ZSE bullish run comes to a halt

The meteoric rise of the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange came to an abrupt halt in September with the key industrial index which had risen to 749 064 on 27 August plummeting to 639308.5 at the end of September.

While only 13 companies had performed below inflation in August, the number doubled to 26 in September. Inflation for September was 456 percent up from 427 percent in August.

Newly listed Dawn Properties, the only property company on the bourse, was down by 22 percent. It had been anticipated that the company would do well because most people are shifting their investments into assets whose value will not be adversely affected by escalating inflation.

It took over the bottom slot from Barbican which has said it is planning a demerger to unlock value of its investments. Though its price had gone up by 150 percent at the end of August, it was down to 22 percent at the end of September.

In third spot was Powerspeed Electrical with an 85 percent increase since the beginning of the year. It is not clear what could have happened because it was among the top 10 performers by the end of August.

Barclays was in fourth spot while Zimnat was number 5.

Falgold which had been the top performer was replaced by another gold mining giant, Rio Tinto which is now venturing into diamonds. Its share price had soared by 6090 percent when only last month it was up by 2710 percent.

Falgold was in second spot with 4673 percent, down from 6718 percent last month. Apex Corporation bounced back into the top five, occupying the third spot with a 3300 percent increase.

Clan, which is to be taken over by fast growing Pioneer Corporation also bounced back into the top five, taking the fourth spot while Falcon Investments, the holding company of Falgold, which has operations in Chile, took the fifth spot.

Pharmaceutical company CAPS, timber company Border, diversified engineering group Radar and sugar distributor ZSR all fell out of the top five.

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