JSE opens slightly up as G-7 summit fails to provide direction

The JSE opened marginally higher on Monday as the Group of Seven (G-7) meeting in Canada at the weekend failed to inspire markets.

The rand was off last week’s weakest levels, but still hovering above R13 to the dollar.

Market focus is on Wednesday’s rate decision by the US Federal Reserve, with an anticipated increase of 25 basis points priced in for now.

President Donald Trump retracted the US’s support for the usual communiqué after the meeting, and resumed his attacks on Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, accusing him of being “dishonest and weak”.

Trudeau, together with other Western leaders, criticised the implementation of higher US tariffs on a number of countries, which Trump had justified on the basis that many countries had a trade surplus while the US was trading at a deficit.

The spat continued over the course of the weekend with Trump tweeting, “Trudeau made false statements … and the fact [is] that Canada is charging massive tariffs to our US farmers, workers and companies”.

FxPro said markets were indecisive, with participants failing to find meaningful progress at the G-7 meeting “as the US marginalised what has been dubbed the G6 +1 meeting”.

With the US rejecting the communiqué as predicted, markets were directionless ,with the attention now on the US-North Korea summit on Tuesday, FxPro said.

The Dow closed 0.3% up on Friday. The Nikkei 225 gained 0.48% on Monday and the Hang Seng 0.42%.

Brent crude was 0.31% lower at $76.13 a barrel.

At 10am the all share was up 0.10% to 58,283.80 points and the top 40 had gained 0.11%. General retailers climbed 0.77%, industrials 0.43% and banks 0.38%. The gold index shed 3.4%, platinum 0.99% and resources 0.81%.

Anglo American slipped 1.25% to R321.72 and Sasol 0.75% to R488.81.

AngloGold Ashanti plummeted 4.47% to R106.34.

Alexander Forbes lost 0.82% to R6.03. Annual headline earnings per share of 44.4c were down 16.8%, largely attributable to the disposal of Lane Clark & Peacock in December 2016, the group said.

TFG rose 1.98% to R188.70 among retailers.

Resilient lost 1.63% to R58.52 in the property sector.

Vodacom dropped 2.1% to R141.42. It unveiled a new multibillion-rand black economic empowerment (BEE) deal on Monday, with the proposed R17.5bn transaction replacing the existing BEE deal, which is scheduled to unwind in October.

Naspers gained 0.96% to R3,372.

Source: businesslive.co.za