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Johannesburg - The JSE moved further into record territory
on Thursday, but investors took a breather after the strong run of the past few days.
Most of the major indices closed at record levels on Wednesday,
but were only marginally higher on Thursday to move the bar even higher.
The All-share index, the Top 40 index and the Industrial index
closed on all-time highs, while the resources index ended the day on a 52-week
high.
These moves are mainly due to local investors buying dual-listed shares to benefit from the weaker rand, which traded at R13.59 to the dollar on Thursday. The softer local unit is however not good news for foreign investors, and they are currently disinvesting from the JSE despite a strong foreign interest in emerging markets.
The JSE announced on Wednesday that foreigners were net sellers of
South African shares to the value of R90.5bn for the year to date.
However, the All-share index was 0.15%
higher on a new intraday all-time high of 56 834 points at mid-morning, while the Top 40 index traded 0.13% stronger on a high of 50 621 points.
The major indices were mainly driven by the Industrial index,
which includes some of the biggest dual-listed stocks. The index is also on an
all-time high and gained 0.09% to a record of 85 240 points on
Wednesday morning.
The Resources index also closed on a 52-week high on Wednesday and
gained 0.38% to 36 511 points, but the index is still far below the
all-time best of more than 50 000 points.
The Financial index was only 0.08% higher at 41 473 points, and is not yet in record territory. The all-time high is 45 184 points and
the 52-week high is 43 062 points.
Most of the market's attention was on Vodacom [JSE:VOD], after the share price dropped more than 5% on Wednesday following the Competition Commission's statement that it has started investigating the company for abuse of market dominance, after the firm secured an exclusive contract to provide mobile services to the government.
The share price was however 2.71% higher at R155.46 on Thursday after
Vodacom’s chief executive Shameel Joosub said the group had followed due
process in bidding for the government contract. Almost 4 million shares were
sold in early morning trade for more than R620.5m. There was also much interest in MTN [JSE:MTN], but the share price lost 0.76% to R122.79.
Naspers [JSE:NPN], whose weight in the market indices has recently helped to
push the Industrial and All-share indices higher, was only 0.07%
stronger on a new all-time high of R30 97.26. Steinhoff [JSE:SHF] however lost
0.34% to R59.10 and British American Tobacco [JSE:BTI] traded 1.04% softer at
R884.93.
Two of the three top commodity shares, Anglo American [JSE:AGL] and Glencore [JSE:GLN], again reached new highs, pulling the rest of the sector higher. Anglo gained 1.24% to a 52-week high of R261.48 and Glencore was 1.30% stronger on an all-time high of R65.64.
