{"id":113704,"date":"2016-02-23T08:23:25","date_gmt":"2016-02-23T06:23:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=113704"},"modified":"2016-02-23T08:23:25","modified_gmt":"2016-02-23T06:23:25","slug":"5-important-things-you-need-to-know-before-the-jse-opens-today-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/113704\/5-important-things-you-need-to-know-before-the-jse-opens-today-5\/","title":{"rendered":"5 important things you need to know before the JSE opens today"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s what&#8217;s happening in the markets today:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>With his budget speech set for tomorrow (Wednesday), finance minister Pravin Gordhan is expected to implement austerity measures to <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.biznews.com\/budget\/budget-2016\/2016\/02\/23\/david-shapiro-heres-how-pravin-can-use-budget-to-begin-fixing-zumas-destruction\/\" target=\"_blank\">drag the South African economy out of its troubled state<\/a><\/strong>. Markets are holding their breath to see how the minister will play it &#8211; while economists and analysts are practically begging the minister to <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bdlive.co.za\/opinion\/2016\/02\/23\/gordhan-can-use-his-strong-hand\" target=\"_blank\">rein Zuma in<\/a><\/strong>, and <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.moneyweb.co.za\/moneyweb-opinion\/columnists\/gordhan-must-say-the-things-zuma-didnt\/\" target=\"_blank\">rebuild confidence in the economy<\/a><\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>While avoiding a credit rating downgrade to junk has been at the top of Zuma&#8217;s rhetoric surrounding the budget and the economy, economists say that <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.iol.co.za\/business\/budget\/junk-status-not-likely-to-scare-off-investors-1988297\" target=\"_blank\">even if the country got downgraded, it wouldn&#8217;t signal a mass exodus of investors<\/a><\/strong>. This is partly due to the fact that much investment happens on domestic, rather than international credit ratings.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>South Africa&#8217;s rand firmed to an eight-week high against the dollar on Monday as investors returned to high yielding assets boosted by improved oil and commodity prices. On Tuesday the <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.xe.com\/currencycharts\/?from=USD&amp;to=ZAR\" target=\"_blank\">rand was trading at R15.24 to the dollar, R21.51 to the pound and R16.81 to the euro<\/a><\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>In global news, <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-global-markets-idUSKCN0VW046\" target=\"_blank\">Asian shares retreated from a seven-week high on Tuesday as reversed, while the euro and sterling were hit by uncertainty over Britain&#8217;s membership in the European Union<\/a><\/strong>. Wall Street jumped on the brief surge in oil prices on Monday, before the oil markets retreated.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-global-oil-idUSKCN0VW03S\" target=\"_blank\">Oil futures fell more than 1% on Tuesday amid worries rising Iranian output would deepen a global crude oversupply<\/a><\/strong>, offsetting expectations of a drop in U.S. production that had spurred sharp price gains in the prior session. US crude was down 50 US cents to $32.89, while Brent crude was down 50 US cents to $34.19.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>In other news:<\/strong> A research paper put out by the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) shows that <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.iol.co.za\/business\/news\/gauteng-freeway-costs-overinflated---research-paper-1988295\" target=\"_blank\">South Africa overpaid for the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project by an average of 321%<\/a><\/strong>. The group compared the upgrade costs with 11 other international case studies to reach the conclusion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s what is happening in and affecting the South African markets today (23 February 2016)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":110385,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872,11121],"tags":[26,175],"class_list":["post-113704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-finance","tag-headline","tag-jse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113704"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":113706,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113704\/revisions\/113706"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}