Johannesburg - The South African bond
market was a bit weaker‚ albeit on very low volumes‚ on Tuesday
afternoon.
“There was a bit of pressure on bonds
in the US and Europe today‚ with some German bunds sell-off seen.
We saw a very thin market locally today‚” a local trader said.
The bond market is taking a breather
now that European Central Bank (ECB) president Draghi has committed
to tightening peripheral spreads‚ and has promised more stimulus
measures in the pipeline. This together with German Chancellor Angela
Merkel's backing of the ECB's bond-buying plan helped ease general
jitters in bond markets worldwide.
At 16:06 local time the benchmark R157
bond was trading at 5.540% from Monday’s close of 5.460%. The R207
was bid at 6.530% and offered at 6.510% from its previous close of
6.415% and the R186 was trading at 7.295% from its previous close of
7.275%.
The rand was bid at R8.1374 against the
dollar from Monday’s close of R8.1644.
Dow Jones Newswires reported that
Spanish and Italian yields eased off their highs for the day and in
the absence of any bad news‚ the front-month contract was able to
fall to as low as 142.27 earlier in the session before consolidating
near the lows for the day. In the cash market‚ the 10-year yield
was up 7 basis points on Monday's close at 1.47%.
Foreigners were net buyers of R178.641m
of South African bonds including repo transactions on Monday after
net purchases of R1.584bn of local bonds on Friday‚ data released
by the JSE show.
Nominal cumulative volume was R62.152bn
on Monday from R62.580bn on Friday.
Foreigners were net sellers of
R634.737m of local bonds excluding repo transactions on Monday after
net purchases of R1.384bn of local bonds on Friday.
For the year to date foreigners have
been net buyers of R67.731bn of local bonds‚ excluding repo
transactions. In 2011 they were net buyers of R47.359bn worth of
local bonds‚ excluding repo transactions.
In the year to date foreigners have
been net buyers of R64.737bn of local bonds including repo
transactions. In 2011 they bought R37.501bn worth of local bonds.