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 - A softer rand tracked
the euro against the dollar in midday trade on Friday, amid a fall from most
currencies following news yesterday from Dubai that government-owned investment
company Dubai World, which has almost $60bn worth of liabilities, asked
creditors to postpone its forthcoming payments for six months.
At 11:31 the rand was bid at 7.5658 to the dollar from 7.4866 at its
previous close. It was bid at 11.2805 to the euro from its previous close of
11.2327 and was at 12.3875 against sterling from 12.3578.
The euro was bid at $1.4909 from $1.5007 overnight.
A local trader said: "News from Dubai is still having an effect on markets,
and we will track the euro against the dollar for direction. If the euro breaks
1.48 against the dollar then we could see further rand weakness, however the
range for the time being is 7.54-64 against the dollar."
RMB analysts John Cairns and Nema Ramkhelawan in a morning report noted
that markets had been left in turmoil after the Dubai World debt restructuring,
with widely disparate and erratic moves.
"Normally the reaction to such negative news is a knee-jerk move that often
just fades away. The problem though is that the all-important New York markets
haven't yet reacted given that they were closed yesterday. Wall Street is
expected to open 2% lower but it might well have other ideas. The problem also
in trying to fade the spike is that the rand's reaction has been relatively
muted," the analysts said.
"Look for volatile trading on the rand today. This was mostly concentrated
in US dollar/rand yesterday but we could see fallout in the crosses today.
Direction is far from clear but while we said yesterday that we will almost
certainly end the week at the bottom of the 7.32/35-7.62 range, it now seems
more likely that we will be closer to (and, if anything, actually above) the
top," RMB said.
Dow Jones Newswires said that the foreign exchange markets saw a broad move
out of currencies perceived as more risk sensitive, with the euro taking a hit
as the European markets' reaction on Thursday to the Dubai news reversed the
recent "risk on" trades.
Japanese exporter stocks were weaker too as the yen's climb against the
dollar reached heights not seen in almost 15 years. The greenback hit a 14-year
low of ¥84.82 before recovering some ground to trade at ¥86.35 at 09:00 GMT,
down from ¥86.59 late on Thursday.
Elsewhere, the euro was trading at $1.4871, down from $1.5020, and sterling
was quoted at $1.6363, down from $1.6461.
- I-Net Bridge