Time to fasten your seat belts as rand breaches R18.50/$ – TreasuryONE

By Wichard Cilliers

(TreasuryONE) – It’s been a very eventful day as the rand was in a record-breaking mood today, but not in a good way.

The local currency reached a high of R18.64 to the US dollar in afternoon trade as emerging markets were under the pump again. With thin liquidity conditions, the rand seemed almost in free fall as it sliced through resistance levels like a hot knife through butter.

The unit recovered a little to trade at R18.35 during the afternoon session before ending the session on the back foot against the dollar at R18.50.

The start of the EM troubles was the oil spat between Russia and Saudi Arabia, and in recent moments we had US President Donald Trump coming out,  saying that the issue will be resolved. We have seen oil jumping 20% on the news.

Further news that came out of the US was that the US jobless claims hit another record of 6.6-million new jobless claims, which was 3m more than was expected. It is expected that the US unemployment number will reach 10% due to the coronavirus pandemic after printing below the 4% level no longer than a month ago. Speaking of which we have the non-farm number for the US coming out tomorrow which could make for some interesting reading.

Fasten your seat belts yet again.

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