{"id":230259,"date":"2018-03-08T09:35:34","date_gmt":"2018-03-08T07:35:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=230259"},"modified":"2018-03-08T09:36:51","modified_gmt":"2018-03-08T07:36:51","slug":"rand-slips-over-fears-of-trumps-trade-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/finance\/230259\/rand-slips-over-fears-of-trumps-trade-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Rand slips over fears of Trump&#8217;s &#8216;trade war&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The rand opened weaker on Thursday morning (8 March), following remarks made by American president Donald Trump and the spectre of a global trade war.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to sparking fears in the EU, Trump&#8217;s planned steel tariffs have weighed heavily on on emerging market currencies, particularly commodity exporters such as South Africa, <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/af.reuters.com\/article\/africaTech\/idAFL5N1QQ116\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Reuters<\/a> <\/strong>reports.<\/p>\n<p>By 08h40 South African time, the rand had weakened\u00a00.27%\u00a0to R11.86\/dollar, marking a second straight session of losses as fears of a sell-off slowed demand for one of the best performing currencies globally.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Dollar\/Rand: R11.86 \u00a0(-0.27%)<\/li>\n<li>Pound\/Rand: R16.47 \u00a0(-0.10%)<\/li>\n<li>Euro\/Rand: R14.70 \u00a0(-0.11%)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These fears were stoked after the departure of top economic adviser to Trump, Gary Cohn, sparking worries that Trump will indeed move ahead with the new tariffs.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The rand, however, remains a bull target with the fast recovering economy on the back of Cyril Ramaphosa\u2019s appointment as state president, fuelling bets the currency will stretch gains if it breaks through technical resistance at R11.70 dollar,&#8221; Reuters said.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Revised rand levels<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that analysts were &#8216;<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/finance\/229777\/analysts-scramble-to-change-their-forecasts-for-the-rand\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">scrambling<\/a><\/strong>&#8216; to revise their expectations for the rand for the remainder of 2018, on the back of &#8216;Ramaphosa fever&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs recently as December, the median prediction of analysts in Bloomberg surveys was for the rand to end 2018 at R14.50 per dollar. That\u2019s\u00a0<strong>come down to R12.30<\/strong>,&#8221; it said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cForeigners can\u2019t seem to get enough of South African assets. Inflows into the country\u2019s stocks and bonds are running at a combined daily average of R916 million ($78 million), compared with R216 million last year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat suggests investors are becoming more comfortable with the currency risk,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read:\u00a0\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/finance\/229777\/analysts-scramble-to-change-their-forecasts-for-the-rand\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Analysts \u2018scramble\u2019 to change their forecasts for the rand<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The rand could suffer if Trump moves ahead with his plans of a global &#8216;trade war&#8217;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":142924,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11121],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-230259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230259","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=230259"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":230269,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230259\/revisions\/230269"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}