LONDON Oct 3 (Reuters) – Emerging stocks dipped on
Wednesday and the commodity-focused rand hit four-week lows
after weak Chinese and Australian data raised global growth
concerns.
China’s official services PMI slowed to 53.7 percent in
September from 56.3 in August, highlighting the economy’s
seventh straight quarter of slowdown, while Australia posted
weak export data. Chinese markets were closed for holidays.
Export-led emerging markets are heavily dependent on growth
in China.
Benchmark emerging equities eased 0.1 percent.
Russian stocks lost as much as one percent as Brent
crude futures slipped below $111 per barrel.
The rand weakened to four-week lows amid broad falls
in commodity currencies and after Reserve Bank Governor Gill
Marcus said this week that current levels of foreign flows into
South Africa’s bond market were not sustainable.
“All of a sudden a series of bad news is there,” said Gaelle
Blanchard, emerging FX strategist at SocGen.
“We have the Moody’s downgrade which had a bit of a negative
impact on the currency and we have all this unrest in the mining
sector.”
Moody’s cut South Africa’s rating to Baa1 from A3 last week,
while wildcat mining strikes spread to the iron ore sector on
Wednesday.
Poland’s zloty steadied against the euro ahead of
a rate decision which analysts polled by Reuters expect will
bring interest rates down 25 basis points to 4.5 percent.
Continued…
