Lower and waiting

Nico Kelder reports that this was mainly due to the gold price reacting negatively to the strong dollar.

The currency traded flat against the euro and sterling but weaker against the dollar. However, the dollar gained some ground the past two days against the euro.

South African bond yields traded marginally weaker yesterday, the R153 higher by 1 points and the R157 flat.

Commodities traded lower - oil lost 2.10%, platinum gave back 0.83% and gold dropped 1.46%. In Europe markets closed in the red – weaker earnings reports from Phillips, Europe’s biggest consumer electronics firm, caused the company to trade 4% down and did not help the market much.

In the US the markets closed flat. Negative third quarter profit reports from Intel and Merrill Lynch did not affect the markets that much – the news were expected by some.

The Hang Seng and the Nikkei are currently trading lower by -0.11% and -1.00% respectively. Locally a quite day is expected in anticipation of the MPC decision on interest rates.