Effects of macroeconomic news on the South African financial markets: a domestic and foreign perspective

• Main Author: Kotane, Mauwane
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: Stocks > South Africa > Rate of return; Monetary policy > South Africa; Macroeconomics
• Online Access: Kotane, Mauwane (2017) Effects of macroeconomic news on the South African financial markets: a domestic and foreign perspective, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, <http://hdl.handle.net/10539/23052>; http://hdl.handle.net/10539/23052

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Masters of Management Finance and Investments === There is plenty of research examining the relationship between surprise macroeconomic data and financial returns, however, in a South African context, such research is scarce. This paper adds to the event study body of knowledge by studying the effects of South African macroeconomic announcements on South African financial returns and juxtaposing that with the relationship of surprise macroeconomic announcements released in the United States with the same local financial instrument returns. In this study, the review period is 10 years starting the beginning of 2006 and ending at the end of 2015. Two strands of economic news are studied, monetary news and real activity news against an equity futures index as a proxy for the South African Stock market; the R186 government bond as a proxy for the South African bond market and the spot US dollar to South African rand exchange rate. The monetary announcements studied are the interest rate adjustments of the South African and United States Central Banks and the consumer price index. The real activity data studied are the unemployment rate; the retail sales and the gross domestic product releases. Many of the findings in this paper were in line with much of the literature where evidence shows that monetary policy has a significant effect on fixed income and forex rates. Stocks were also to be shown to be sensitive to both types of data. The regression specification used in this study shows that local equities are more sensitive to both types of news, although mainly to South African news. Only monetary surprises are shown to be sensitive to the bond market and surprises from both countries. Evidence is that the rand is only sensitive to the interest rate announcements released in the United States. === MT2017