Around the World's Markets: Johannesburg

SOUTH AFRICA's stock market surged to fresh year highs, as institutions grabbed stock in anticipation that supply would be tight ahead of the millennium.

A late rash of futures-related trading and signs that Wall Street would open firmer pushed stocks north. The All-Share index added 89 points - 1.19 per cent - to 7,590.7, its peak for the session and its highest level since last August, in the middle of an emerging markets financial crisis that knocked 44 per cent off the bourse's value.