AIRLINK 62.48 Increased By ▲ 2.05 (3.39%)
BOP 5.36 Increased By ▲ 0.01 (0.19%)
CNERGY 4.58 Decreased By ▼ -0.02 (-0.43%)
DFML 15.50 Increased By ▲ 0.66 (4.45%)
DGKC 66.40 Increased By ▲ 1.60 (2.47%)
FCCL 17.59 Increased By ▲ 0.73 (4.33%)
FFBL 27.70 Increased By ▲ 2.95 (11.92%)
FFL 9.27 Increased By ▲ 0.21 (2.32%)
GGL 10.06 Increased By ▲ 0.10 (1%)
HBL 105.70 Increased By ▲ 1.49 (1.43%)
HUBC 122.30 Increased By ▲ 4.78 (4.07%)
HUMNL 6.60 Increased By ▲ 0.06 (0.92%)
KEL 4.50 Decreased By ▼ -0.05 (-1.1%)
KOSM 4.48 Decreased By ▼ -0.09 (-1.97%)
MLCF 36.20 Increased By ▲ 0.79 (2.23%)
OGDC 122.92 Increased By ▲ 0.53 (0.43%)
PAEL 23.00 Increased By ▲ 1.09 (4.97%)
PIAA 29.34 Increased By ▲ 2.05 (7.51%)
PIBTL 5.80 Decreased By ▼ -0.14 (-2.36%)
PPL 107.50 Increased By ▲ 0.13 (0.12%)
PRL 27.25 Increased By ▲ 0.74 (2.79%)
PTC 18.07 Increased By ▲ 1.97 (12.24%)
SEARL 53.00 Decreased By ▼ -0.63 (-1.17%)
SNGP 63.21 Increased By ▲ 2.01 (3.28%)
SSGC 10.80 Increased By ▲ 0.05 (0.47%)
TELE 9.20 Increased By ▲ 0.71 (8.36%)
TPLP 11.44 Increased By ▲ 0.86 (8.13%)
TRG 70.86 Increased By ▲ 0.95 (1.36%)
UNITY 23.62 Increased By ▲ 0.11 (0.47%)
WTL 1.28 No Change ▼ 0.00 (0%)
BR100 6,944 Increased By 65.8 (0.96%)
BR30 22,827 Increased By 258.6 (1.15%)
KSE100 67,142 Increased By 594.3 (0.89%)
KSE30 22,090 Increased By 175.1 (0.8%)

South-African-Rand-and-DollarJOHANNESBURG: South Africa's rand steadied against the dollar on Friday, having come back from two-week lows after failing to break key technical levels.

Local stocks looked set to open lower after three straight days of losses. The JSE's June futures contract of blue chip stocks was down 0.39 percent before the 0700 GMT start of trade.

The rand was trading at 6.7290 to the dollar at 0643 GMT, not far from Thursday's New York close of 6.72. It had recovered from a two-week low of 6.77 hit Thursday.

"Technically speaking, the rand needs to close above the 6.7525 level, which it failed to do and that's a big technical level," said a local trader.

"There's some good buying interest here at 6.69 and we could target 6.81," he added.

With the absence of key data locally, market focus will be on US non-farm payrolls numbers due later on Friday.

The market is expecting US non-farm payrolls for April to rise by 186,000. If it disappoints it will weigh on the dollar and the rand could test 6.62, said Standard Bank in a note.

South African government bonds were a mixed picture. The yield on the 2015 bond was unchanged at 7.67 percent and that on the 2026 paper was up one basis point to 8.705 percent.

Bonds weakened in line with the rand in the previous session but some analysts said given the still-sluggish global growth environment and the likelihood to contain inflation, heavy bond losses are unlikely.

Copyright Reuters, 2011

Comments

Comments are closed.