• President Zuma, in a statement late last night, appointed Pravin Gordhan as the new Finance Minister. Amidst calls for the removal of Zuma in the wake of Nene’s sacking, Zuma announced the new appointment. The rand reacted positively on news of Gordhan’s re-appointment, and dropped below 15.00 to the dollar.

  • It’s a quiet week on the local front in terms of data releases. The SARB releases the October leading indicator tomorrow at 09:00.

  • Stats SA releases the Quarterly Employment Statistics for Q3:15 tomorrow at 11:30. Bloomberg consensus expectations are for non-farm payrolls growth to have moderated to -1.1% y/y in Q3:15 from -1.8% y/y in Q2:15.

  • Stats SA also releases the PPI data print for November on Thursday at 11:30. Expectations are for PPI to have increased to 4.5% y/y in November from 4.2% y/y in October.

  • The much anticipated Fed lift-off is (in all likelihood) finally here. The Fed is expected to raise rates for the first time in almost a decade on Wednesday, which will impact on emerging markets in particular.

  • The Chinese RMB hit a 4 year low this morning when the People’s Bank of China set the reference rate weaker than the previous day for the sixth day in a row.

  • Asian markets are on the back foot today following a negative lead from Wall Street on Friday, low oil prices, and the weakened RMB.


Local developments

President Zuma, in a statement late last night, appointed Pravin Gordhan as the new Finance Minister. Amidst calls for the removal of Zuma in the wake of Nene’s sacking, Zuma announced the new appointment. The rand reacted positively on news of Gordhan’s re-appointment, and dropped below 15.00 to the dollar. Zuma announced that Gordhan will return to his portfolio held during 2009-2014 and will lead government in the following:

  • Ensure an even stronger alignment between the Budget and the Medium Term Strategic Framework (MTSF) in the interest of stimulating more inclusive growth and accelerated job creation while continuing the work of ensuring that our debt is stabilised over the medium term.

  • Promote and strengthen the fiscal discipline and prudence that has characterised our management of public finances since the dawn of freedom.

  • Work with the financial sector so that its stability is preserved under the broad umbrella of the Twin Peaks reform.

  • Ensure that National Treasury is more acceptable to all sections of our society.

  • Adherence to the set expenditure ceiling while maintaining a stable trajectory of our debt portfolio, as set out in the February 2015 Budget.

It’s a quiet week on the local front in terms of data releases. The SARB releases the October leading indicator tomorrow at 09:00. The leading indicator has been slipping since May this year and is expected to have continued on its downward trend in October. The indicators slipped to 92.4 pts in September from 92.7 pts in September. The Barclays PMI leading indicator also declined in October and for a second consecutive month in November.

Stats SA releases the Quarterly Employment Statistics for Q3:15 tomorrow at 11:30. Bloomberg consensus expectations are for non-farm payrolls growth to have moderated to -1.1% y/y in Q3:15 from -1.8% y/y in Q2:15. Recall in Q2:15 employment declined by 161,000 to 8.944 million employed in the formal non-agricultural industries from 9.105 million people employed in Q2:14. On a quarterly basis, employment fell by 1,000 and was driven by losses in the following industries: manufacturing (-7,000), transport (-4,000), business services (-3,000) and construction (-2,000). Increases in employment were reported in the trade industry (8,000) and community services (7,000).

Stats SA also releases the PPI data print for November on Thursday at 11:30. Expectations are for PPI to have increased to 4.5% y/y in November from 4.2% y/y in October. On a m/m basis, PPI growth is expected to have moderated to 0.4% in November from 0.9% in October. The ascent of PPI was driven by coal and petroleum products, which moderated to -2.3% y/y in October from -5.1% y/y in September. Within this category, both petrol and diesel slowed, contributing a combined 0.5 ppts to the headline PPI print in October. Food PPI rose only slightly to 6.0% y/y from 5.8% y/y. Our economics team notes that this should moderate expectations for food CPI.


International developments

The much anticipated Fed lift-off is (in all likelihood) finally here. The Fed is expected to raise rates for the first time in almost a decade on Wednesday, which will impact on emerging markets in particular. Although the markets have been well prepared for this move, and it is felt that the increase in rates has been priced in at this point, it is likely that there will still be a knee-jerk reaction to the rate hike, and we expect the rand to weaken against the dollar. Most economic analysts expect two to four rate hikes over the course of next year. Our G10 analyst expects two 25bps hikes next year on top of the rate hike this week.

The Chinese RMB hit a 4 year low this morning when the People’s Bank of China set the reference rate weaker than the previous day for the sixth day in a row. This comes despite a good set of data out of China on Saturday where we saw industrial output, retail sales and urban investment improve. Industrial output for November was up 6.2% y/y from 5.6% in October, while retails sales improved from 11.0% y/y in October to 11.2% y/y in November.

Asian markets are on the back foot today following a negative lead from Wall Street on Friday, low oil prices, and the weakened RMB. At the time of writing, the Shanghai Composite was up 0.5%, the Shenzhen Composite was down 0.2%, the Japanese Nikkei was down 2.1%, and the Hong Kong Hang Seng was down 0.9%.

All eyes will be on the FOMC announcement on Wednesday this week, and we have the last set of data for the US ahead of the announcement, namely CPI, coming out tomorrow.


Markets

The rand weakened further on Friday, closing at 15.89, and reached an all-time high of 16.05, compared to Thursday’s close of 15.47. The rand’s depreciation against the greenback occurred despite dollar weakness against all of the major currencies; the dollar posted losses against the yen (-0.5%), the euro (0.4%) and the pound (0.3%). The rand’s performance was weaker yet again against all of the major crosses; the rand lost ground against the euro (3.2%), the pound (3.1%) and the yen (-3.1%). The rand put in the worst performance amongst both the commodity currencies we monitor for purposes of this report, and the EM currencies. The rand traded between a low of USDZAR15.3585 and a high of USDZAR16.0543.

Metal prices were mixed on Friday. Copper and gold were up on Friday, by 2.5% and 0.3%, respectively, while platinum was down by 1.7%. Brent closed 4.5% lower, at $37.93/bbl. Both the developed world MSCI and the MSCI EM were down on Friday, by 1.6% and 2.0%, respectively. The ALSI was down by 1.9% on the day. The EMBI spread widened by 24 bps on the day and SA’s 5yr CDS widened by 8 bps. The CBOE VIX Index, a volatility-based proxy for global risk appetite/aversion, increased by 26.11%.

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