JSE breaks through 70 000 points – highest level ever

Africa’s largest stock exchange, SA’s Sandton-based JSE, closed at a new record high of 70 091 points on Monday, after almost touching the milestone 70k mark on Friday.

The bourse reached an all-time high of 70 327 points earlier on Monday but pared a bit in afternoon trade to close 0.24% up.

Retail giant Shoprite Group ended the day as the top performing stock, after surging almost 7% to a 52-week high. It gained R12.80 to close at R197.80 per share.

This came in the wake of the group publishing a voluntary operational update on the JSE, which showed further market share gains and sales in its core ‘Supermarkets RSA’ business growing 11.6% (growth of 9.3% group-wide) for the first quarter (ending September 2021) of its financial year.

Read: Shoprite’s quarterly sales rises over 9%

Shoprite’s strong performance comes despite the impact of the July unrest in KwaZulu-Natal and parts of Gauteng.

Richemont also hit a new 52-week high and was the second best performing Top 100 stock on the day, closing almost 3% up at R230.34.

This comes after a 10% surge on Friday, with Richemont being the biggest contributor to the benchmark FTSE/JSE Africa All Share Index.

Richemont also features on the JSE’s Top 40 index, which closed 0.34% firmer on Monday, at 63 481 points. However, the Top 40 did not surpass its record high close of 63 541, which was achieved on August 10.

Another contributor to the JSE topping the 70 000-points milestone was platinum giant Northam, which closed 2.41% firmer at R221.20 a share.

The rand was also trading firmer on Monday (+0.79%) at around R15.25 to the US dollar.

Both the JSE and the rand have been buoyed following new Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana’s debut Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement speech on Thursday, in which he committed to fiscal prudence.