{"id":123253,"date":"2016-05-11T08:34:21","date_gmt":"2016-05-11T06:34:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=123253"},"modified":"2016-05-11T08:34:21","modified_gmt":"2016-05-11T06:34:21","slug":"5-things-you-need-to-know-before-markets-open-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/123253\/5-things-you-need-to-know-before-markets-open-today\/","title":{"rendered":"5 things you need to know before markets open today"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s what is happening in the markets:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bdlive.co.za\/companies\/2016\/05\/11\/Details-of-Independent-deal-offer-first-look-into-PIC%E2%80%99s-unlisted-assets\">The government&#8217;s\u00a0R1.85 trillion investment fund &#8211; the Public Investment Corporation &#8211; has shed some light on some of its unlisted investments<\/a><\/strong>, which includes R890 million which was\u00a0plugged into Iqbal Surve&#8217;s Independent Newspapers in 2013. Government&#8217;s investment in the media company was met with speculation and criticism at the time. The PIC is expected to reveal more about its unlisted investments soon.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.iol.co.za\/business\/markets\/currencies\/investors-still-worry-over-rating-cuts-2020136\">Investors are still worried about South Africa hitting junk status in the coming weeks, despite ratings agency Moody&#8217;s keeping the country&#8217;s level at two notches above junk<\/a><\/strong>. Two more agencies, Fitch and S&amp;P, are expected to deliver their assessments starting in June. Investors have pointed to income shrinkage, high levels of unemployment and creeping economic growth as key precursors to a downgrade.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>South Africa&#8217;s rand clawed its way back from six week lows against the dollar on Tuesday as a firmer oil price lifted commodity currencies, but analysts said concerns over the ailing domestic economy would cap any significant gains. <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.xe.com\/currencycharts\/?from=USD&amp;to=ZAR\">On Wednesday, the rand was trading at R15.12 to the dollar, R21.86 to the pound and R17.22 to the euro<\/a><\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>In global news,\u00a0<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/af.reuters.com\/article\/southAfricaNews\/idAFL5N1880Y8?sp=true\">Asian shares gave up early gains and turned lower on Wednesday as investors shrugged off an overnight rally in global stocks and looked to bonds<\/a><\/strong> in the absence of signs of a sustainable recovery in China and other emerging markets. US stocks rose across the board on Tuesday, with a jump in oil and a rally in Amazon.com helping propel the S&amp;P 500 to its best day in two months.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-global-oil-idUSKCN0Y204L\">Oil prices dipped on Wednesday as Canadian\u00a0oil sand production was expected to gradually ramp up\u00a0following forced closures due to wildfires<\/a><\/strong>, and as record\u00a0crude inventories especially in the United States put\u00a0pressure on markets. Brent crude futures were trading at $45.49 per barrel, down 3 cents, while US\u00a0crude futures were down 8 cents at $44.58 a barrel.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>In other news<\/strong>: <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timeslive.co.za\/thetimes\/2016\/05\/11\/R99-scams-face-big-fines\">The Payments Association of South Africa (PASA) is preparing to tackle the problem of unauthorised debit orders by implementing fines<\/a><\/strong> for every unmandated debit order processed. Banks have been slow to do anything about dodgy debit orders, which are typically processed in amounts under R100 to avoid notifying victims.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s what is happening in and affecting the South African markets today (11 May 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],"class_list":["post-123253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-finance","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123253","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=123253"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":123255,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123253\/revisions\/123255"}],"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=123253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}