JOHANNESBURG: South Africa's rand seesawed in early trade on Thursday as investors refrained from making aggressive bets due to uncertainty over US bond buying programme and a weak outlook for the domestic economy.
The rand was at 10.0825 against the dollar at 0641 GMT, 0.21 percent firmer from Wednesday's close of 10.1000 in New York.
It sank to its weakest level since 2009 early on Tuesday, before staging a recovery that was spurred by forecast-beating factory output data and after President Jacob Zuma promised to take a hard line against labour unrest in the nation's mines.
"One gets the sense that market players are still skittish with the lingering uncertainty of another rand blow-out to put on trades that scream value," Rand Merchant Bank said in note.
The rand remains vulnerable as investors cut their holdings of emerging markets assets amid worries of a possible ratcheting down of the US bond buying programme, which has been the source of dollars funding a rally in risky but high-yielding assets.
In tandem with the rand, government bonds also inched lower, breaking two straight days of gains.
The yield for the 2026 issue edged up 6 basis points to 8.005 percent and that for the 2015 paper rose 5.5 basis points to 6.215 percent.
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