Precious metal stocks pull back

The precious metals and mining index fared worst on a slightly weaker JSE as commodity prices took a breather on higher Covid-19 cases in India and as US oil inventories rose. The precious metals index fell 1.9% on Thursday but is still up nearly 17% for the year to date, according to Infront data.

India reported its highest daily number of Covid-19 infections since the start of the pandemic, according to Johns Hopkins University data, with almost 315,000 new cases in a day. The country is the world’s largest consumer of gold and third largest of oil.

The JSE all share lost 0.26% on the day to 66,971 points and the top 40 0.35%. Resources fell 0.91%, while listed property gained 0.49%.

After running hard late last year and in the first quarter of 2021, commodity gains are expected to taper off, said Investec chief economist Annabel Bishop. She said, however, that as SA is a large commodity exporter, the gains achieved “can have lasting effects for SA in the next year too, and a positive impact on GDP growth”.

At 5.50pm, gold had fallen 0.6% to $1,782.43/oz, while platinum was little changed, but remained above $1,200. Palladium was down 1.49% to $2,831/oz and silver 1.23% to $26.20.

Northam Platinum led losses among precious metal miners, falling the most in a month, down 3.44% to R266.50. Impala relinquished 3.09% to R285, Sibanye-Stillwater 2.66% to R69.76 and Anglo American Platinum 1.78% to R2,051.24.

Despite the overall negative tone of the market, some stocks outperformed. These included Pepkor, which had its biggest one-day gain since November 2020, leaping 4.83% to R15.63. Prosus also provided some support, rising 1.65% to R1,591.52.

Allied Electronics added 5.68% to R11.54, after earlier confirming a special dividend of 96c per share, which comes as a result of the demerger of Bytes Technology.

Earlier, the Shanghai Composite fell 0.23%, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gained 0.41% and Japan’s Nikkei 225 2.38%. At 6.15pm, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 0.18% to 34,075 points. In Europe, the FTSE 100 gained 0.62%, France’s CAC 40 0.91% and Germany’s DAX 30 0.82%. At the same time, the rand had weakened 0.36% to R14.2914/$ and 0.14% to R17.1671/€, while it had gained 0.22% to R19.7954/£. The euro lost 0.2% to $1.2011.