Trade jitters plague markets

The JSE closed weaker for the second consecutive session yesterday as uncertainty about global trade‚ against the backdrop of a hawkish stance from the US Federal Reserve‚ continued to rattle markets.

Analysts said the steady decline in emerging-market stocks in the past few months was a full-blown plunge as China extended its losses‚ from its year high‚ to 20%.

Foreigners have been dumping emerging-market investments with the net outflows from domestic bond and equity markets amounting to R30.6-billion this year.

While this has been predominantly driven by a sharp sell-off in bonds‚ stocks have seen inflows dropping from a peak of R35-billion early last month, to R6.6-billion.

Last week’s total outflows amounted to R14.1-billion.

Naspers and rand hedges Anheuser-Busch InBev, British American Tobacco and Capitec led the losers on the day‚ on a volume basis.

The JSE all-share closed 1.14% lower at 55 254.7 points. The Top-40 also lost 1.14%. The gold index shed 3.46%‚ property 1.77%‚ industrials 1.74%‚ platinums 1.33%‚ financials 0.79% and banks 0.77%. Resources rose a marginal 0.04%.

Standard Bank dropped 1.64% to R184.85.

Sibanye-Stillwater plummeted 11.19% to R8.33 after reporting the death of another mine worker.