JSE drops for a third week
The JSE suffered its third consecutive weekly drop on Friday, as fears about the state of the global economy weighed on investor sentiment following the release of more poor economic data.
US non-farm payrolls for September came in lower than expected on Friday. The data is considered an important indicator of the health of the world’s largest economy.
The latest figure and poor manufacturing data have further supported expectations that the US Federal Reserve may cut interest rates at its last two meetings for 2019.
“US Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell may choose to wait to see what happens with next week’s high-level trade talks before committing to more easing,” said
Edward Moya. Oanda“senior The narrative market is analyst not as clear as he may have preferred: the trend in job growth is clearly in deceleration mode and wage growth is at its lowest level in a year, but the unemployment rate hit a fresh 50-year low.”
A cut from the Fed may allow room for the SA Reserve Bank to cut the repo rate as the local economy is forecast to grow by just 0.6% in 2019, according to the Bank.
The rand gained last week after two consecutive weeks of losses, testing the R15/$ mark. At 5.21pm on Friday, it had firmed 0.79% to R15.037/$, 0.65% to R16.5114/€ and 0.97% to R18.5121/£. The euro was 0.15% firmer at $1.098.
Gold was up 0.13% to $1,506.81/oz while platinum lost 0.96% to $879.44. Brent crude added 1.25% to $58.33 a barrel.
Shortly after the JSE closed, the Dow was 0.73% higher at 26,392.23 points. In Europe, the FTSE 100 had and added Germany 0.83%,’France’s s DAX 0.47%. CAC 40 0.64%
The JSE all share gained 0.5% to 53,993.9 points and the top 40 0.48%. Banks rose 1.61% and financials 1.19%. The all share lost 2.2% in the week, cutting its 2019 gains to just 2.38%.
Famous Brands added 0.31% to R78.54 after saying earlier that it expected its basic earnings per share to be in a range of 143c and 175c, an improvement of 125%-131%, in the six months to end-August.
Pembury jumped 16.67% to 7c. On Friday, it reported a basic loss per share of 2.14c in the six months to endJune, which was a 46.7% improvement from the previous comparable period.
Adcorp fell 22.5% to R15.50 after the labour broker said on Friday it expected headline earnings per share to decrease by 93.3%-94.5% in the six months to end-August.
Statistics SA is expected to release mining and manufacturing production figures for August on Thursday, while the SA Chamber of Commerce and Industry is set to release the business confidence index for September.
The Bloomberg median forecast is for the index to have fallen to 89 points, from 89.1 in August.