Rand steady, stocks set to open higher

Johannesburg - The rand steadied early on Thursday as upbeat US economic data and expectations that the Federal Reserve would not raise interest rates subdued global fears over the impact of Britain's eventual departure from the European Union.

At 08:45, the rand traded at R14.7570/$, largely unchanged from its New York close on Wednesday.

Minutes of the Federal Reserve's June policy meeting released on Wednesday showed that policymakers had decided to keep interest rate hikes on hold as they assessed the impact of Brexit.

"The US economic outlook and data is slowly starting to replace Brexit as the main market focus," Rand Merchant Bank analyst John Cairns said in a note.

"A strong service sector ISM (Institute for Supply Management) figure combined with dovish Fed minutes were certainly helpful in stopping the global market weakness yesterday and in generating the small risk-on bounce."

Investors were now awaiting key US non-farm payrolls numbers due on Friday.

Stocks were set to open higher at 09:00, with the JSE securities exchange's Top-40 futures index up 0.78%.

In fixed income, the yield for the benchmark instrument due in 2026 dipped 5 basis points to 8.76%.