South African bourse opens the week in red

Source: Xinhua| 2018-02-06 00:31:59|Editor: huaxia
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JOHANNESBURG, Feb. 5 (Xinhua) -- The Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) opened the week in red, with banks, retailers and property stocks hard hit.

The local bourse lost 4.77 percent last week, its worst performance since January 2016.

The all share index was 2.63 percent weaker at 57,113.74 and the top 40 was off 2.72 percent at 50,496.3 points.

Property stocks continued to get squeezed, with Nepi Rockcastle down 5.55 percent to R126 and Resilient shed 6.35 percent to R100.21.

The South African rand was weaker against major currencies, as investors were watching with keen interest ahead of President Jacob Zuma's meeting with the national executive committee members of the ruling party over his future. The local unit was trading at R12.02 to the U.S. dollar, R16.85 to the pound and R14.94 to the euro.

Capitec was weaker, giving up all the gains from the end of last week after the release of the Viceroy Research report. Capitec shed 6.45 percent to R864.66.

Platinum shares were also lower, despite the metal price gaining 1 percent to 994.87 U.S. dollar an ounce.

The current sell-off followed on Friday's better-than-expected jobs data in the U.S. The U.S. economy added 2 million jobs in 2017, another solid year of gains. According to labor department figures released Friday, the economy added 148,000 jobs, in December.

The platinum index shed 5.54 percent, property 2.97 percent, banks 3.15 percent, financials 2.68 percent and the gold index 2.34 percent.

Naspers was down 3.38 percent to R3,121 and British American Tobacco 3.11 percent to R787.

Steinhoff was down 6.53 percent to R6.15 and PSG ended rose 3 percent to R231.50.

Shoprite was off 1.99 percent to R235, 58, and Steinhoff Africa Retail gained 1 percent to settle at R19.

Cement producer PPC added 2.66 percent to R7.34. The volume of cement sold in the nine months to end-December fell about 2 percent, the company said in a press statement on Monday. Enditem

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