The old Wall Street adage "as goes January, so goes the year" was apt for the JSE in 2016. The JSE’s top 40 index began the first trading day of last year with a 2.9% drop and ended the first month of last year down 3.8%. Over the course of 2016, the top 40 index lost 4.14%. Investors in the JSE’s benchmark exchange-traded fund, Satrix Top 40, which tracks the blue chip index, ended last year 4.62% poorer. But investors in local equities can take some consolation in that they still beat those who bet on foreign stocks. All five of the developed market index-tracking exchange-traded funds offered to JSE investors by Deutsche Bank suffered worse losses than Satrix Top 40 over the course of last year. Although the UK, eurozone, Japanese and US markets did appreciate in local currencies, the rand’s rebound from December 2015’s Nenegate caused them to be bad investments for South Africans. The pound’s slump following the UK’s vote to leave the EU on June 23 made Deutsche Bank’s FTSE 100 ...
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