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“The rand is a little weaker this morning but still trading in a broad consolidation range‚” said Ockert van Niekerk‚ head of trading at PSG.
“The market is definitely waiting for the US Federal meeting later this week. Ben Bernanke’s term is coming to and end at the end of this year‚ and this feeds into speculation about the US tapering off their bond-buying programme.”
Earlier this morning StatsSA released their quarterly employment figures that showed the number of people employed in the formal non-agricultural sector of the South African economy rose by about 7 000 persons‚ or 0.1%‚ in the first quarter of this year.
“We’ve also got a lot of local economic data coming out which will give us some insight into the well-being of the economy and overall we are still experiencing local weak fundamentals.
"The rand will be in weaker territory for the foreseeable future unless we can show investors locally and abroad what we are doing to address not only labour issues but also the current account deficit‚” said Van Niekerk.
At 11:33 the rand was bid at R10.0025/$ from an overnight close of R9.9551.
The local currency was bid at R13.3831/€ from its previous close of R13.2958 and was at R15.6582 against sterling from R15.6424 at its previous close.
The euro was bid at $1.3377 from $1.3362.
