JSE looking at calm New Year after Christmas drama

Markets appeared calmer on Friday morning following the dramatic falls and rises in the US and Asia over Christmas.

In Hong Kong, Tencent was down slightly, indicating its 31%-owner Naspers may continue Thursday's slide in which it fell 3% to R2,866.70.

Satrix published the December re-weightings of the various indices its range of exchange-traded funds track on Thursday.

A decline in Naspers's share price over the fourth quarter of 2018 while BHP and other miners' share prices grew saw the gap between the top 40 index's first and second largest companies narrow.

Naspers's weighting in first quarter of 2019 will be 22.07%, down from 22.45% in the fourth quarter of 2018.

Meanwhile BHP's slice of the top 40 has widened to 11.13% from 10.54%.

Richemont, which six months ago was neck-on-neck in second place with BHP, has fallen to 8.3% from 10%, while fourth placed Anglo American has widened its slice of the top 40 to 5.56% from 5.22%.

Naspers's and Richemont's share prices have lost about 20% while miners BHP and Anglo have gained about 20% over 2018.

Old Mutual fell from ninth to twelfth position in the top 40, swapping positions with rival life insurer Sanlam.

Private hospital group Mediclinic fell out of the top 40, and was replaced by PSG group in the December weightings.

With Naspers accounting for more than a fifth of the top 40, investors in index via the various exchange-traded funds which track it have lost about 13% over the past year.

The rand was relatively unchanged on Friday morning from Thursday night.

It was trading at R14.48/$, R16.60/€ and R18.35/£ at 6.55am.

laingr@businesslive.co.za