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Johannesburg — The rand fell by more than 10c to the dollar at midday on Monday‚ reaching an intraday low of R10.2166 as weaker than expected data Chinese data weighed on commodity-based currencies.
“We can blame this morning’s move on the Chinese figures at the weekend‚ which put all the commodity currencies under pressure. But aside from that there is no rand-specific news‚” RMB trader Jim Bryson said.
Chinese data for May were broadly weaker than expected‚ with industrial production figures coming in at 9.2% y/y compared with a forecast 9.5% and a consensus expectation of 9.4%.
“There seems to be a bit of a trend at the moment – the Chinese data disappoints and we see a sell-off in commodity currencies‚” Bryson said.
According to a morning note by Absa Capital‚ the weakness in Chinese industrial figures are particularly notable‚ and will have implications in particular for industrial commodity prices.
“Although we went above R10.20 earlier we didn’t set a new high this morning. We’ll see if we test R10.2830‚ and if we break through that we could head towards R10.50. Overall the market remains extremely nervous and headline driven and it looks as though we will stay that way‚” Bryson said.
At 11:27 the rand was bid at R10.1661/$ from Friday’s close of R10.0545. The local currency was bid at R13.4336 to the euro from its previous close of R13.2774 and was at R15.7663 against sterling from R15.6186 at its previous close.
The euro was bid at $1.3214 from $1.3205 at the previous close.
