JSE hovers at two-month low as US-China trade war weighs on global markets
The JSE opened at its lowest level in more than two months, tracking Asian stocks, after the prolonged US-China trade war escalated last week.
Asian markets dropped on Monday, continuing last week’s losses after US President Donald Trump slapped a 10% tariff on $300bn worth of Chinese goods as of September 1.
Trump’s latest move in the protracted trade war caused the yuan to weaken below the psychological seven-to-one US dollar level for the first time in more than a decade.
“The timing of the move will spark speculation that this is being done intentionally as a countermeasure against US tariffs, which could cool relations further and make negotiations that much tougher. We now await Trump’s response which I imagine will come via Twitter shortly,” said Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at Oanda.
The Shanghai Composite earlier dropped 1.62%, the Hong Kong Hang Seng 2.85% and Japan’s Nikkei 225 2.11%.
At 10.11am, the JSE all share had fallen 1.68% to 55,327.10 points and the top 40 1.86%. Industrials earlier dropped 2.15% and banks 1.62%.
MTN had fallen 0.17% to R111.17. The company said on Monday that its Ghanaian business increased its subscriber base by 6.2% to 21.3-million for the six months ended June.
Quilter earlier fell 0.2% to R25.03 after the financial services company announced on Monday that it will sell its life assurance business for £425m to ReAssure.
Merafe Resources dropped 4.13% to R1.16 after the the company said on Monday that its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation decreased by 45% to R435m for the six months ended June.
Source: businesslive.co.za
