South Africa bourse closes lower, weighed down by commodity prices

The Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) was moderately lower on Monday at close of trading as the strong dollar continued to put pressure on commodity prices.

The result was that the All-share index traded only 0.58 percent lower at 52,628.62 points and the Top 40 index climbed 0.01 percent to 46,537.93.

A U.S. dollar cost R15.76, a British pound cost R22.78, and a euro cost R17.65 at 5:00 p.m. local time.

The Financial index, which is regarded as oversold, traded 0.22 percent higher but the Industrial index was a marginal 0.08 percent higher.

The big dual-listed commodity shares on the JSE were therefore also lower. Anglo American lost 0.83 percent to R136.20, while BHP Billiton was 1.00 percent softer at R184.42.

The big fluctuations are the result of sharp moves in the iron ore price, which reached a level of 69 dollars per tonne last month after being as low as 39 dollars in January this year. The commodity traded at 56 dollars per tonne on Friday.

Anlgo American Platinum shares bucked the trend and gained 1.73 percent to R381.74. According to the company, it wants to sell two of its South African entities in an endeavour to become a low-cost miner.

One of the top ten losers was Pretoria Portland Cement, whose shares went down 18 percent after investors bought and sold 6,858,311 shares in 2,387 deals, sending the share price down to R11.25. DRD Gold (DRD) slid 7.54 percent to R7.85 after 401 deals saw the sale of 1,536,075 shares. Enditem