JOHANNESBURG, May 4 (Reuters) – The South African rand weakened on Monday, pressured by a firmer U.S. dollar and a jump in oil prices, as escalating tensions between the United States and Iran weighed on global market sentiment.<\/p>\n
\n o At 1334 GMT, the rand traded at 16.6925 against the dollar, down 0.5% from its previous close.<\/p>\n
\n o The safe-haven U.S. dollar edged higher against a basket of currencies, while oil jumped over 3% to more than $110 a barrel.<\/p>\n
\n o Tehran said it had forced a U.S. warship to turn back from the Strait of Hormuz, although U.S. Central Command quickly denied a report by Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency that two missiles had hit the vessel.<\/p>\n
\n o The rand has been at the mercy of global market sentiment since the U.S. and Israel launched their war on Iran in late February and Tehran subsequently retaliated.<\/p>\n
\n o South African manufacturing sentiment improved in April as output and new sales orders rebounded after a weak first quarter.<\/p>\n
\n o Separately, data from South Africa’s auto association NAAMSA showed that new vehicle sales increased by 13% year-on-year in April, compared with a 17.3% increase recorded in March, as domestic demand continued to anchor the industry despite global uncertainty.<\/p>\n
\n o “The latest outcome reflects a market still benefiting from earlier cyclical support, even as external shocks continue to reshape the operating environment,” NAAMSA said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\n o On the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, the Top-40 index was down 0.2%.<\/p>\n
\n o South Africa’s benchmark 2035 government bond was slightly firmer, as the yield fell 1 basis point to 8.785%.<\/p>\n
\n (Reporting by Sfundo Parakozov and Nilutpal Timsina;Editing by Louise Heavens and Joe Bavier)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JOHANNESBURG, May 4 (Reuters) – The South African rand weakened on Monday, pressured by a firmer U.S. dollar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424915,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,190,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-424914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-markets","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}