Think Daily 13 May 2022

In Thursday’s trading session in the local markets, the Top 40 closed the day down by 1.85%. The Resources 10 sector went down by 4.9%, the Financial 15 went up 0.76%, the Industrial 25 went down by 0.93% and lastly the South African Listed Property index was down by 1.12%. The rand traded at R16.13 against the United State Dollar, R19.65 against the Great British pound, and R16.72 against the Euro. MTN Group released the company's quarterly earnings and they were stellar.  


 
Figure 1: Sibanye Stillwaters intraday share price action 

On the commodities front, the Brent Crude oil is trading at $108.75 a barrel and WTI Crude oil is traded at $107.20 a barrel. Gold Spot price is currently trading at $1824.90. Platinum Spot is now trading at $954.50 and lastly, Palladium Spot price is at $1954.50. The prospect of an EU ban on Russian oil continued to buoy prices, with tensions escalating further this week after Moscow imposed sanctions on European units of state-owned Gazprom. Meanwhile, the US oil benchmark is still down about 2% this week on fears that high inflation, weaker global growth and China’s Covid curbs would dampen demand. Rising US interest rates also drove the dollar to 20-year highs, pressuring crude prices as a stronger dollar makes oil more expensive for buyers holding other currencies. An IEA report released yesterday highlighted the duelling factors in the market, saying rising oil production in the Middle East and the US and a slowdown in demand growth are "expected to fend off an acute supply deficit amid a worsening Russian supply disruption.”. 

Across the globe, the S&P 500 closed the day down 0.13%, Dow Jones closed down 0.33% and the Nasdaq had a 0.18% drop. The FTSE 100 closed down 1.56% and the DAX was down 0.64% and CAC40 was down 1.01%. In the Asian markets, the Nikkei 225 is currently up 2.64% and the Hang Seng is currently up 2.24%. In the United States, For the week, the Dow and S&P 500 are down 3.55% and 4.69% so far, respectively, while the Nasdaq Composite has declined 6.37%.