Despite a week of uncertain geopolitical tensions in the US and serious Brexit negotiations, share prices on the JSE had one of its biggest rallies of the year.
The all share index on the JSE reached a new record level at the close on Friday. This, despite tensions around the German investigation against Steinhoff’s alleged inflated financial accounts that had seen the share price tumble 15%on Thursday.
On the other hand, Naspers also reached a milestone by trading above the R3000 and closed Friday afternoon on R3010. Many analysts now feel that the 50% increase in Naspers share price since the beginning of the year was mostly due to its 33% stake in Chinese company Tencent. They feel that the rest of the company did not perform as well and that the share price is overvalued.
Some shareholders also feel that the remuneration paid to top executives is not aligned to the performance of the rest of the business, excluding Tencent.
The announcement of the much lower inflation rate of 4.6% in July, with expectations that the rate will remain lower than 5% for months to come, contributed to retail share prices to have rallied on the back of interest rates that are likely to come down.
Truworths ended the week 6.5% higher, Shoprite shot up by 9.6%, while Spar gained 4.4% and Mr Price traded 6.5% higher than the previous Friday.
The all share on the JSE increased by 1352 points, or 2.4%, higher than the previous Friday to close at a record high 56655.88 points. The index is now 11.8% higher since the beginning of the year and 6.9% higher than a year ago.
Over the week, the industrial index rose by 2.5%, gaining 14.3% for the year to date. Financials gained 1.9% last week. Resources gained the most over the week and traded 2.8% higher. The listed property index, however, had decreased by 2.8% on the previous Friday.
The rand continued to recover against the dollar and the pound. On Friday just after the close of the JSE, the rand traded at R13.07 to the dollar, 7c (0.8%) stronger than a week ago. Against the, pound the currency had firmed by 12c (0.7%), and traded at R16.82. Against the euro, it lost 7c at R15.54.
