Oanda analyst Stephen Innes said the dollar was “on a rampage”‚ supported in part by several US Federal Reserve officials’ upbeat assessments of the US economy.
A weaker rand pushes up the cost of imports‚ such as fuel‚ though it benefits the tourism sector and exporters.
The rand has weakened just more than 2% against dollar over the past 24 hours‚ bringing losses for week so far to just shy of 4%.
Local bonds were not spared the sell-off‚ with the yield on the benchmark R186 pushing up to 9.22%‚ from 9.08% at the last settlement. Bond yields move inversely to prices.
Brent crude hovered just under $86 a barrel‚ levels last visited 2014‚ according the Iress data.
At 8.48am‚ the rand was at R14.7042 to the dollar from R14.6363‚ at R16.8868 to the euro from R16.7961 and at R19.0422 to the pound from R18.9397. The euro was at $1.1485 from $1.1475.