JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) -Miners listed on South Africa’s main stock exchange rose strongly on Wednesday, buoyed by the global gold price’s surge above $4,000 an ounce for the first time.
Gold Fields and AngloGold Ashanti closed up more than 3% on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, while Harmony Gold ended more than 2% higher.
Gold, traditionally seen as a store of value during times of instability, has hit record highs because of economic uncertainty, as well as expectations of U.S. interest rate cuts.
“The safe-haven status of gold has led to its rally on concerns over the impact of tariffs on U.S. growth and more recently the U.S. shutdown, along with heightened geopolitical tensions,” Annabel Bishop, chief economist at Investec, told Reuters.
Spot gold was up about 1.5% at about $4,045 per ounce at 1510 GMT, taking this year’s gains to 54%.
It is one of the strongest-performing assets of 2025, outpacing advances in global equity markets and bitcoin, while the U.S. dollar and crude oil are down for the year.
Gold’s momentum has spread to other precious metals, like platinum and palladium, boosting the shares of Johannesburg-listed companies that produce those metals, including Sibanye Stillwater, which gained 5% on Wednesday.
The Johannesburg Stock Exchange’s Top-40 index closed up 1.5%.
South Africa’s rand also benefited from the precious metals rally, advancing 0.4% against the dollar, as did the benchmark 2035 government bond, whose yield fell 9 basis points to 9.09%.
(Reporting by Anathi Madubela and Sfundo Parakozov; Editing by Alexander Winning and Jane Merriman)
