An attack on central bank independence by US President Donald Trump in a TV interview upset markets on Friday morning. "I don’t like all of this work that we’re putting into the economy and then I see rates going up," Trump said in an interview on CNBC.
The US Federal Reserve Bank has raised interest rates five times since Trump took office in January 2017, and indications of two more US interest rate increases this year sent the rand from R13.26 to nearly R13.60 to the dollar on Thursday. The rand was trading at R13.57 to the dollar, R15.82 to the euro and R17.67 to the pound at 6.30am. The latest "Trump slump" saw Tokyo’s Topix index fall 0.7% and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index 0.54%, with Tencent down 0.85% to HK$372.40. However, global markets, including the JSE, may get a boost from Microsoft. In what Nasdaq terms "after hours trading", Microsoft’s share price rose 3.26% after releasing better than expected quarterly results. Microsoft reported 17% revenue growth to $30bn an...
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