THROUGH THE RABBIT HOLE
The mystery of the stronger rand
The rand is rallying in the midst of a grave political crisis, confounding many of the experts who expected a disaster after Pravin Gordhan’s axing. What is happening in Wonderland?
After then finance minister Nhlanhla Nene was axed in December 2015, the rand weakened dramatically. This time around, however, despite the even worse news of Pravin Gordhan’s axing and SA’s downgrade to junk status, the rand has proved remarkably resilient. How do we square this? Are the markets getting so used to bad news coming out of SA that they have stopped reacting to it? Or is there some other factor at play? Before President Jacob Zuma’s cabinet reshuffle on March 30 the rand was trading at R12.40/$. In the following two weeks it weakened by roughly R1.50 against the dollar. But at the time of writing, it had reversed almost one-third of its losses, firming by 50c to trade at R13.40/$. Like Cairns, Roodt made this forecast many months before Zuma reshuffled his cabinet and caused many to wonder if SA’s democratic project had permanently run aground. So the fact that he hasn’t lowered his forecast also bears scrutiny. Roodt has a remarkably successful track record in correct...
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