The USD/ZAR currency pair lost ground on Tuesday, as market players awaited the key US CPI report that may provide further clues on the timing of the Federal Reserve’s first rate cut.
Annual headline consumer inflation in the United States probably remained steady at 3.1% in February, according to market consensus.
Annual core CPI inflation probably eased to 3.7% in February from 3.9% in January – a 2 1/2-year low.
Markets are pricing in three to four 25 basis point Fed rate cuts this year, with the chance of the first cut taking place in June at 70%, according to LSEG’s interest rate probability app.
In other data, Rand traders will also pay attention to South Africa’s mining and manufacturing production figures for January due out on Thursday.
Currency Pair Performance
As of 9:48 GMT on Tuesday the USD/ZAR currency pair was losing 0.51% on the day to trade at 18.5812.
Earlier in the session, the exotic Forex pair went down as low as 18.5642. The latter has been the pair’s weakest level since February 2nd (18.5270).