JSE closes lower Wednesday pulled down by industrial index

The Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) continued to lose ground on Wednesday despite a rally on the global stock markets.

The South Africa rand was weaker against the major currencies, with a US dollar costing R13.70, a British pound costing R17.73 and a euro costing R15.27

The all-share index, which closed at its lowest level in two months on Tuesday, shed even more on Wednesday. The all share the index was 1.13 percent down at 50,757.82 points, while the Top 40 index traded 1.29 percent softer at 44,282.63 points.

The main culprit was again the Industrial index, which includes all the big dual-listed shares which make up more than half of the JSE's market capitalisation.

The financial index was 0.86 percent lower despite a strong run on global markets by banking shares, but the resources and gold mining indices benefited from a weaker dollar, gaining 0.75 percent and 3.65 percent respectively, but industrial shares dropped 1.86 percent.

The local banks did not join the rally, despite other good news that rating agency Moody's foresees a possibility of less than 50 percent that South Africa's credit rating will be downgraded to junk status at the end of the year.

Among individual stocks on JSE, Naspers was one of the big losers in the Industrial index, trading 3.03 percent softer at R2 298.54, while Richemont shed 3.04 percent to R80.16. British American Tobacco lost 0.98 percent to R853.80.

Among the banks, FirstRand traded 0.40 percent higher at R47.70 but Standard Bank was 0.80 softer at R137.74.

Amongst the top ten movers up was Harmony Gold Mining Company, which rose 4.77 percent to R47.90. Pan African Resources rose 4.55 percent to R3.45.

Source : XINHUA