USD/ZAR trades at 2-week high on rising 25 bps Fed cut bets

The USD/ZAR currency pair traded not far from recent two-week high of 17.6022 on Monday.

The US Dollar maintained gains against major peers after a robust US employment report pointed to a resilient economy and urged market players to reduce bets of an out-sized Federal Reserve rate cut in November.

Data showed last Friday that the US economy had created 254,000 jobs in September, much more than expected, following a revised up 159,000 increase in August.

It has been the strongest job growth since March and it also exceeded the average monthly growth of 203,000 over the previous 12 months.

In addition, the unemployment rate dropped to 4.1% in September, or the lowest level since June, from 4.2% in August.

Markets are now pricing in about a 98% chance of a 25 basis point rate cut at the Fed’s policy meeting in November, compared to a 47% chance a week earlier.

Meanwhile, in other data, foreign exchange reserves in South Africa expanded to a fresh record high of $63.633 billion in September, up from $63.205 billion in August.

The nation’s gold reserves and Special Drawing Rights both rose.

As of 8:11 GMT on Monday the USD/ZAR currency pair was little changed to trade at 17.3715.