JSE weaker with focus on Federal Reserve

The JSE was weaker on Tuesday, with global peers mixed as investors remained cautious while awaiting the conclusion of the US Federal Reserve policy meeting on Tuesday.

Market participants are expecting the Fed will keep interest rates unchanged when it concludes its twoday federal open market committee meeting on Wednesday. However, they will keep close attention to the central bank’s guidance for the future direction of interest rates.

After last week’s hotter-thanexpected inflation reports, investors are concerned that the central bank might be forced to keep interest rates higher for longer.

Despite the cautious mood in the markets, investors are still hoping that the influential central bank will indicate it still expects to cut rates three times later this year, as it suggested a few months ago, Bloomberg reported.

“Markets remain cautious ahead of tomorrow’s federal open market committee meeting,” Citadel Global director Bianca Botes said. “Hotter US inflation readings have resulted in traders kicking the rate-cut-expectation can further down the road.”

The JSE all share lost 0.78% to 71,868 points and the top 40 0.97%. Food producers added 0.77%. Precious metals fell 2.67%, resources 1.59%, industrials 0.78%, industrial metals 0.77%, retailers 0.56%, financials 0.41%, banks 0.26% and SA listed property 0.12%.

Sibanye-Stillwater led the losses in the precious metals sector on the day, falling 4.14% to R19. Northam Platinum lost 3.99% to R105.61, AngloGold Ashanti 2.58% to R385.50, Pan African Resources 2.58% to R4.90 and Gold Fields 2.46% to R264.09.

At 6pm, the Dow Jones industrial average was 0.35% firmer at 39,015 points, while markets were mixed in Europe.

Transaction Capital led the losses on the local bourse, falling 7.07% to R8.80. Last week, the company said it would list subsidiary WeBuyCars separately on the JSE on April 11.

The prelisting circular said Transaction Capital expected to raise R750m with a book build beginning on March 18. The company said it expected its value on the stock market, or market capitalisation, to be R8.7bn-R10bn with an estimated 413.7-million shares in issue.

Having lost as much as 1.2% on higher-for-longer US interest rates worries, the rand attempted to reverse losses on Tuesday.

At 6.10pm, the rand had strengthened 0.2% to R18.9240/$ touching the best intraday best of R18.8875. It had firmed 0.34% to R20.5483/€ and 0.23% to R24.0606/£. The euro was 0.13% weaker at $1.0857.

Gold lost 0.21% to $2,155.36/oz and platinum 2.09% to $892.9/oz.

Brent crude was 1.34% firmer at $87.49 a barrel.