The Daily Forex Market Report

Good morning

1 April 2025 is here, a day known for hijinks around the world, but today also marks the 10-year anniversary of my daily forex report!!!  This milestone is a proud achievement while also a catalyst for change as after 10 years of early mornings 5 days a week I will be scaling things back to Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.  Thanks for reading over the years!!! 

These are the mid rates at 6:00 today:

Market News

• March 2025 is done, as is the first quarter for the year, but while this was an extremely challenging period for US equities and the Dollar alike the Rand actually notched up gains.  We started the year at R18.86 to the Dollar and the month at R18.70, and after touching R18.01 as the month’s best level on the 18^th we have since slipped back to close things off at R18.34 yesterday afternoon. 
• What feels like one of the most important days of the year for financial markets is just 24 hours away and we still have pretty much no idea of what’s about to happen.  What we do know is that Donald Trump will be announcing his much talked about reciprocal tariffs on countries who currently have levies on US goods, and while we know that negotiations with many of America’s trading partners have been underway we also know that two days ago Trump said he would start “with all countries”.  Headlines doing the rounds are predictably negative, but we don’t have to wait much longer to find out what’s happening.   
• Uncertainty is the name of the game right now and the following from CNBC paints the picture:  The Dollar strengthened against the Japanese Yen and the Euro on Monday, but was set for its largest quarterly decline since July 2024, as uncertainty around US tariffs kept traders mostly on the sidelines waiting for clarity on President Donald Trump’s trade policies. “Markets are worried about the US economy. They’re more particularly worried about Trump’s tariffs and the effect that they’re going to have going forward, because that entire project is undefined,” said Joseph Trevisani, senior analyst at FX Street. “Nobody knows exactly what Trump’s going to do. Nobody knows exactly what the response is going to be from the other countries. And more importantly, nobody knows what the economic response is going to be.”
• It must be remembered that at times like this the market is prone to being overly negative in its assumptions, and as a result any announcement tomorrow that isn’t as bad as first feared would trigger an immediate snap back (especially for stocks).  While trying to guess what Trump will do is fraught with danger it’s encouraging to hear Kristalina Georgieva, MD of the IMF, warning against becoming too negative as recent data still suggests strong US economic growth.  Georgieva said the IMF does not see any indications of a recession on the horizon, and while consumer and business confidence levels have fallen the IMF has not seen a dramatic impact on the real economy thus far.   
• Tariff headlines will dominate news outlets tomorrow, and probably for the rest of the week even though we also have the monthly US jobs report on Friday as well as FED Chair Jerome Powell speaking that same day.  On the local front we have parliament set to vote on our highly contentious 2025 budget tomorrow, and while the impasse within the GNU is still unresolved it was encouraging to hear DA leader John Steenhuisen saying that a deal is close, and that the parties are “closer than many people think” in finding a solution. 
• Local market data today sees our March manufacturing PMI at 11:00 followed by the month’s new vehicle sales later in the day.
• Possible USD mid rate trading ranges in the Rand today are R18.15 and R18.45.

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