Finally some good news out of the Middle East where the US and France have brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah with the fighting having stopped in the early hours of this morning. The region remains extremely tense, but this is a big step in the right direction.

French Prime Minister Michel Barnier has been ousted by a vote of no-confidence.  The life-long politician will probably not attend the government’s Christmas party but that shouldn’t detract from the festivities as by his own admission he “is not a fun guy”, and he has little time for the “bluster” of his younger colleagues.

It has finally arrived.  Not exactly the last working week for the year but definitely the last week for my forex report.  Hopefully, we see some movement in the Rand over the next five days as last week we were stuck in a narrow trading range which made reporting on events rather dull.   

Developments in the US are ensuring that the Dollar’s dominance is firmly in place but the Rand usually finds support when we get good news out of China and hopefully that remains the case after Chinese GDP data beat expectations earlier this morning, although there’s no sign of an encouraging pull through to our exchange rate just yet.

Finally we got some big news from Trump on the tariff front and it wasn’t what the market was expecting. He also fired his first salvo into the central bank/interest rates debate, and the combination of these comments has been great for the Rand.

Two down and two to go. Unfortunately I’m not talking about the number of days till we get to Friday but rather the major US tariff battlefronts with Canada and Mexico pretty much sorted while we still need similar resolutions for China and Europe.

In the world of equity investing the saying goes, “it’s not about where you open, it’s about where you close.” The Rand is taking a leaf out of that book after opening on Monday morning under severe pressure, but that’s just a distant memory now as we look to close the week out significantly stronger.