JSE flat as market eyes US corporate earnings

The JSE was little changed on Friday morning, with losses by banks and retailers offsetting gains by some miners.

The global mood is cautious, with focus on US corporate earnings, with a number of major financial institutions set to report their results later.

Typically, earnings season comes with a bump higher in stock prices, said Vestact analysts. As things stand, equities seem to be in a holding pattern possibly due to the surge in equity prices so far in 2019.

The rand was slightly weaker on Friday morning, retreating past the psychologically important R14/$ level.

At 10am the all share had gained 0.03% to 58,201.2 points and the top 40 was 0.04% up. Banks were down 0.94% and general retailers 0.65%. Platinums were up 1.38% and gold miners 1.25%.

Gold and platinum were flat at $1,292.20/oz and $893.74 respectively. Brent crude was little changed at $70.94 a barrel.

Absa was up 1.7% to R158.57.

EOH fell 8.2% to R10.30, having reported earlier that it expected headline earnings per share to slump 409% in the six months to end-January, due to impairments of some of its assets.

Richemont gained 0.6% to R100.74, but remains down 1.4% this week. Credit Suisse has warned that it believes the company’s shares are overvalued, due to the market underestimating the amount of cash needed within the multinational retailer’s various businesses.

Naspers was up 0.36% to R3,587.84.

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