By Oyintari Ben
In the early hours of Monday’s trading, the US dollar gained a little as the South African rand and stocks declined.
The rand was trading at 18.2200 against the dollar at 7:20 GMT, down 0.16% from its previous close.
The dollar index, which compares the value of the dollar to those of six significant competitors, increased by about 0.07% to 102.37, not far from the one-month low of 102.00 it reached on Friday.
The rand won’t be able to gain much more ground because of how firmer the dollar is this morning, according to economists at ETM Analytics in a research note.
However, they added that the rand had a very strong performance in June, making up for its losses in May.
Local investors will be examining May’s inflation this week in search of indicators of the state of the economy.
The Top-40 (.JTOPI) index and the larger all-share (.JALSH) index both had early market declines of about 1%.
Early sales on South Africa’s benchmark 2030 government bond saw lower prices and a 3.5 basis point increase in yield to 10.775%.
