A little unhealthy?

The Efficient Group says that Harmony (+7.44%) took the biggest advantage of the softer rand. South Africa’s leading supplier of cement and lime, PPC (-3.19%) had a slight hick-up during trading.

All is not well for our dear currency; the rand has lost 126 cents and 83 cents against the dollar and euro respectively since the beginning of the year.

With the gold price (-0.83%) moving these days as it is, traders would find a recent article by resourceinvestor.com interesting. It is entitled “is the gold price rigged or manipulated”.

Opec president, Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahd al-Sabah said yesterday that he expected the cartel to maintain its current oil (+5.74%) output level into the third quarter of 2005.

Wall Street edged higher after a manufacturing report eased investor’s inflation and interest rates fears. US equity markets were 0.87% up on average. In Europe, the DAX (+1.49%) bounced 67 points higher, to a three year high, ignoring the weak May PMI report.

Japanese equity markets are currently looking strong after a report was released showing that unemployment is currently at its lowest level in six years. The movements of the currency will dominate the trading strategies of local traders today.