Johannesburg - The rand tracked a weaker euro in the morning session on Tuesday amid profit taking on the single currency.
At 08:58 the rand was bid at R7.4310 to the dollar from R7.3868 at its previous close. It was bid at R10.0980 to the euro from its previous close of R10.0756 and was at R11.1297 against the sterling from R11.1210.
The euro was bid at $1.3604 from $1.3618 previously.
A local trader said: "The rand initially broke R10.09 against the euro, down to R10.06, but has since come back above R10.09 again and it is quite an important number."
"The euro is a bit weaker this morning, and if rand gets consistently above R7.39 against the dollar, we should see R7.48," the trader said.
Dow Jones Newswires meanwhile reported the euro fell against the dollar and the yen in Asia on Tuesday as speculators took profits before a key US-Greece meeting later in the day, while weak UK housing data sent sterling broadly lower.
It isn't clear whether the single currency's recovery that started around the beginning of the month has ended, but the longer-term outlook remains gloomy due to persistent doubts about the fiscal and economic health of some of the 16 eurozone nations, dealers said.
Profit-taking by Asian investors and US hedge funds pushed the euro down by three-quarters of a yen from New York late on Monday to ¥122.33 on EBS during Tokyo hours, traders said. The common European currency also slipped a fifth of a US cent to $1.3607 at one point.
The sellers took profit on the euro's gain overnight as caution set in before planned meetings between Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, US President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, dealers said.
Papandreou has said he is seeking support from the Obama administration to rein in the type of market speculation he blames for driving up Greece's borrowing costs, while traders are also watching whether the Greek prime minister says anything new about his nation's debt troubles.
Also, "people just don't feel like buying the euro or sterling," said Mamoru Arai, a senior trader at Mizuho Corporate Bank.
"The outlook is just weak for both of them" because of concerns over some eurozone nations' fiscal and economic problems and the UK's growing debt, he said.
Arai tips the euro to trade in a $1.3400-$1.3900 band in the coming few weeks.
Sterling fell to an intraday low of $1.4995 compared with $1.5063 in New York, while it also slid versus the euro and the yen.
The pound suffered from data released in Asian time by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors showing that in February, the proportion of surveyors reporting a rise in UK house prices exceeded the proportion reporting a fall by 17 percentage points. That was the lowest level since the plus 9.4
reading in August 2009, and sharply missed the plus 32 forecast by economists polled by Dow Jones Newswires.
- I-Net Bridge