Wednesday 17th July 2013 After 8 consecutive up-days, the US stock market closed down 0.4% last night, with disappointing Coca-Cola sales contributing to this and Goldman Sachs’ return on equity just above its cost of capital of 10%; was 30% before the crash. European markets fell 0.7% as German investor confidence surprisingly fell. Markets in Asia are either up slightly or down slightly, although S Korea is up 1%, buoyed by Samsung. The JSE ALSI closed down 0.9% yesterday at 40,385, with the stronger rand (9.86 today) hurting the big rand hedges: Richemont -2%, SAB -1.8%, Sasol -1.7%. Banks were down around 2% and Shoprite lost 4.8% after announcing disappointing sales. The firmer-looking rand attracted over R2 billion net of foreign-buying of our bonds yesterday - not at all surprising considering yields of over 8%. This almost doubled the year-to-date net purchase of our bonds by foreigners. Perhaps our big news this morning is the good production numbers out from Billiton in the quarter to its year-end (June), especially its most profitable commodity iron ore. The share is up 2.3% in Aussie. This marks the 2nd good news item on the mining front after Amplats’ profit forecast.
Posted on: Wed, 17 Jul 2013 08:11:35 +0000