JOHANNESBURG: South Africa's rand firmed against the dollar on Thursday on the back a strong appetite for riskier assets and outperformed most of its peers despite a pullback from the euro.
The rand often tracks the euro, its largest trading partner.
With the European Central Bank's three-year liquidity injection and the Greek bailout still playing on traders' minds, the rand was undeterred by US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke who was cautious on the US economy.
On local data, Kagiso Securities will release February's Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI)data at 0900 GMT. In January, the PMI rebounded to 53.2 its highest level since June, from 49.4 in December.
At 0713 GMT, the currency was trading at 7.4951 to the dollar, up 0.23 percent from Wednesday's New York close of 7.515.
"The rand is performing very well, it's outperforming all of its peers, some month-end flows also contributed to the rand strength," said a Johannesburg-based trader.
"In the short term you will see some dollar buying, but levels towards 7.52-53 you will see some people coming to sell the rand again," he added.
On fixed income, the yield on the 2015 note rose 3.5 basis points to 6.64 percent while that on the 2026 issue was up 4.5 basis points to 8.275 percent.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.