The worrying news is that Donald Trump appears to be singling South Africa out for some special attention, and very unwelcomed attention as he has cut off all US funding while opening the door to resettling our “refugee” farmers in the States. The good news is that he has immediately moved on to much bigger headlines which will without doubt take the world’s gaze away from SA.

After being minted for 230 years it looks like the US penny has come to the end of the road. Donald Trump has ordered the end of penny production, and when considering that the US Mint made 3.2 billion pennies last year alone at a cost of 3.7c for the 1c coin then calling time on it makes a lot of sense.

After drifting sideways around R18.50 to the Dollar for most of last week the Rand finally got the memo and reacted to Dollar weakness on Friday. Unfortunately for us it’s a US public holiday today so we’ll have to wait till tomorrow to see if further gains are on the cards.

It may seem like Donald Trump is keeping the market on its toes with his regular social media posts but a study by JPMorgan reminds us that his first term truly was a rollercoaster ride by comparison. Last week he increased his intensity by posting 20 messages that moved the currency market, but at his peak first time around his average was 60 market moving posts a week!!!

Budget Speech Wednesday has arrived and on the local front, all eyes will be on Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana as he delivers his first budget under the GNU.  Concerned/pessimistic articles claim that he is stuck between a rock and a hard place but let’s see if he has a few tricks up his sleeve. 

It just goes to show that the best time to have an unprecedented local scandal, like postponing the annual Budget Speech for the first time in our democratic history for example, is to do it when the Dollar is on the back foot!!!