JSE moves in line with Wall St

Johannesburg - The JSE ended flat on Tuesday moving in line with a sideways Wall Street, with a local trader saying the bourse was seeing some buying, but with market players remaining cautious.

At 17:00 the JSE all share index was flat, down 0.17%, resources weakened 0.59%, gold producers fell 2.40% and platinum counters declined 0.72%.

Banks and financials collected 0.69% and 0.45% respectively, while industrials were unchanged.

The rand was bid at 7.49 to the dollar, from 7.47 when the JSE closed on Monday. Gold was quoted at $1 164.32 a troy ounce from $1 170.60 at the JSE's last close, and platinum was at $1 454/oz, from $1 452/oz at its previous close.

"We were down this morning, but we ended flat. The GDP figures were better than expected, I think the market still has a bit of legs to it," the trader said.

"The Dow is slightly down. I think there is still a bit of upside in the market; markets just don't want to fall.

"The overseas guys are buying and pushing the market up, but our local guys are selling. The heavyweights are looking a bit pricey. I wouldn't rush into the market. The guys are a bit cautious," he said.

Dow Jones Newswire reported that US stocks opened lower on Tuesday, led by the energy and financial sectors as crude-oil futures fell and worries about the financial sector increased after China's banking regulator warned the nation's lenders to strictly comply with capital requirements or face sanctions.

The Djia was down 60 points, or 0.6%, to 10 389, recently. Boeing led the measure's declines, dropping 1.7%. Hewlett-Packard was also among the measure's worst performers, falling 1.1% despite the company reporting a 14% jump in quarterly profit, as investors were disappointed by an 8.4% drop in revenue in the quarter.

The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 0.2%. The Standard & Poor's 500 edged 0.1% lower. Declines in its energy and financial sectors were offset by gains in its telecommunications and health-care categories.

The Commerce Department's revisions to several of its third-quarter estimates tempered sentiment on Tuesday. The revisions showed lower gross domestic product and consumer spending and a wider trade deficit than previously estimated. However, that was offset in part by the fifth monthly increase in US home prices in September, as well as a sequential rise in home prices in the third quarter, according to the S&P Case-Shiller home- prices indexes.

Third-quarter US GDP was revised lower, to 2.8% from the 3.5% gain originally estimated, although the revision was in line with forecasts. It showed overall consumer spending rose 2.9% in the third quarter and contributed 2.1 percentage points to GDP at annual rates, smaller than prior estimates. A wider trade deficit also contributed to the lower third-quarter GDP number. Still, the rise in GDP was the first since the second quarter of 2008 and the strongest in nearly two years At the time the JSE closed, the Djia had weakened 0.47%.

- I-Net Bridge