JSE steady as investors wait for ANC policy direction

Johannesburg - Share prices hardly moved on Friday as investors wait to see what will happen at the ANC’s policy conference, which is under way in Johannesburg.

All indices were marginally higher at mid-morning as investors moved to the sidelines to see what is said at the conference about the state of the local economy, and what is needed to fix it.

The rand was much softer on Friday, after better-than-expected estimates of economic growth in the United States led to some short selling of emerging currencies in New York last night. Higher yields in US bonds signalled an imminent move away from emerging currencies as they lost some of their attraction for carry-trade.

At mid-morning the rand was R13.09 to the dollar, but this had limited influence on the dual-listed shares in the industrial and resources sectors.

• READ: Rand slides as banks warn SA currency performance won't last
  

By mid-morning the All-share index was 0.15% up at 51 432 points, while the Top 40 index, which includes all the dual-listed shares, traded 0.18% higher at 45 292 points.

The Resources index was 0.44% higher, while the Industrial index was only 0.08% stronger. The Financial index, which lost some momentum on Thursday afternoon after a promising start earlier in the morning, was 0.01% softer.

Naspers [JSE:NPN] continued to slide on Friday morning, dropping 0.79% to R2 529.81 per share – widening the discount to the value of its investment in Chinese internet giant Tencent.

Naspers is now trading more than 26% below the market value of its 34.4% stake in Tencent, and some investors are becoming uneasy about what they regard as destruction of value.

Before Friday’s trade Naspers was already 7.8% lower over the past 30 days, despite some strong results announced last week.

Richemont [JSE:CFR] was one of the strong performers among the major stocks, gaining 2.09% to R108.81. Remgro [JSE:REM], which lifted more than 3% over the previous seven days, improved 0.97% to R213.51.

Banking shares, which experienced big swings on Thursday, were steadier on Friday. Standard Bank [JSE:SBK], which dropped more than 2% on Thursday afternoon after gaining more than 1% in the morning, lost 0.20% to R142.68. Barclays Africa [JSE:BGA] was 0.44% softer at R142.87, but FirstRand [JSE:FSR] traded 0.08% higher to R47.44.

Resources shares were mixed on Friday after their recovery over the last few days. Anglo American, which is more than 7% higher over the previous seven days, gained 0.80% to R177.15. BHP [JSE:BIL] was however 0.27% softer at R210.20 and Glencore [JSE:GLN] was 0.45% lower at R45.87.

South32 [JSE:S32], which gained almost 9% over the seven days before Friday’s trade, made a turnaround and lost 1.87% to R26.83.

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