South African stocks ended barely changed on Monday as further profit-taking cancelled out gains in gold shares on surging bullion prices and cement producer PPC on buoyant cement sales.
The top 40 index ended virtually unchanged, down 0.1 percent at 14,635.83 points, while the all share index finished 0.02 percent lower at 16,132.23 points.
"We've really seen some profit-taking over the last week or so, and that hasn't changed. We still see world markets being threatened by continued inflation fears and rising interest rates," said Tubby Goodwin at Investec Securities.
"There's a lot of money that has been made and people are just cashing in some of it."
The top 40 index had gained 33 percent in the year to last Monday, when it touched a fresh all-time peak. But since then profit-taking has shaved nearly five percent off the index.
Some of the biggest losers were steel producer Mittal, which tumbled 3.12 percent to 52.80 rand and mobile phone group MTN, which fell 2.6 percent to 47.70 rand.
The biggest blue chip loser was paper producer Sappi, dropping 4.08 percent to 65.99 rand.
"Sappi has had a hard ride for quite a while now. We never saw a turnaround in the paper market. Paper demand doesn't seem to have recovered and there's still an oversupply of pulp," Goodwin said.
Among winners, Pretoria Portland Cement Company (PPC) shot up 4.4 percent to 313 rand, making it the biggest blue chip gainer. The gains were on the back of data from the Cement and Concrete Institute showing that southern African regional cement sales rose 13 percent in September to a new peak of 1.24 million tonnes.
Industrial conglomerate Barloworld, which owns 71 percent of PPC, added 2.74 percent to 111.99 rand. Gold mining shares glittered as the gold price hit the strongest levels in 18 years.
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