Business confidence figures and data providing important clues to SA’s third quarter GDP growth rate will likely take a back seat to the running of the US presidential election this week. Donald Trump’s eleventh-hour resurgence has spooked the markets, causing a spike in risk aversion that has caused US equities to fall for eight straight sessions and oil for five consecutive days. "Emerging market currencies have not sold off aggressively but are clearly very jittery – and it is not going to take much to see the panic that would drag the rand along," said Rand Merchant Bank currency strategist John Cairns. US betting odds put the likelihood of a Donald Trump victory at only about 28% but this was still eight percentage points ahead of his odds just a few weeks ago. This suggests that if Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton wins, as is widely anticipated, both the rand and the markets in general are likely to respond positively. Locally, the South African Reserve Bank will updat...
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