THE euphoria surrounding the Cyprus bail-out fizzled out in late trade on Monday, causing the rand to give back most of its earlier gains, with a softer euro also weighing on the local currency.
"We had a pretty range-bound day with the rand trading roughly between the R9.22-R9.30 level to the dollar for most of it. A lot of the euphoria on a bail-out plan for Cyprus led to risk-on sentiment, which initially benefited the rand, but this euphoria has waned and the rand went with it," a local trader said.
"We saw some offshore selling of dollars and rands were bought around the R9.25 level. The liquidity in the market was poor due to Easter coming up and a lot of traders have been off since last Thursday," he said.
At 4.07pm, the rand was bid at R9.2827 to the dollar from R9.2838 at the previous close and R9.3536 at about 4pm on Friday.
The local currency was bid at R12.0023 to the euro from its previous close of R12.0740 and at R14.0979 against sterling from R14.1435 before. The euro was bid at $1.2929 from $1.3018 at the previous close.
