Stocks ended in the red on Tuesday on the back of weaker commodity prices and lower world markets.

Precious metal prices remained under pressure after sharp falls on Monday. However, they were off the day's worst levels by the close.

The all share index ended 2.00 percent lower, led by a 1.60 percent decline in the resources index and a 5.32 percent fall in the platinum mining index. The gold mining index, however, finished 0.73 percent in the black.

Banks were off 3.82 percent, financials eased 3.04 percent and industrials gave up 2.02 percent.

The rand was bid at 7.82 to the dollar from 7.70 when the JSE closed on Monday, while gold was quoted at $794.40 a troy ounce from $792.80 at the JSE's last close. However it tested an intraday worst level of $782.05 earlier in the day.

Platinum was last trading at $1334.00/oz – down $51/oz from its overnight close.

Dow Jones Newswires reports that US stocks opened lower as producer prices unexpectedly soared, while the dollar showed strength as the markets shrugged off weak housing data.

US stocks slid into the red after a government report showed that the producer price index for finished goods rose 1.2 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis in July.

The index soared 9.8 percent from the previous year, the highest annual increase since June 1981. The core index, which excludes food and energy, climbed 0.7 percent last month and was up 3.5 percent from a year ago, a 17-year high.

Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires were expecting a 0.5 percent increase in the overall index for July and a 0.2 percent rise in the core index.

Traders said shares on the JSE were following the global trend, while the resource-heavy local market was weighed down by gold and platinum miners.

They added that local GDP data, while slightly lower than expected by some, was still good and had had stemmed some of the losses on the local bourse, as had a weaker rand.

"If you look at the mining sector contribution, there is a possibility of a ramp up in production if Eskom allows it, and this is very positive for next year," said one trader.

Mining and quarrying contributed 0.8 of a percentage point to overall growth.

South Africa's real gross domestic product at market prices on a quarter-on-quarter seasonally adjusted annualised basis rose by 4.9 percent in the second quarter of 2008 from 2.1 percent in the first quarter, Statistics South Africa said on Tuesday.

Non-seasonally adjusted year-on-year GDP in the first quarter was placed at 4.5 percent from 4.0 percent in the first quarter.

Growth was expected to have increased by 5.2 percent on a quarter-on-quarter saa basis according to a consensus survey undertaken by I-Net Bridge.

The range of forecasts for quarterly growth was from 2.7 percent q/q to 6.8 percent q/q.

On the JSE, resource giant Anglo American was down 1.65 percent at 390.65 rand and BHP Billiton shed 2.31 rand to 220.25 rand.

Synthetic fuels maker Sasol however added 25 cents to 386.75 rand.

Gold miner AngloGold Ashanti was 1.35 rand weaker at 202.16 rand, Gold Fields was up 2.25 rand to 68.25 rand and Harmony inched up four cents to 57.55 rand.

Among platinum miners Anglo Platinum fell 5.46 percent to 831 rand and Impala Platinum fell 5.91 percent to 211 rand.

Among industrials, brewer SABMiller was off 1.48 rand at 164 rand and Bidvest was 5.45 percent lower at 104 rand.

Banking group Standard Bank shed 4.12 percent to 84.49 rand and Nedbank was off 2.80 percent to 104 rand. FirstRand lost 5.09 percent to 15.29 rand while Absa was off 2.19 percent at 107.30 rand.

Sanlam shed 2.57 percent to 17.43 rand and Old Mutual was 4.03 percent worse off at 13.35 rand.

I-Net Bridge