Johannesburg - Relatively strong demand for banking and platinum shares pushed the JSE above the 40‚000-point level as the South African bourse looked to recover from last week’s heavy losses.
At 12:36 the All Share [JSE:J203] index was 0.89% higher at 40 011.77 points‚ with the Top 40 - (Tradeable) [JSE:J200] index recovering 0.96% at 35 589.88 while the banking and platinum indices regained 1.26% and 1.32% respectively.
“Investors are slowly coming back into the market after the US Federal Reserve January minutes triggered a global market selloff last week. We missed out on a big bounce on Friday when most major equities clawed back much of the losses‚” said Ryan Wibberley‚ equity dealer at Investec Asset Management.
The selloff on Wednesday and Thursday last week was triggered by news that monetary easing in the US might end sooner than expected.
Precious metal prices‚ which also took a knock last week‚ rebounded on Monday‚ with platinum price up 1.57% to $1‚627 per ounce and gold up 0.86% to $1‚592 per ounce.
European markets were generally firmer at noon‚ with London’s FTSE gaining 0.60%.
On the JSE‚ global resources giant Anglo American (AGL) was 1.24% higher at R266.96‚ Northam Platinum (NHM) was up 2.77% to R39.28‚ Lonmin (LON) recovered 1.61% to R47.90 and Assore (ASR) garnered 1.87% to R350.22.
Industrial counter Bidvest (BVT) was up 2.13% to R241.54 and MTN (MTN) rallied 2.34% to R179.59.
Nedbank (NED) lifted 1.85% to R191.48 after the bank earlier reported a 19% rise in diluted headline earnings per share to 1‚595c in the year to December 2012‚ from 1‚340c a year earlier.