The rand, which strengthened nearly 3% from R13.71/$ on Tuesday to R13.31/$ on Thursday, held on to its gains on Friday morning, trading at about R13.36/% at 7am. Markets trading ahead of the JSE’s opening on Friday morning were generally gloomy, taking their cue from Wall Street, which suffered a crash in department store stocks on Thursday. Worst hit was Macy’s, whose share price plunged 17%, followed by Sears, which lost 9.61%, and Kohl’s, which fell 7.84%. The sell-off that followed disappointing quarterly results from Macy’s and Kohl’s dragged down both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq indices 0.22% on Thursday. Tokyo’s main indices were down about 0.6% and Sydney 0.84% ahead of the JSE’s opening on Friday morning. Luxury brands group Richemont said in its December quarter update that it expected to report on Friday that its year to end-March would "face a challenging comparative due to the prior year’s inclusion of the €639m noncash gain relating to the merger of Net-a-Porter with Yoox"...
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