{"id":359265,"date":"2019-12-03T11:27:20","date_gmt":"2019-12-03T09:27:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=359265"},"modified":"2019-12-03T11:27:20","modified_gmt":"2019-12-03T09:27:20","slug":"trouble-ahead-for-the-rand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/finance\/359265\/trouble-ahead-for-the-rand\/","title":{"rendered":"Trouble ahead for the rand?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rand volatility is at a five-year low. Don\u2019t count on it staying that way.<\/p>\n

One-month at-the-money options volatility for the rand versus the dollar has plunged to the lowest since November 2014 and its 373 basis points drop since the beginning of last month is the biggest among emerging-market currencies monitored by Bloomberg.<\/p>\n

That suggests traders are anticipating price swings will moderate in coming weeks, as many markets move into the holiday period and volumes decline.<\/p>\n

But the spread of six-month implied volatility over the one-month measure widened by almost three percentage points in the same period, and is now the most in two years, indicating that investors are adding protection against currency moves further out along the curve.<\/p>\n

The next six months are crucial for South Africa\u2019s economy, with the government fighting crises at state-owned companies including the national airline and power producer. The budget in February will be watched for signs of further fiscal slippage as Moody\u2019s Investors Service prepares to review the country\u2019s credit rating in March.<\/p>\n

All the while, investors will have to weigh monetary policy in the US and Europe, as well as the state of trade negotiations between the world\u2019s two biggest economies and how that will affect global growth. Those risk factors could move the rand either way.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWe expect a very strong move once the market has made up its mind whether the global economy will recover or not,\u201d said Neels Heyneke, a strategist at Nedbank Group Ltd in Johannesburg. He suggests now is the time to hedge against price swings.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe direction is always important, but with volatilities this low, we think it is not worth the risk to put all your eggs in one basket, as hedging is cheap.\u201d<\/p>\n

The prospect of greater swings in the rand stands in contrast to the outlook for some of its peers. The six-month-one-month implied volatility spread for Brazil\u2019s real is 95 basis points, and is now lower than in June. For Turkey\u2019s lira, the spread is 375 basis points but it\u2019s narrowed from as much as 486 basis points in May.<\/p>\n

The rand gained 0.1% to R14.53 per dollar by 6:54 a.m. in Johannesburg, paring its decline this quarter to 4.6%.<\/p>\n

\n

Read: These companies will invest billions of rands in South Africa<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rand volatility is at a five-year low. Don\u2019t count on it staying that way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":297616,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11121],"tags":[26,6416],"class_list":["post-359265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance","tag-headline","tag-nedbank-group"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359265","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\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359265"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":359275,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359265\/revisions\/359275"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}