Unum Market Commentary: Global Equities Remain Bid, Dollar fades

Rumblings throughout the financial markets continued on Tuesday around US Donald Trump being concerned about the Federal Reserve raising interest rates. As you may well know, higher rates in the US means a stronger US Dollar but could also spell trouble for equity markets which for nearly a decade have relied on low interest rates to borrow cheaply and fuel growth. This dollar weakness saw the Rand gain on the day, testing a one-week low of R14.27. Also on the day the All Share Index was marginally higher by 0.07% while the Top 40 added 24 points to close the session 0.05% higher.

JSE Major Sectors

Resources 10 -1.19%
Industrial 25 +0.28%
Financial 15 +1.03%

In currencies, the South African Rand trades as follows:

USDZAR -0.28% to 14.34
GBPZAR -0.23% to 18.52
EURZAR -0.23% to 16.61

Gold trades at $1201
Platinum at $795
Brent Crude Oil at $72.92

International Markets

This morning, Asian equities are as follows:

Nikkei 225 (+0.61%)
Hang Seng (+0.30%)
Shanghai Composite (-0.65%)

Latam Markets closed as follows:

Merval 25 (-0.74%)
Bovespa (-1.50%)
INMEX (+1.04%)

Aus miners:
BHP Billiton (-1.60%)
Rio Tinto (-1.62%)
S32 (-0.91%)

FANGs
Facebook (+0.07%)
Amazon (+0.36%)
Netflix (+3.14%)
Google (-0.37%)

FTSE Miners:
Anglo American plc (+0.54%)
BHP Billiton plc (-2.10%)
Glencore plc (+0.24%)

Alibaba Holdings (+0.92%)
Tencent Holdings (+2.28%)