JSE opens flat as Naspers comes under renewed pressure

The JSE opened flat on Tuesday as market heavyweight Naspers came under renewed pressure from a weaker Tencent in Hong Kong trade.

Tencent, of which Naspers owns a third and which is the main driver of Naspers’s own share price, was down nearly 3%. Tencent has tumbled 25% from its January peak, erasing about $140bn of market value.

Naspers was 2.77% lower at R3,223.33 in early morning trade. It has lost 6.6% for the year so far.

General retailers led at the opening, supported by resources.

The Dow closed 0.57% weaker on Monday as the negative momentum among tech stocks from the previous sessions persisted. Twitter lost 8%, Netflix 6% and Facebook and Amazon both 2%.

Asian markers were mixed, with the Nikkei 225 up 0.04% and the Hang Seng down 0.43%.

The rand continued to trade robustly, improving average trading levels to R13.13 to the dollar from R13.22 as the recent surge in the dollar paused, with the euro clawing back some gains. If dollar weakness persists, the local currency could hit R13 over the short term, analysts said.

Brent crude was marginally softer at $75.28 a barrel while platinum and gold prices were flat.

At 9.36am the all share was 0.02% up at 57,324.30 points but the top 40 had lost 0.09%. General retailers rose 1.71%, resources 0.86%, property 0.7%, platinums 0.65%, banks 0.64% and financials 0.58%. Industrials dropped 0.65%.

BHP added 1.175 to R301.04.

Imperial Holdings was up 0.85% to R215.39.

Standard Bank rose 0.73% to R204.50 and Nedbank 0.72% to R275.46.

Massmart added a further 0.49% to R118.08, following a trading update on Monday, which was well received by the market despite basic earnings per share (EPS) expected to decline by between 40% and 50%.

Redefine Properties rose 1.04% to R10.66, Growthpoint 0.88% to R26.25 and Nepi Rockcastle 1.02% to R122.18.

Spur climbed 2.31% to R26.10 after earlier reporting upbeat annual sales numbers at RocoMamas and The Hussar Grill.