Limited damage

The rand was weaker against the dollar in late afternoon trade yesterday after weekly jobless claims data in the US gave the dollar a lift.

RMB and Business Day report that market analysts saw the rand's losses as limited ahead of key US foreign trade data due out on Friday.

In late afternoon, the rand was quoted at R6,6753 to the dollar from R6,6436 on Wednesday. It was quoted at R8,1095 to the euro from a previous R8,0771 and at R11,898- against sterling from Wednesday's close of R11,8700.

There was some encouraging weekly jobless figures out of the US and the dollar made back a bit of ground on that, so the rand crept a bit weaker on that, a market analyst said.

The analyst cautioned that should the rand break R6,75, it would fall to R7 fairly quickly, with the next meaningful support level at about R7,14. The dollar clung to most of its recent losses as upbeat economic data failed to give currencies new direction yesterday.

While marginally down against the euro and Swiss Franc, the US currency managed to clock modest gains against sterling as well as the yen, which hampered by a drop in Japanese machine orders and a soft equity market.