JSE starts Friday positively after Facebook rocked markets on Thursday

The JSE opened higher on Friday, as the Dow shrugged off massive losses from Facebook to end the day 0.44% higher. Asian markets were mixed, with the Nikkei 225 rising 0.56%. The Hang Seng softened 0.07%.

Brent crude was flat at $74.44 a barrel while platinum and gold prices edged higher.

Miners led at the JSE’s opening with banks and financials gaining from a stronger rand, trading at R13.1991 to the dollar from R13.2452. The euro clawed back some lost ground against a rampant dollar.

The world’s foremost tech company tumbled 19% on Thursday, the largest one-day market loss in history. This followed a disappointing trading update, reflecting lower-than-expected revenue for the second quarter as well as disappointing global daily active users.

Sasfin Securities analyst David Shapiro said in a tweet that Facebook’s 19% plunge was bigger than the total market cap of local market heavyweight Naspers. He said the $120bn fall equates to R1.59-trillion. “That is Naspers’s market cap of R1.45-trillion with change,” he said.

Naspers was marginally higher at the opening, rising 0.35% to R3,326.99 amid reports that management was mulling breaking up the company, with profits nearly exclusively driven by its interest of 31.2% in Chinese internet company Tencent. Despite this, Naspers has no management input into the activities of Tencent.

The market was eyeing US GDP growth data for the second quarter, set to be released later on Friday. Many economists have predicted that the report will show robust growth, and economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal expect a 4.4% rate on average, Dow Jones Newswires reported.

On Thursday, US President Donald Trump said: “You’re going to see on Friday what happens with GDP. A lot of predictions … some with a five in front of it … of a 5% GDP,” he said: “It could be very close. It could even happen.”

At 9.30am the all share was 0.72% higher at 57,151.70 points and the top 40 rose 0.77%. Resources rose 2.46%, platinums 0.78%, banks 0.56% and general retailers 0.37%.

Anglo American lifted 2.96% to R300.52 and Sasol 1.11% to R517.36.

Anheuser-Busch InBev lost a further 0.27% to R1,346.10. It fell more than 3% on Thursday, after earlier reporting flat global sales and falling volumes in SA in the six months to end-June.

British American Tobacco shed 1.82% to R716.70. The group earlier reported a 56.9% jump in revenue for the six-months to end-June, driven by an 11% rise in cigarette sales.

Nedbank rose 0.35% to R268.86. It said in a trading statement that headline earnings per share (HEPS) to end-June were expected to rise between 23% and 28%.

FirstRand was up 0.74% to R66.80.

Cement producer Sephaku Holdings dropped 8.8% to R2.28.

Intu Properties recovered 0.28% to R28.58. It plunged 9.09% on Thursday after slashing its interim dividend to end-June.

Capital & Counties shed 0.74% to R46.75. The property group announced on Wednesday that it was on track to split into two separate companies.

Curro Holdings was up 2.46% to R31.25.