Think Daily 19 October 2021

In Monday’s trading session in the local markets, the Top 40 closed the day down by 0.45%. The Resources 10 sector went down by 1.12%, the Financial 15 went up by 0.8%, the Industrial 25 went up by 0.38% and lastly the South African Listed Property index up by 0.43%. The Rand traded at R14.66 against the United States Dollar, R20.14 against the Great British pound, and R17.03 against the Euro. The Rand is currently showing strength against the greenback and is trading at levels last observed in mid-September 2021. The top40 has also lost the momentum that it had at the beginning of the month.



Figure 1: Top 40 two-week chart
On the commodities front, the Brent Crude oil is trading at $84.88 a barrel and WTI Crude oil is traded at $82.33 a barrel. Gold Spot price is currently trading at $1778.92; Platinum Spot is now trading at $1057.51 and lastly, Palladium Spot price is at $2068.26. The oil price has slowed down on its current rally in the price per barrel.
Across the globe, the S&P 500 closed the day up 0.21%, Dow Jones closed down 0.14% and the Nasdaq had a 0.64% climb. The FTSE 100 closed down 0.42% and the DAX was down 0.72% and CAC40 was down 0.81%. In the Asian markets, the Nikkei 225 is up 0.65% and the Hang Seng is also currently up 1.42%. Yesterday morning China had reported the country's GDP numbers at 4.9%, which was lower than the forecasted 5.2%. Today we have more companies in the United States to report results, such as Interactive Brokers, Intuitive Surgical, Netflix, Proctor & Gamble and Johnson and Johnson. Elsewhere, Bitcoin traded around $62,500. ProShares is preparing to launch its Bitcoin futures fund today.