South Africa Market Watch | 22 July 2015: Bear appears across all sectors on the JSE today

Johannesburg, South Africa (Capital Markets in Africa) — On Wednesday, the South African JSE All Share closed 1.75 percent or 923.86 points lower with losses across the board led by tumbling resource shares. The JSE Top 40 index fell by 1.87 percent or 885.35 points to end at 46,370.97 points.

The financial sector index plunged by 1.35 percent or 620.07 points at 45,245.68 points. Both Industrial sector index and industrial 25 index plummeted by 1.48 percent to end at 75,542.46 points and 1.55 percent to settle at 67,390.93 points respectively. Likewise, the resource sector index fell by 3.92 percent with a closing level of 36,108.81 points and the JSE Gold index tumbled 0.80 percent at 862.83 points.

Looking at the market strength/breath, the market recorded 96 price gainers and 262 price losers as well as 52 remained unchanged, hence market strength/breathe ended negative. On the top ten list of movers upwards today was African Oxygen, whose shares advanced 5.56 percent to ZAR 13.30 after investors traded 1,310,627 shares in 109 deals. ADVTECH  Limited rose 5.17 percent to ZAR 12.20 after 149 deals exchanged a total of 485,833 shares. SABVEST Limited gained 5.91 percent to ZAR 34.95 after 11,713 traded shares and Crookes Brothers Limited closed at ZAR 68.60 after gaining 5.70 percent.

Amongst the losing shares today was BHP Billiton  whose shares dipped 4.53 percent after investors bought and sold 3,334,051 shares in 5,701 deals, sending the share price down to ZAR 229.31. Petmin Limited slid 4.48% to R1.28 after 2,247,232 shares were exchanged in 143 deals. OAKBAY Resources & Energy plunged by 12.50 percent to trade at ZAR 35.00 and Mazor Group Limited price went down to ZAR 1.27 by giving away  ZAR 0.18 (about by 12.41 percent).

On the foreign exchange market, the South rand depreciated against US dollar at ZAR 12.4184 by losing 0.77 percent and by 1.01 percent against British pound to trade at ZAR 19.3290. The rand also depreciated by 0.45 percent against the Euro to end at ZAR 13.5368.