Rand hits best level in weeks after US inflation slows | News24_Business
Asian stocks started down on Thursday after inconclusive US midterm election results and a turbulent cryptocurrency market left Wall Street and European markets in a sea of red.
"US growth looks still too strong to bring inflation down," Tapas Strickland of National Australia Bank said in a note. "The FTX news is having an outsized effect on asset prices," he said, adding that"all ships were sinking on the crypto tumult."On Wednesday, Gold Fields' share price climbed more than 21% to R184.50 after it terminated the agreement to acquire Canadian precious metals miner Yamana Gold.
The tech industry is in a serious slump and several major firms have announced mass layoffs -- Twitter's new owner Elon Musk fired half its staff last week. Zuckerberg renamed the company to Meta a year ago to reflect the commitment to the project, but the division working on metaverse technology has since made losses of more than $3.5 billion.
Last month, Meta announced profits of $4.4 billion in the third quarter, a 52 percent decrease year-on-year, causing its stock price to fall 25 percent. "Demand continues to remain strong," the company said in a stock exchange filing, but warned it remained vulnerable to"global uncertainties".But Tata Motors said"improving chip supply and cooling commodity prices" will aid business recovery in the quarters ahead.
Pending orders at JLR, Britain's biggest carmaker, stood at 205,000 units at the end of September, as chip supply constraints persisted. The company now expects net income from continuing operations of around 250 million euros this year, down from a target of around 500 million euros set out in a statement on Oct. 20.
But they dipped in mid-morning trade after official data showed the world's second-largest economy languishing under Beijing's strict zero-Covid policy. At the same time, market players are eying US inflation data due on Thursday, causing the dollar to retreat, said Edward Moya, senior market analyst at OANDA.
Speculation over how long Beijing will stick with its harsh lockdown-and-testing policies designed to stamp out Covid-19 has fuelled volatility in Chinese markets in recent days. "Rolling lockdowns in China, as Covid cases rebound, are catching oil traders leaning the wrong way," he added. Both main crude indexes were down more than 2.5 percent.I'm a happy shareholder and I can't wait to see if the price pops all the way back up to pre-deal levels.Harmony Gold on Tuesday reported a fatality at its Tshepong North mine in the Free State province after a fall-of-ground incident.
M&R’s interest in Australia will continue through mining services business RUC Cementation Mining, one of the three operating companies in the group’s multinational mining platform. Early voting has begun in many states and most US voters go to the polls on Tuesday, with a Republican takeover of Congress likely dooming President Joe Biden's ambitious proposals.
"It is difficult to argue the extreme inflation and slowing economy are entirely the Biden administration's fault, but voters will be very clear in their feelings on the matter just the same." "In a timely reminder of the potential for Covid policy to hit output, Apple warned iPhone shipments will be lower than previously expected after China lockdowns affected operations at a supplier's factory," he noted.
Finance costs amounted to R207 million, and the group's loan-to-value, a measure of indebtedness, climbed just over a percentage point over the six months to 58.2%. Delta, which has 98 properties worth about R7.5 billion, has been battling with debt racked up through acquisitions, and had also been temporarily suspended from the JSE after withdrawing its 2020 results, which were then restated.
Headline earnings per share are expected to fall by between 406c and 420c in its half-year, from 356c previously, MultiChoice said in an update, implying a headline loss of as much as R283 million. MultiChoice’s shares were down 0.49% to R118.83 in afternoon trade on Monday, having lost about 2.6% in year to date. Most Asian markets rose on Monday following strong US jobs data, with fresh rallies seen in Hong Kong even after China said it would stick to its strict zero-Covid policy.
The data, which comes days ahead of critical US midterm elections, raised hopes of a soft landing for the world's biggest economy despite aggressive Fed rate hikes aimed at taming inflation. "Last week, the financial market was stirring on rumours of China reopening," Raymond Yeung and Zhaopeng Xing of ANZ Research said in a note on Monday.
Dashed hopes of a Chinese reopening also drove down oil prices, which had rallied on Friday on the optimism that Beijing could soon change course, pushing up demand for crude.Naspers and Prosus rise as speculation of Chinese policy shifts fuel Hang Seng rally In mid-morning trade on the JSE Naspers was up 6.13% to R2 155.45 and Prosus 5.45% to 4.84% to R882.74. Both shares had come under pressure in October, when Chinese Communist Party president Xi Jinping secured a third term, then packing his cabinet with those who had supported his hardline stance on pandemic restrictions.Africa's largest mobile operator MTN says its overall subscriber base grew 6.
This result was delivered against high inflation, rising interest rates, unemployment and unprecedented loadshedding, which negatively impacted the overall network availability and some business functions, the group said. In mid-morning trade on Friday, MTN's shares were up 1.81% to R134.27, outperforming Vodacom, which was flat, and Telkom, which had fallen 0.66%.Most Asian markets rose Friday after the previous day's Federal Reserve-induced sell-off, with Hong Kong leading the way with another big rally fuelled by hopes China will roll back some of its painful zero-Covid policies.
The comments skewered the pound -- already under severe pressure after recent turmoil in Westminster -- and sent it tumbling against the dollar and euro, while it struggled to bounce back in Asia. Hong Kong jumped more than five percent on lingering hopes that China will soon begin rolling back its zero-Covid strategy of lockdowns that has hammered the world's second-largest economy.The Hang Seng Index has jumped almost 10 percent this week since an unverified statement earlier this week suggested officials in Beijing were discussing a change.
The dollar rose strongly against the pound on Thursday despite the Bank of England also delivering a 0.75-percentage-point hike - the largest in 33 years - to 3.0 percent, or the highest rate since 2008.The rand was more than a percent weaker at R18.40/$, but gained 1.6% against the pound to R20.59. The JSE's All-Share index lost 1.6%, with Sibanye losing more than 10% of its value following downbeat quarterly results.
"Stocks fell... after the Federal Reserve raised benchmark interest rates and warned that there was still some ways to go in its efforts to tame inflation," said Mark Haefele, chief investment officer at UBS Global Wealth Management.
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