After being banned by the social media giants Donald Trump has unveiled his own platform, TRUTH Social, in an attempt to “stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech.” Trump had this to say at his new platform launch:?“We live in a world where the Taliban has a huge presence on Twitter, yet your favourite American president has been silenced.”?
These are the mid rates at 7:05 today:
Brent Crude = $85.94 per barrel
- While it’s only Thursday morning, and way too soon to claim a weekly gain for the Rand, at this point things are looking pretty good.?The intra-week worst of R14.79 to the Dollar came on Monday morning while yesterday we touched R14.36, a 3% gain thus far, and with the R14.50 barrier now broken let’s see how far this run can continue.
- The Dollar Index took yet another step backwards yesterday which was music to the Rand’s ears.?While there are always a number of moving parts driving price action in the currency market the focus right now is on central banks and the timing of their respective interest rate hikes.?It’s a narrative that has been dominated by the FED for months, but all of a sudden the central banks from Canada, New Zealand, the UK and even emerging markets like Brazil and Russia are gaining airtime with the end result being a fall in the Dollar.?The Bank of England (BoE) is suddenly touted as the first major central bank to raise interest rates, maybe even as soon as next month, and the prospect of interest rates moving higher around the world while the FED stands still is hurting the Dollar.
- The following is from CNBC and talks to the Dollar’s retreat:??Commodity currencies stood near multi-month highs on Thursday on strong raw material prices while the improved risk mood saw the US dollar losing earlier momentum built from expectations the FED would tighten monetary policy. “It looks almost certain that the BoE will raise interest rates in November, perhaps again in December, as inflation could get out of control given a severe labour shortage,” said Yukio Ishizuki, senior strategist at Daiwa Securities. “And globally we are likely to see rate hikes to curb inflation in many countries, which means the US Dollar is standing out less than before in terms of rate hike expectations.”
- So the Dollar is on the back foot but the following excerpt from Reuters suggests that it shouldn’t be about the start of interest rate hiking cycles but more about how far each central bank can hike rates:??“When it comes to central banks, there’s a lot of aggressive pricing out there,” said Bipan Rai, North American head of FX strategy at CIBC Capital Markets in Toronto, noting that the market is likely overstating how quickly rate hikes will come. “When push comes to shove, given the underlying fundamentals in the United States, which are still very constructive for growth, we think the FED is probably going to be the central bank that raises rates over the course of the coming years at a more aggressive clip than the market is pricing in now.”
- Looking at the local market we had the week’s only data point yesterday with our consumer inflation reading coming in exactly as forecast.?With CPI increasing from 4.9% to 5% this is still comfortably inside the SARB’s upper target of 6%, but September’s print delivered the third monthly increase in a row and with fuel prices heading north our own monetary policy announcement on 18 November is increasing in importance.?Lesetja Kganyago and his team may well decide to hike interest rates to cool inflation and the Rand enjoyed support yesterday as a result of this speculation.
- No local market data today.?
- Possible USD mid rate trading ranges in the Rand today are R14.30 and R14.60.?