Johannesburg - Lack of liquidity pushed South African financial markets lower on Friday morning, with the rand and share prices losing ground.
US markets are closed for the Thanksgiving holiday, and the lack of foreign investor activity allowed share prices to drift lower.
Foreign buying of the big dual-listed companies with huge overseas interest has been the driving force behind JSE gains of late, and this again became clear on Friday morning.
The lack of action is a disappointment in the light of technical evidence indicating that modest advances were likely as a number of short-term metrics had exhibited "quiet" improvement.
According to the technical analysts from Imara SP Reid, all the major indices exhibited some technical improvement on Thursday and they suggested likely further short-term technical improvement.
However, by Friday mid-morning all indices were modestly down after a strong opening, hampered by a lack of liquidity and some mild profit-taking.
By mid-morning the All-share index was 0.63% softer at 51 902 points and the Top 40 index had lost 0.55% to 46 619 points. The biggest losers were resources shares, with the dollar still strong. At that stage the Resources index was 1.67% softer and the Gold index had lost 1.01%.
Banking shares are still struggling to get a run going and the Financial index was 0.60% lower with the Industrial index losing 0.42%, following weaker European markets.
Nampak [JSE:NPK] surprised the market on Friday with strong results, and the share price responded positively. The stock, which until Thursday evening had been 32.5% down over the past 30 days, gained 9.82% to trade at R25.27.
Africa’s biggest manufacturer of beverage cans said full-year trading profit gained 10% as growth in Nigeria and Angola offset production setbacks at some operations in its home market.
Trading profit from continuing operations rose to R1.8bn for the 12 months to end-September.
In the industrial sector Naspers [JSE:NPN] pulled the index lower by trading 1.31% down at R2 195.89. Investors have already discounted news that it will announce an earnings increase of 42% later this month.
Bloomberg reported on Friday morning that Naspers is planning to expand its video-streaming competitor to Netflix into three new continents next year. The company will target more than 15 million customers outside its home market, providing content across Europe, North America and Australasia, according to a source who asked not to be identified.
In the resources sector the three major commodity conglomerates were all lower. Anglo American [JSE:AGL] lost 3.85% to R88.60 and Glencore [JSE:GLN] traded 1.17% down to R20.31. BHP Billiton [JSE:BIL], which was the only big commodity share trading lower on Thursday, lost another 1.91% to trade at a new 52-week low of R176.52.
Analysts said BHP Billiton, which until recently has been more resilient than other commodity shares, is now pulling the rest of the Resources index down because of its weight in the sector.
The big dual-listed commodity giants are currently taking a hammering on the London Stock Exchange as investment banks are concerned about their cash position and ability to pay dividends. Anglo American is the second-worst performing share in the FTSE 100-index.
Standard Bank [JSE:SBK] and FirstRand [JSE:FSR], the two busiest shares in the financial sector, both traded lower. Standard Bank lost 1.75% to R133.52 and FirstRand 0.87% to R47.94.