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Johannesburg - There was very little movement on the JSE on Thursday morning as investors seem to be consolidating their positions.
The industrial index continued its upward movement, but the gains were very moderate with the index only 0.10% higher by midday. The rest of the market was mostly down with the resources index the biggest loser with a drop of 1.13%.
By midday the All Share-index was 0.17% lower at 53 938 points while the Top 40-index was 0.14% softer on 47 898 points.
In their daily market snapshot Imara SP Reid’s technical analysts said that there are important resistance levels developing which must be breached for upward momentum to continue. This include a level of 48 000 points for the Top 40-index.
The big industrial shares generated the most interest and Imara SP Reid said that the overall technical structure for industrial shares continue to be well supported although the area at just shy of 70 000 points represents significant near-term resistance. By midday the index was on 68 154 points.
Naspers [JSE:NPN], which gained more than 4% on Wednesday on Tencent’s solid results, gained another 0.51% to R1 850.50 and traded at one stage as high as R1 877.99. SABMiller [JSE:SAB] was also stronger but the gains were modest and by midday the share traded 0.25% stronger on R666.87.
There was a lot of interest in the paper industry, with both Mondi [JSE:MNP] and Sappi [JSE:SAP] announcing results this week. The market loved Mondi’s results and on Wednesday the share gained more than 7.5%.
On Thursday morning it was another 2.04% higher on R268.36, which means that the share gained 10.97% over the past week and 39.37% over the past 90 days.
On Thursday Sappi said second-quarter profit rose 75%, helped in part by a stronger rand relative to the US dollar, as the company continued efforts to reduce debt, but the share price did not respond.
By midday the share traded 0.19% lower on R46.91. Mondi is currently outperforming Sappi and Sappi’s share price is only 10.38% higher over the past 90 days.
Tiger Brands [JSE:TBS] was one of the busiest shares on Thursday after the group released a trading statement that the basic headline earnings for the first half of the year will be 2% lower than the same period last year.
The results were negatively impacted by foreign exchange losses in Dangote Flour Mills arising from the devaluation of the Nigerian Naira and a weak performance by the group’s Kenyan subsidiary, Haco Tiger Brands. By midday the share price was 0.87% lower on R301.59.
Bidvest was heavily traded as the company is in the process of acquiring all the shares in Adcock Ingram, but the share price did not respond much. By midday it traded only 0.01% stronger on R305.90
Another busy share was Life Health Care [JSE:LHC] which announced that earnings per share (HEPS) decreased by 2.9% primarily due to the impact of the increased funding costs for international operations.
Normalised earnings from continuing operations was 10.4% higher buy the share price lost 2.10% to R38.86.
