The rand weakened from R11.88 to the dollar on Wednesday to R12.06 on Thursday morning following ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa’s statement indicating President Jacob Zuma’s exit would drag on for several more days.
At 6.30am‚ the rand was trading at R14.79 to the euro from Wednesday’s R14.67‚ and at R16.74 to the pound from Wednesday’s R16.57.
While the rand’s Ramaphosa rally stumbled‚ the JSE’s all share index rebounded 0.9% to 56‚886 points on Wednesday.
Judging from Asian markets‚ which generally shrugged off further losses on Wall Street on Wednesday‚ the JSE may continue its rebound on Thursday.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 was up 0.86% and Sydney’s ASX 200 was up 0.22%. Mainland China’s Shanghai composite index‚ however‚ was down 1.5%.
The S&P 500 fell 0.5% and the Nasdaq index 0.9% on Wednesday.
US President Donald Trump — who had been strangely silent about February’s stock market crash considering he took credit for Wall Street’s bull run — finally commented in a tweet on Wednesday: “In the ‘old days’‚ when good news was reported‚ the stock market would go up. Today‚ when good news is reported‚ the stock market goes down. Big mistake‚ and we have so much good (great) news about the economy!”
>https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/961253168968622086Electronic payment group Net 1 UEPS said on January 16 that it would release its interim results on Thursday. It has not issued a trading statement‚ as would be required if earnings differed by more than 20%.
Logistics group OneLogix said on January 17 that it expected to report on Thursday that its interim headline earnings per share (HEPS) for the six months to end-November grew between 15% and 27%.
Statistics SA is scheduled to release December’s mining production and sales figures at 11.30am and December’s manufacturing production and sales figures at 1pm.
Investec Bank economist Kamilla Kaplan forecast mining production growth to have slowed to about 5.7% in December from 6.5% in November.
Using the Absa manufacturing purchasing managers index (PMI)‚ which declined to 42.7 points in December from 48 points in November as a guide‚ Kaplan said the Stats SA report was likely to show factory output growth slowed to 0.5% in December from 1.7% in November.
December’s mining and manufacturing data will provide clues on SA’s fourth quarter gross domestic (GDP) growth.
Kaplan said mining may have made a negative contribution to the fourth quarter’s GDP because the three-month rolling average in November was negative 1.1%.
For manufacturing‚ the quarter-on-quarter seasonally adjusted measure used to calculate GDP is likely to be positive.