Johannesburg Stock Exchange, located at the Financial and Business District of Sandton, with the sculpture The Battle of the Markets – The Bull and The Bear

The numbers are clear – the JSE’s equity market is in deep decline, writes Renée Bonorchis. 

If you think about South Africa’s ranking as the continent’s largest and most advanced financial market, according to the Absa Africa Financial Markets Index 2023, images of a surging JSE come to mind. But those images would be wrong, at least as far as the prowess of the JSE’s equity market goes. 

In 1995, it was the world’s 12^th largest exchange. In August last year, it was number 18. By August this year it had dropped another notch to number 19, according to research by the World Federation of Stock Exchanges. Comparing the first week of October in 2018 and 2023, before the conflict between Gaza and Israel began, and using the JSE’s own data, the equity market’s total market capitalisation may have risen 30% over five years, but trades fell 76%, volumes were down 68% and the value plummeted 80%.