Bonds barely move in quiet session

Johannesburg - South African bonds were quiet in midday trade on Monday, with the R157s remaining a touch firmer and hardly no action on other major bonds.

This week is a busy one in terms of news and data.

Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan's 2012 budget speech on Wednesday will take centre stage, and consumer and producer price inflation for January from Statistics SA are also due for release.

At 11:50, the benchmark R157 bond was trading at 6.580%, from its previous close of 6.590%. The R207 was bid at 7.715% and offered at 7.685% from a previous close of 7.695% and the R186 was bid at 8.230% and offered at 8.200% from its close of 8.215%.

The rand was bid at 7.6787 against the dollar from its previous close of 7.6834.

"There's a firmer bias on the currency. It's extremely quiet though - guys are not getting involved ahead of budget," a trader said.

Foreigners were net sellers of R681.923m of South African bonds including repo transactions on Friday after net purchases of R240.614m of local bonds on Thursday, data released by the JSE show.

Nominal cumulative volume was R45.379bn on Friday from R60.368bn on Thursday.

Foreigners were net sellers of R673.836m of South African bonds excluding repo transactions on Friday after net purchases of R232.119m of local bonds on Thursday.

For the year to date foreigners have been net buyers of R11.073bn 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 R9.515bn of local bonds including repo transactions. In 2011 they bought R37.501bn of local bonds.