The JSE faces largely lower Asian markets after Wall Street ended weaker, while at home there is growing frustration over load-shedding.
Several protests have been planned to express unhappiness about the power cuts, while civil society organisations, opposition parties and labour mount legal challenges.
President Cyril Ramaphosa believes Eskom should be cautious and considerate in implementing electricity tariff hikes after the National Energy Regulator of SA (Nersa) granted an 18.65% tariff increase to Eskom from April 1.
Ramaphosa faces a legal challenge from two civil society organisations over his failure to implement legislation directing energy planning, while Eskom, Nersa and minister of public enterprises Pravin Gordhan are also dealing with multiple court challenges from opposition parties, organised labour and business owners.
The Nikkei in Japan climbed 1.85%, while the Shanghai composite in mainland China was flat and the Hang Seng in Hong Kong dipped by 0.13%.
Tencent, which influences the JSE via Naspers and Prosus, gained 1.07%.
This was largely because of the Bank of Japan sticking to its policy of low interest rates.
Investors are watching the latest news from China after abandoning its zero-Covid policy, while the possibility of a global recession looms as central banks raise interest rates.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, China’s top economic official Liu He said the world’s second-largest economy will bounce back to pre-pandemic growth levels in 2023.
In local markets, the JSE closed slightly firmer on Tuesday after going back and forth between small losses and gains, while the rand weakened as investors digested news about SA’s power crisis and the economy.
Investors now await the outcome of the meetings between Ramaphosa and the national energy crisis committee, the Eskom board and management team, labour organisations and business leaders.
On Tuesday the JSE all share gained 0.27% to 79,385 points and the top 40 0.32%. Industrial metals gained 1.38%, industrials 0.94% and resources 0.16%. Precious metals lost 1.56%, banks 1.39% and financials 1.15%.
Over in the US, the Nasdaq ended slightly higher on Tuesday as it firmed by 0.14%, while the S&P 500 declined by 0.20% and the Dow Jones 1.14%.
In commodities, gold, Brent crude and platinum all decreased. Gold was 0.52% lower at $1,897.67/oz, Brent down 0.30% to $86.39 a barrel and platinum lessened by 0.17% to $1,036.22.
The rand weakened by 0.17% against the dollar to trade at R17.10/$.
The corporate calendar is bare for Wednesday, with no releases expected.
However, it be a busy day on the economic side of things as Stats SA releases the December consumer price index (CPI) reading at 10am and the retail trade sales for November at 1pm.
Headline consumer inflation eased to 7.4% year on year in November, from 7.6% in October, leading to speculation that the SA Reserve Bank could step back from hiking interest rates aggressively at its monetary policy committee (MPC) meeting next week. A further cooling in consumer inflation is expected.
Meanwhile, the SA Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Sacci) will publish the business trade conditions survey for December and technology group Altron its FinTech Household Resilience Index (Afhri) for the third quarter of 2022.
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