S.Africa rand edges up, miners lead bourse down

South Africa’s rand held firm against the dollar on Wednesday after strong gains overnight, supported mainly by selling interest from exporters in a thin festive holiday market.

Domestic stocks fell for a second day running, in line with global equities, with miners undermined by faltering commodity prices.

The rand hit a session high of 7.3710 but pared some of those gains to trade at 7.3970 by 1536 GMT, 0.37 percent stronger than its Tuesday close at 7.4242.

“We’ve seen good exporter interest today and the rand (was) therefore below 7.40, but it’s really a year-end market, a lot thinner than normal,” said RMB trader Jim Bryson.

“We expect the rand to stabilise somewhere around the 7.36/38 area,” he said, adding that the rand paid little attention to data showing South Africa recorded a narrower trade deficit of 2.47 billion rand in November compared with a 6.7 billion rand shortfall in October.

The JSE Top-40 index of blue chips was down 0.80 percent to 24,820.86 points and the All-share index retreated 0.65 percent to 27,475.25 points.

“Resources are leading us down again. We saw the dollar firming up and gold price pulling back but by and large it’s been a good month,” one trader said.

AngloGold Ashanti fell 0.58 percent to 299.50 rand while rival Gold Fields was down 0.62 percent to 96.50 rand.

Elsewhere, mobile telephone company Vodacom dropped 4.30 percent to 54.55 rand, Tiger Brands was 2.47 percent weaker at 170.36 rand and Richemont dipped 1.55 percent to 24.85 rand.

Government bonds were flat, and the yields on the 2015 and 2036 notes were also unchanged at 8.425 and 8.795 percent respectively.

Reuters.