JSE soars to record levels driven by Financial and top 40 Indices

Despite two further companies – Bell Equipment and Sasfin – confirming plans to delist from the JSE, Africa’s biggest stock exchange closed at a new record high of 82 154 points on Monday.

The bourse topped the 82 000 points mark on the back of strong showings by the Financial Index and the JSE Top 40 Index, up 1.33% and 0.65%, respectively.

While the JSE closed just 0.57% up on the day, it also closed 0.73% stronger on Friday.

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Monday’s close saw the Top 40 topping the 75 000 points mark for the first time, ending the day at 75 186.

This means the JSE All Share Index (Alsi) is up just over 8.5% year to date.

The JSE has been buoyed by SA’s new government of national unity (GNU), with the bourse jumping 3.5% on 18 June, before the GNU cabinet was even announced and the day before President Cyril Ramaphosa was inaugurated.

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It lost some ground on the GNU cabinet announcement delays but has steadily firmed since then. Last week the JSE firmed 1.8%.

Financial leads the charge on JSE

On Monday, the market also firmed on increased expectations for the US Federal Reserve to finally start to cut interest rates in August.

The South African Reserve Bank (Sarb) will announce its next repo rate decision on Thursday (18 July). However, there is general consensus that it will be another “hold” decision, with the Sarb unlikely to cut before the likes of the Fed.

The rand, which has seen seesaw movements over the past two months, weakened over 1.4% on Monday to around R18.23 to the dollar, but this was following an attempted assassination on former US president Donald Trump.

The Financial 15 Index – made up of the big banks and financial services companies – led the charge on the JSE on Monday, with Investec up 2.79%, while all the banks were in the green.

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Sasfin and Bell Equipment rocketed over 45% following confirmation of buyout and delisting plans; however, both companies are regarded as smaller cap stocks and are not part of the JSE Top 40 index.

The top three traded stocks on Monday were Naspers, FirstRand and Capitec.

JSE behemoth Naspers closed marginally down (almost R2.8 billion in shares traded), FirstRand closed around 1% up (just over R1.5 billion in shares traded), and Capitec closed 2.05% up (just over R1.37 billion in shares traded).

This article was republished from Moneyweb. Read the original here