Market Comment - 12.01.2023

ZSE takes a breather... The market slipped into the red in Thursday’s session as the All-Share Index slipped 0.21% to end at 21857.18pts. The ZSE Top Ten Index dropped 0.01% to 13857.44pts while, the Mid Cap Index trimmed 0.81% to 41040.3pts. The ZSE Agriculture Index was the only riser amongst the indices on a 0.44% uplift to 82.93pts. Logistics concern Unifreight was the worst performer of the day on a 12.37% drop to $51.7000 followed by banking group First Capital that shed a further 10.65% to settle at $16.0980. RTG eased 7.83% to $10.0000 while, NMB retreated 7.50% to $41.0000. First Mutual holdings was 3.82% lower at $24.0000 as it capped the top five shakers of the day. Headlining the risers of the day was Zimpapers that jumped 14.99% to $2.7775. Trailing was MASH that surged 7.17% to $9.0000 as SeedCo Ltd improved 7.15% to $97.1561. Construction group Masimba put on 5.06% to end pegged at $84.0500 while, Star Africa completed the top five gainers of the day on a 4.97% rise to $2.1446. The market closed with a negative breadth as fallers outnumbered fallers by a count of one. Volumes traded dipped 56.02% to 2.96m shares as Proplastics, Econet, SeedCo Limited and Ecocash accounted for a combined 71.78% of the aggregate. Turnover succumbed 47.16% to $289.58m as heavies Econet, Delta and SeedCo Limited claimed 25.16%, 24.75% and 17.93% of the outturn apiece. Foreign inflows amounted to $4.95m as foreigners cherry-picked Proplastics while, outflows stood at $2.29m. Padenga was the only counter to trade on VFEX as it dropped 1.35% to USD$0.3360 on 3,850 shares. Morgan and Co MIZ slid 3.76% to $1.2030 while; the Old Mutual ETF lost 1.11% to $7.4190. Morgan and Co MCS was down 0.08% to $22.0000. The Datvest MCS was the sole gainer amongst the ETFs as it ticked up 0.24% to $1.5145. The Tigere REIT was stable at $54.1500 as 183,000 units worth $9.91m exchanged hands.