Oil prices nosed dived on Monday due to fears over Chinese energy demand amid a Covid-19 lockdown in Shanghai. Oil prices have also dropped significantly on the slowdown of demand, with Brent Crude currently down 7.5% for the day.
Renewed surges of Covid-19 cases have placed pressure on commodity prices with lockdowns slowing down demand with platinum trading at $988, palladium at $2,260 and gold holding firm at $1,935.
Global stocks mainly rose with traders hoping for some success in the ongoing peace talks between Ukraine and Russia, but gains were marginal because of the Shanghai lockdown that has also stoked global supply chain concerns.
On the local front, the JSE fell 0.18% with the All Share Index closing on 74,194 points.
Billionaire Patrice Motsepe’s African Rainbow Capital hiked its interest in Alexander Forbes to 40.42%. This was after US insurance and investment firm Prudential bought a 15% stake in Alexander Forbes earlier in the month.
Alexander Forbes share price lost 3.23% while African Rainbow Capital eked out a small 0.44% gain.
Private education provider ADvTECH (3.51%), which owns brands like Crawford, Trinity House, Vega and Varsity College, reported good profit growth on Monday despite having not increased school fees.
ADvTECH reported an 8% increase in revenue to R5.9 billion while operating profit came in at R1.1 billion, representing a 22% increase.
Strong demand for aluminium products has seen Hulamin (2.81%) stride back into profit with an operating profit jumping up a massive 760% to R538 million for the financial year ended December 2021 compared to an R81 million loss the year before.
In the currency markets, the rand returned most of the post MPC gains and is currently trading at R14.70/$ but despite giving back over one per cent for the day, the local unit was one of the best performing emerging market currencies.
“With investors looking more aggressively at EM risk, we could see the rand continue to hold firm as Turkey and Russia are out of consideration for the time being. We could expect the rand to consolidate between R14.55 and R14.80 over the next few days after its strong run during the first quarter of 2022,” comments TreasuryONE.
