaving funds at the ECB in the hope they might lend it on to businesses and consumers instead.
It also cut its lending rate to a record low of 0.15% from 0.25% and said up to €400bn would be made available in cheap loans to banks as long as they lent more to the private sector.
Although the easing measures were expected and had been largely discounted by the market, investors were cheered by the news.
The rand did not respond as much as it should have o the lower interest rates in Europe, which could lead to capital flows to South Africa, because of concerns about the state of the South African economy.
This was bad news for commodity shares, including gold shares, which recovered somewhat this week after the rand weakened sharply at the beginning of the week.
But there was a lot of activity in the financial sector and some of these shares are fast approaching the record levels reached towards the end of last month.
One of them is Standard Bank which traded at R145.25 which is 25c higher than the previous record set on 23 May.
This share is now 32.9% higher than a year ago. Firstrand also improved on high volumes with 0.76% to R40.00 just below the record of 23 May of R40.25.
In the insurance sector Old Mutual was at midday only 2c below the record set on 23 May when it gained 0.14% to R36.39 – a level which is 23.6% higher than a year ago.
There is still a lot of interest in Sanlam which improved with more than 5% yesterday to close at a new 52 week high. This morning the share price was quite volatile and reached a new record after dropping initially, but by midday the share price was 0.48% lower on R61.71.
Sanlam’s short term insurer, Santam, made a strong run this morning with a gain of 5.09% to R205.51.
The star performer however was Clientele Life, which is concentrating on the developing market. The share improved with 8.82% to a record of R18.50 and is now 50.4%stronger than a year ago.
The market initially received a boost from the drastic measures announced by the European Central Bank (ECB) on Thursday to counter the threat of deflation.
The local market did, however, not respond as much as elsewhere in the world where the Dow Jones and Standard & Poor indices in New York closed on new records.
Most of the action was in insurance markets, in particular in developing markets, with Sanlam [JSE:SLM] and Clientele Life [JSE:CLI] performing strongly.
By midday the All-share index was again 0.07% lower on 49 966. While the Top 40 was 0 06% weaker on 44 960. Most of the major indices were also marginally down, except for the financial index which gained 0.37%.
The ECB announced its deposit rate would be cut to -0.10%. This means banks will be charged for leaving funds at the ECB in the hope they might lend it on to businesses and consumers instead.
It also cut its lending rate to a record low of 0.15% from 0.25% and said up to €400bn would be made available in cheap loans to banks as long as they lent more to the private sector.
Although the easing measures were expected and had been largely discounted by the market, investors were cheered by the news.
The rand did not respond as much as it should have o the lower interest rates in Europe, which could lead to capital flows to South Africa, because of concerns about the state of the South African economy.
This was bad news for commodity shares, including gold shares, which recovered somewhat this week after the rand weakened sharply at the beginning of the week.
But there was a lot of activity in the financial sector and some of these shares are fast approaching the record levels reached towards the end of last month.
One of them is Standard Bank which traded at R145.25 which is 25c higher than the previous record set on 23 May.
This share is now 32.9% higher than a year ago. Firstrand also improved on high volumes with 0.76% to R40.00 just below the record of 23 May of R40.25.
In the insurance sector Old Mutual was at midday only 2c below the record set on 23 May when it gained 0.14% to R36.39 – a level which is 23.6% higher than a year ago.
There is still a lot of interest in Sanlam which improved with more than 5% yesterday to close at a new 52 week high. This morning the share price was quite volatile and reached a new record after dropping initially, but by midday the share price was 0.48% lower on R61.71.
Sanlam’s short term insurer, Santam, made a strong run this morning with a gain of 5.09% to R205.51.
The star performer however was Clientele Life, which is concentrating on the developing market. The share improved with 8.82% to a record of R18.50 and is now 50.4%stronger than a year ago.
