Think Daily 2 December 2022

Thursday was an eventful day for the South African markets after the release of the Phala Phala report. The Rand weakened significantly against major currencies, specifically against the dollar, weakening to as much as R17.97 to the dollar. Banking stocks reacted negatively as well to the news that the President was considering resigning. The shares of Absa, Capitec, Firstrand, Nedbank and Standard Bank all dived by between 7% and 10% for the day. Elsewhere, Sasol's share price fell nearly 5% after the company said it expects challenges at its Secunda operations to impact coal and fuel production, although higher crude oil prices are seen boosting half-year profit by more than 20%. The  Top 40 closed the day up 0.44% and the Resources 10 sector went up by 3.48%, the Financial 15 went down by 6.85%, the Industrial 25 went up by 1.86% and lastly the South African Listed Property index was down 3.2%. The Rand last traded at R17.57 against the Dollar, R21.54 against the Pound, and R18.46 against the Euro.


Figure 1:  JSE Financial Index Intraday Price Chart 

On the commodities front, Brent Crude oil is trading at $86.97 a barrel and WTI Crude oil is trading at $81.16 a barrel. Gold is currently trading at $1800.12. Platinum is now trading at $1041.30 and lastly, Palladium is at $1927.50. 

Across the globe, the S&P 500 closed the day down 0.09%, the Dow Jones closed the day down 0.56% and the Nasdaq had a 0.1% climb. The FTSE 100 was down 0.19%, the DAX was up 0.65% and the CAC40 was up 0.23%. In the Asian markets, the Nikkei 225 is currently down 1.59% and the Hang Seng is currently down 0.32%. On an economic data side, The Nonfarm Payroll numbers will be printed for the United States and are forecasting 200k new jobs.