Johannesburg - Shares ended broadly unchanged yesterday as early highs were crimped in largely speculative business, traders said, with more to come and the only fundamental drivers being commodity prices.
The FTSE/JSE Africa all share index closed 0.34 percent higher at 9156.38 points after touching a seven-month high earlier in the session, while the top 40 shares nosed up 0.27 percent to 8414.20 points.
Four of the five biggest gainers in leading shares were gold mining stocks and the fifth was Sasol, benefiting from expectations commodity prices would rise on concerns over violence in Iraq and the Middle East.
Traders said these sectors were likely to have buying again today, as global tensions were expected to continue.
Gold Fields, AngloGold - currently in a bidding war for Ghana's Ashanti Goldfields - and Harmony Gold all rose more than 4 percent, helping to lift the gold index by 4.05 percent.
Gold for immediate delivery rose as much as 0.9 percent to $365.15 an ounce. The metal traded at $363.70 at 5pm.
Sasol, which supplies about 44 percent of the country's liquid fuel, gained 3.01 percent to R82.51.
The price of crude oil rose for the first day in nine. Brent crude gained as much as 0.8 percent to $28.70 a barrel and traded at $28.60 by 5pm. Expectations persisted that escalating violence in the Middle East would push crude prices up eventually.
Traders said a bout of speculative trading led to switching between stocks in the same sector, with Telkom suffering at the expense of cellphone firm MTN and platinum counters diverging.
Telkom ended down 2.6 percent at R40.90 after touching a low of R40.50, while MTN rose 1.09 percent to R18.55.
Anglo American Platinum shed 2.38 percent to R287, while its rival Impala Platinum climbed 1.5 percent to R543.
"It's trading positions more than investor interest," said one trader. "It's like musical chairs. People are switching out of one stock in a sector and into another."
Iscor, which earlier reported a sharp rise in its annual earnings a share to R5.57 from R1.39 a year ago, ended up 1.15 percent at R18.41.
Massmart rang up gains of 3.26 percent to R23.75 after it said year profit jumped 32 percent and it expected moderate sales growth to come.
Retailers will be in focus again today, with results expected from upmarket department store Woolworths and mid-market shop chain Truworths.
Kumba also reports results today, with analysts surveyed by Reuters expecting year earnings a share to be between R2.24 and R2.54, with a median at 24c, nearly 40 percent down on a year ago.
Shoprite Holdings jumped 5.5 percent to R6.70. Analysts at Cazenove & Co and HSBC upgraded the stock a day after it indicated that second-half profit rose 22 percent as slowing inflation boosted consumer demand.
ERP.com Holdings, a computer services firm, rose 4.8 percent to 87c after it said fiscal 2003 profit would be substantially higher than the previous year.
Peregrine Holdings, a financial services firm, surged 12 percent to R1.70 after it said it bought 7.4 million of its own shares, or 3 percent of issued shares, at an average price of R1.39. Peregrine said it had shareholder approval to buy another 21.1 million shares.