In the past 12 months the Alsi has gained almost 35% but it is the small-cap index that has outshone the rest with a gain of more than 46%.

The Alsi powered ahead in early morning trade yesterday to hit a fresh record high of 28636 points, following an overnight gain for Asian stocks. However, it later fell back to close at 28150 points o­n the back of fast and furious profit-taking.

“Smart investors want to realise their money,” said Mark Wurr, head trader at o­nline brokerage Global Trader.

“The market has run so high and the guys now don’t want to short. The market has done 14% in the past three months and it could do another 14% in the next three months.”

Doug Blatch, chief dealer at Investec Asset Management, said that based o­n the performance of US markets late o­n Monday (the Dow Jones Industrial Index came off sharply in its last two hours of trade) dealers had come in yesterday expecting some profit-taking o­n the JSE.

“There were already concerns about political violence in Nigeria and the oil price, people were taking some risk off the table,” said Blatch.

Stocks that lost ground yesterday included a number of the year’s best performers — Eland Platinum, Impala Platinum and MTN. Wurr was surprised MTN had not sold off more and said a few of the big gainers this year were a bit puzzling since they were rising o­n the back of very little news.

And although Wurr was not overly keen o­n retail stocks, he said he had been given a tip o­n Mr Price and also expected Shoprite to “get going”. Resource-based stocks were still looking “very attractive”, according to Wurr. With platinum through $1300 an ounce, Wurr reckoned it was o­n its way to $1400.

Helping the resources market along yesterday was London-based ETF Securities, which said it would launch physically backed exchange traded funds (ETFs) based o­n platinum, palladium, gold and silver o­n the London Stock Exchange. NKC Independent Economists said this announcement followed Zurich Cantonal Bank’s statement that it planned to launch ETFs in platinum, palladium and silver by May 10.

ETFs allow investors to gain exposure to commodity markets without taking physical delivery of the underlying commodity.

Graham Tuckwell, chairman of ETF Securities, said in an interview with Bloomberg that the new ETFs were expected to add between $250m and $500m of demand.

“ETFs are very bullish for the platinum market,” said Wurr. Of the pick of the platinum stocks, he would sell Eland all the way down to R100 but would hold Northam and Impala, he said.

Blatch said most people were still pretty bullish about equities in general — they were still the place to be, offering more compelling returns than bonds or cash. However, with a strengthening rand, Blatch did say it was probably a good time to diversify offshore.

Goldman Sachs, the international finance house, said yesterday the rand and the Chilean peso might extend gains. While yesterday’s pull-back was also seen in European markets, particularly Spain, Blatch said it was nothing sinister.

In fact Wurr believed it would be healthy for the market to take a breather for the next three days, maybe coming off about 3%, but the buoyancy of the US’s Dow Jones was likely to help the JSE maintain its trajectory.

“There are still buyers out there,” said Wurr. He concluded that in the rest of the year markets should come off, “but the biggest rule in trading is don’t go against the trend and the trend is too strong to ignore right now”.