The rand rallied to its highest level since October, reaching R14.82/$ in the afternoon. The move by the local unit is in line with how other emerging market currencies are performing with attractive bond yields and rotation into bond markets further away from the Russia-Ukraine war the likely reasons, comments TreasuryONE.
The rand has performed strongly despite hawkish comments recently from US Fed Chair Jerome Powell who said the central bank could hike rates multiple times this year to combat rising inflation.
The South African monetary policy committee will announce its interest rate hike on Thursday with expectations of at least a 25 basis points increase.
On the commodity front, prices have been on a rollercoaster ride as markets continue to digest the seesaw ride between inflation, supply concerns, and the tightening of economic policies, says TreasuryONE.
Gold is down over 1% at $1,913, platinum is currently down 2.3% at $1 013.94 and palladium is down 3.9% at $2 485.42.
“Oil prices remained elevated today even after the EU’s decision to place an embargo on Russian energy sources remained at a split vote, but Brent Crude and WTI did give back some of those gains during the course of the afternoon,” says TreasuryONE.
The JSE closed trade adding 1.21% to see the All Share Index on 75,751 points.
Thungela Resources (-2.16%) released its financials on Tuesday, reporting a profit of R6.9 billion for the year ended December. The stellar results are in stark contrast to the same period in 2020 that saw the company post a R362 million loss. The company cited strong coal prices for the good results despite the loss of R2 billion in export opportunities due to Transnet’s failing rail infrastructure.
Property group Attacq (0.27%) saw its share price rise half a per cent on Tuesday morning on the back of a 34% increase in distributable income per share to 28.2 cents while property expenses increased by 14.8% to R433.5 million for the six months to end-December.
Property peers Growthpoint and Hyprop added 1.05% and 3.19% respectively.
