Related Articles
Top Stories
May 27 2012 11:21
There's a price war raging between South Africa's cellphone networks after Cell C lowered the rates of its prepaid calls by more than 34%.
May 28 2012 07:53
The City of Cape Town has spent R175m running the Myciti bus service since the Soccer World Cup compared to an income of R35m, a report says.
May 27 2012 13:09
The oversupply of golf estates has claimed another victim.
Johannesburg - The rand and equities were battered by falling metals prices and continued risk aversion on Thursday, with investors nervous about the credit crisis and the health of the US economy.
Johannesburg's Top-40 index fell 3.75% to 20 403.31 points after trading higher for most of the day. The All-Share index shed 3.31% to 22 560.77 points.
"The US market, weak US data and weak commodity prices are driving our markets down," Roy Lamb, a trader at Investec Securities, said.
Local equities traded up for the most of the day, but turned negative when US stocks opened sharply lower on caution about the fate of a $700bn bank rescue plan, and bleak employment and factory order figures.
The rand tumbled to a five-and-a-half year low as the dollar surged against most currencies, partly on expectations the next move in European rates will be down.
The local currency was trading at R8.48/$ at 17:30, 2.85% softer than its previous close in New York. It hit R8.4920 earlier, its weakest level since early 2003.
It was relatively steady against the euro, though, which slid to a 13-month trough to the dollar.
"The weakening of the currency (rand) is not due to ... anything of local origin. It is purely driven by international markets and what is happening on international markets across the globe," ABN AMRO trader Paul Peter said.
A fall through R8.49/51 could trigger an even bigger slide.
Globally, banks were clamping down on lending to try to avert losses relating to the credit crisis and investors are shying away from riskier assets, he said.
Rate cut
The rand has now lost about 19% of its value against the dollar and 14% against the euro so far this year.
The gold price fell about 4% and platinum more than 5%, knocking the JSE gold mining index 11.3% and the platinum index 9.4%.
The world's No. 4 gold producer Gold Fields, performed worst amongst the blue chips, sliding 13.49% to R70.25 a share, while AngloGold Ashanti lost 10.47% to R171.
The world's second biggest platinum producer, Impala Platinum, which announced a tie-up with Mvelaphanda Resources after the market had closed, shed 11.31% to R147.
- Reuters