JSE likely to follow Asia’s gloomy lead

Asian markets returned to gloom on Thursday morning, indicating another bad day for the JSE, which fell 1.6% on Wednesday.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 fell 0.6% after Japanese balance of trade figures for September showed exports declined by 1.2% whereas the economists’ consensus was 1.9% growth.

Tencent was down 1.1% to HK$278.40, indicating Naspers is likely to continue Wednesday’s slide of 2.26% to R2,757.15.

BHP was down 1.56% to A$33.14 in Sydney. BHP closed 2.2% down at R291.65 on the JSE on Wednesday.

The release of the US central bank’s Federal open market committee’s minutes, which indicated further interest rate increases, saw the dollar strengthen against most currencies, including the rand, which was trading at R14.27/$ at 6.20am.

The rand was at R16.40/€ and R18.69/£.

Computer group Datatec said on October 2 that it expected to report on Thursday that its first-half results would show a return to headline earnings per share (HEPS) of between 0.5 US cents and 1c from a headline loss of 5.8c.

“Datatec had a strong start to the financial year, achieving a solid operational performance across all divisions with the reshaping of Westcon International and central cost reductions proceeding according to plan,” the company said in its trading statement.

Chemicals group Spanjaard also said it expected to report a return to profit in the first half of its financial year.

Spanjaard said on October 11 that it expected to report HEPS of between 14.44c and 16.56c for the six months to end-August from a 35.48c headline loss in the matching period.

Source: businesslive.co.za