JSE slumps on trade jitters, led by 4% fall in banks

The JSE fell almost 1% on Friday, capping what was a busy week in terms of news, with rand sensitive stocks taking their direction from risk-off trade.

A decision by the White House to implement $50bn in new tariffs against Chinese goods spooked the market, with the JSE, along with US and European markets, all lower on the day.

The prospect of trade war — which analysts said was increasingly been seen as an impediment to global economic growth — hit local mining shares, with diversified miners posting the greatest losses.

The rise in global trade tension came at a time when emerging-market export growth had already started to slow, said Capital Economics analysts.

Local news was also downbeat, with Eskom continuing with load shedding, amid an ongoing unprotected strike at the utility.

The all share fell 1.43% to 57,660.5 points and the top 40 dropped 1.63%. The bourse lost 0.97% for the week.

Banks fell 3.94%, gold miners 2.83% and financials 2.44%. Platinums firmed 0.2%.

Diversified miner Anglo American slumped 3.41% to R307.25, BHP 2.9% to R300.76 and Glencore 2.54% to R68.77.

Anglo Gold Ashanti fell 5.25% to R109.28.

Standard Bank slipped 5.23% to R197.10, FirstRand 4.3% to R60.50 and Nedbank 3.94% to R264.95.

Steinhoff International lost 3.2% to R121, after it said earlier it had put its loss-making Austrian chain Kika-Leiner’s properties up for sale.

Barclays Africa gave up 2.04% to R162.30, after reports earlier that it may halve the number of senior management at its SA operations.

Basil Read crashed 88.89% to 2c, after earlier saying it had filed for business rescue.

Shortly after the JSE closed the Dow was off 0.93% to 24,942.05 points, while in Europe, the FTSE 100 had fallen 1.34%, the DAX 30 0.53% and the CAC 40 0.18%.

At the same time platinum had lost 1.68% to $890.14 an ounce and gold 1.59% to $1,281.416. Brent crude was 3.23% lower at $73.502 a barrel, falling after further indications from Saudi Arabia and Russia that production would soon be stepped up.