Carnage on Wall Street yesterday as the market didn’t take kindly to the sitting US president declining to rule out an imminent recession as a result of his trade policies. That brings the S&P500’s losses to over $4 trillion since its recent peak on the 19th of February and yet somehow the Rand remains unscathed.

Welcome to the new week, a week that has our long awaited 2025 Budget Speech pencilled in for Wednesday afternoon but depending on which article you read out there it seems that consensus on how to fund the budget has yet to be agreed. Robust discussions behind closed doors are no doubt in full swing.

The market was holping that we would get news of a last minute deal to avert the looming tariff threats but it looks like that deal is not going to come, and while the currency market hasn’t reacted too severely just yet the same cannot be said for equities.

An analyst recently quipped that the market will remain unfazed for as long as Donald Trump is seen as “the boy who cried wolf” when it comes to the threat of trade tariffs. The clock is suddenly ticking very loudly on a major tariff threat and the rest of this week has become a worrisome period for the Rand.

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!!!