Chinese rebound may be good news for JSE

A halt in the slide of Chinese stock markets may help the JSE escape a sixth trading day of losses on Tuesday.

Although Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was up 0.42% ahead of the JSE’s opening, Tencent was down 0.4% — a bad omen for its shareholder Naspers, which fell 0.17% to R2,885.05 on Monday.

The JSE all share index slipped 0.35% to close at 54,219 points on Monday, taking its drop from the 61,777-point peak it reached on January 26 to 12%.

The top 40 index, which is offered as an exchange-traded fund (ETF) by various financial institutions, closed at 48,042, taking its drop from its 55,192-point peak at November 21 to 13%.

The total return of the Satrix top 40 ETF for the year to date is negative 2.8%.

Of the various JSE sector indices offered as ETFs, Satrix Resi, which tracks the index of the JSE’s 10 largest mining companies, has done best with a total return of 19% for the year to date.

Property has been the JSE’s worst performer so far in 2018, with the listed property index tracker offered by CoreShares down 22%, followed by Satrix’s industrial index tracker, which is down 15%.

Agricultural investment holding company Zeder said on October 1 that it expected to report on Tuesday an up to sevenfold increase in interim headline earnings per share (HEPS) for the six months to end-August.

Zeder said the jump in HEPS was thanks to a strong recovery in most of its underlying companies. Profit was also boosted by the sale of Capespan’s 9% stake in Chinese fruit producer Joy Wing Mau for about R1.2bn.

Growth in basic and attributable earnings per share would be about half of the growth in HEPS due to booking a goodwill charge for Agrivision, the trading statement said.

The rand was trading at R14.86 to the dollar, R17.09 to the euro, and R19.48 to the pound at 7am.