South African bonds remain firm in quiet afternoon trade on Wednesday.
THE South African bond market stayed firm in quiet afternoon trade on Wednesday, as the US Independence Day holiday robbed the market of liquidity.
“We hardly did anything today. Even the weaker rand failed to move the market. Hopefully we will see more action tomorrow when the Americans return,” a local trader said.
At 4pm, the benchmark R157 bond was trading at 5,930% from Tuesday’s close of 5,950% and Monday’s close of 6,020%. The R207 was bid at 6,975% and offered at 6,965% from a previous close of 7,005% and the R186 was trading at 7,840% from its previous close of 7,850%.
The rand was bid at R8,1268 against the dollar from an early morning best level of R8,0550, Tuesday’s close of R8,0697 and Monday’s close of R8,1505. The rand was last below eight rand per dollar on May 10.
Dow Jones Newswires reported that the majority of Germans did not want a United States of Europe, rejected the idea of a European Union president and would not cede budget powers to Brussels, according to a survey by Stern magazine.
The poll of 1004 Germans, which will be published in Thursday’s edition of the magazine, comes less than a week after German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters in Paris that the continent needed “more Europe”, not less.
The poll showed that 74% of Germans did not want European countries to mutate into the European version of the United States of America, while 22% thought it was a good idea.
A majority of 63% rejected the nomination of a European president, as was suggested by German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, while 33% were in favour of the creation of a European president post.
There is a comparable smaller resistance when it comes to the nomination of a European finance minister, who would oversee national budgets -47% would like such a position to be created.
A little bit more than half of those polled said they didn’t want German budget law to be transferred to European institutions, while 36% though it would be alright to do so.
Germans are not in favour of jointly-issued eurobonds, the poll suggested, with 73% saying they rejected the debt sharing instruments.
Only 17% thought eurobonds would be a good new tool to battle the European financial crisis.
All in all, Germans were content with the development of the European Union and 54% thought that Germany had benefited from the union so far.
They also say that the introduction of a common currency was a good thing but when it came to shifting more sovereign rights to Brussels, 69% wanted a popular referendum on that matter.
The survey was conducted on June 27 and 28, just before the two-day European summit in Brussels where leaders said they would speed up plans to create a single supervisor to oversee the eurozone’s banks and agreed on measures aimed at reducing soaring borrowing costs for Spain and Italy.
Foreigners were net buyers of R1,818bn of South African bonds including repo transactions on Tuesday after net purchases of R2,816bn of local bonds on Monday‚ data released by the JSE show.
Nominal cumulative volume was R196,293bn on Tuesday from R86,061bn on Monday.
Foreigners were net buyers of R1,516bn of South African bonds excluding repo transactions on Tuesday after net purchases of R2,787bn of local bonds on Monday.
For the year to date foreigners have been net buyers of R52,773bn of local bonds‚ excluding repo transactions. In 2011 they were net buyers of R47,359bn worth of local bonds‚ excluding repo transactions.
In the year to date foreigners have been net buyers of R51,243bn of local bonds including repo transactions. In 2011 they bought R37,501bn worth of local bonds.
