JSE steamrolls forward, the rand to improve and fuel prices to drop this week

DESPITE the continuous geo-political uncertainty in South Africa, given the budget-debacle around VAT and the vulnerability of the GNU, equity prices on the JSE, as well as the rand continues to recover strongly.

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The ALSI improved for the third consecutive week, as the index increased by 1.8%, ending once again a new record level of 92 3330n Friday.

The index is 9.32% up for the year and 20.5% higher than a year ago. Both the All Share industrial, and the Industrial 25 indices reached their highest level since February.

The ALSI industrial index on Friday traded 2.8% higher than the previous Friday and by 9.8% since the beginning of the year.

Resources contracted strongly last week, with the RES10 index losing 6.0, whereas financial shares as a proxy for domestic market sentiment gained 2.3%.

This is proof that it is not only the prices of multinationals listed on the JSE that boosted markets.

The turnaround in equity prices in the US and other developed market economies last week, were mostly due to a more positive outlook for tariffs by the USA, which were imposed by President Trump earlier.