* S.Africa’s currency hit by delayed c/account shock
* Bond investors heed sell signal after rand plunges
JOHANNESBURG, Sept 12 (Reuters) – The rand fell 3 percent
against the dollar, recording it biggest daily plunge in nearly
three months on Wednesday afternoon as New York traders came
into a weaker rand and triggered stop-losses that took the
currency to a week-low.
South Africa’s currency was sold during local trade because
of a festering mining strike that has hit the country’s platinum
belt. On Wednesday, strikers forced the world’s biggest platinum
producer Anglo American to shut down some of its
operations.
By 1632 GMT, the rand was down 2.1 percent to
8.3450/dollar, recovering from a session low of 8.3905 hit when
the New York session opened.
Dealers said the local unit was pressured by poor current
account data from the previous session, where the shortfall hit
its widest gap in four years in the second
quarter.
The rand had shrugged off the data in the previous session
but events on Wednesday cast doubts in investors’ minds about
holding South African assets.
“It’s a delayed reaction to yesterday’s current account
data. The spreading mining industrial action played into
negative sentiment, and then we just saw stop-losses on that,”
said David Gracey, a currency trader for Investec.
Continuing mining strife pushed investors who had held on to
the rand because of expectations of monetary easing from the
United States to drop the currency on Wednesday as mining labour
unrest hit sentiment.
Continued…
