JSE killed retail trading with their fee structure, and Johannesburg traders finally gave up trying. Every trade costs a fortune between broker fees, STRATE charges, investor protection levies, and VAT on top of everything. A small trader trying to buy 10,000 rand of Naspers pays 200 rand in various fees before the stock even moves. Meanwhile, CFD platforms offer zero commissions and spreads tight enough to actually profit. The math became obvious even to traders who wanted to support local markets.
Liquidity on the JSE makes trading feel like watching paint dry in slow motion. Half the stocks trade maybe 100,000 rand daily if lucky. Try selling 50,000 rand of a mid-cap stock without moving the price 5% against yourself. Order books so thin that market orders become financial suicide. CFD platforms connect to global markets where millions trade every second. Johannesburg traders tired of fighting for liquidity discovered what real markets look like.
The JSE closes at 5 PM like it’s still 1950, and everyone needs to count paper certificates. Markets move overnight, and Johannesburg traders can only watch. Tesla jumps 20% after earnings, but JSE traders wait until morning to react through Naspers exposure. By then, the move already happened. Online CFD trading runs 24 hours because that’s how modern markets work. JSE’s banking hours approach to trading lost an entire generation of traders who don’t stop at 5 PM.
Local stocks on the JSE became uninvestable for anyone paying attention. Steinhoff destroyed billions. Tongaat turned out to be fraud. EOH collapsed. Sasol swings 50% based on oil prices nobody can predict. Every few months another JSE company implodes from corruption or mismanagement. CFD traders can short these disasters or avoid South African exposure entirely. JSE-only traders just watch their portfolios burn while management loots what’s left.
Technology at the JSE feels like using dial-up internet in 2024. Their trading platforms crash during volatility. Charts look like Excel spreadsheets from 1995. Mobile apps barely function when they work at all. Meanwhile, CFD platforms offer professional tools that actually help traders make money. One-click trading, real-time data that’s actually real-time, and platforms that don’t require IT support to navigate. Johannesburg traders switched to CFDs just to escape JSE’s stone-age technology.
JSE listing requirements keep interesting companies away while CFDs offer everything globally. Want to trade Chinese tech stocks? CFDs have them. Interested in Brazilian commodities? Available immediately. Cryptocurrency exposure? Multiple options. The JSE offers forty decent stocks and two hundred zombies nobody should touch. Diversification on the JSE means choosing between different mining companies all exposed to the same risks.
Insider trading on the JSE happens so obviously that traders joke about it openly. Stocks jump 30% the day before announcements. Connected people always seem to know before news breaks. Regulatory enforcement exists in theory but never practice. CFD markets have problems too, but at least the manipulation gets distributed among millions of participants. JSE’s small market makes manipulation easy for those with connections and impossible to escape for everyone else.
Settlement times make JSE trading feel prehistoric. T+3 settlement in 2024 when the rest of the world moved to T+1 or instant. Waiting three days for trades to settle while money sits frozen. CFD positions close immediately with funds available instantly. Young Johannesburg traders used to instant everything can’t understand why settlement takes longer than Amazon delivery. The JSE explains it’s about risk management while traders explain they’ve already left for platforms that work.
Professional traders in Johannesburg abandoned the JSE years ago except for specific arbitrage opportunities. The retail traders following their lead discovered CFDs offer better liquidity, lower costs, superior technology, and global access. The social proof matters. When everyone successful already trades CFDs, staying on the JSE feels like stubborn nostalgia. New traders don’t even consider the JSE. They go straight to CFD platforms because that’s where everyone they follow trades.
The brutal truth is the JSE doesn’t want retail traders. Every policy, fee structure, and technology decision shows they prefer institutional players. Retail traders whom JSE had driven away during the online CFD trading were readily embraced and made to feel welcomed and offered better terms. Traders in Johannesburg did not desert JSE to CFDs. JSE dumped them initially by ignoring them, by being too expensive, and refusing to modernize. CFD platforms simply offered what traders always wanted: fair access to global markets at reasonable costs with technology that works. The JSE can keep pretending retail traders matter while watching their market share disappear to platforms that actually serve traders’ needs.
