South Africa Equity Markets | 04 Nov 2015: Positive momentum persists, Resource shares gain 3.65%, South Africa’s rand slips

Johannesburg, South Africa Capital Markets in Africa —The bullish momentum persisted at the equity trading session at the end of Wednesday’s trading session. The Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) All Share (the broadest measure of the equity market performance) gained 0.99percent or 532.94 points to settle at 54,609.01 points and the benchmark JSE Top 40 index ended 1.10 percent or 532.80 points higher to end at 49,081.01 points.

The financial sector index jumped by 0.61 percent or 279.60 points at 45,913.85 points. Industrial sector index and industrial 25 index grew by 0.69 percent to end at 81,703.90 points and advanced by 0.76 percent to trade at 73,648.67 points respectively. The resource index also soared by 3.65 percent or 1,228.16 points to settled at 34,846.44 points but the Gold mining sector index fell by 0.13 percent with a closing level of 1,045.39 points.

Looking at the market strength/breath (measured as ratio of gainers to losers), the market recorded 119 price gainers and 124 price losers, hence market strength/breathe closed in the negative region.  Among the top gainers today was Glencore Xstrata which advanced 7.98 percent to ZAR 27.05 per share after 1,812 deals traded 5,404,614 shares. Anglo American  gained 6.46 percent to ZAR 125.81 per share after 4,307,305 shares were bought through 8,342 deals.

In the biggest losers list today was Trencor went down by 9.61 percent at ZAR 46.10 after 928 deals sold 331,272 shares. Lonmin lost 8.79 percent to close at ZAR 4.98 after 3,041,350 shares were traded in 393 deals..

On the forex markets front, the South rand was weaker against US dollar at ZAR 13.9733 after losing 1.59 percent and against British pound to trade at ZAR 21.4446 after dropping 1.25 percent. The rand sagged by 0.52 percent against the Euro to close at ZAR 15.1637.