Update

Just a quick update on my long USD short ZAR trade. Things have moved in the right direction and I am marginally in the money.

Quite pleased that the Rand is starting to get comfortable below the R7.50 to the US dollar level and it is good to see decent volumes continuing to go through on that USDSCA warrant.

Something that should give a bit of momentum to the weakening of the ZAR will be the hints being offered by the bond market. Foreigners were net sellers of R596m worth of SA bonds on Thursday following up on the R645m sold on Wednesday.

These are the kind of flows likely to indicate that people are starting to pull in their horns and take money back to the developed markets for a while.

According to the guys over at RMB: "RMB analysts said in their daily report that risks of an immediate break
of 7.62 have faded as mixed US data has taken the strength out of the US recovery and global risk-taking is resuming, if slowly."

.... they're bankers and probably wrong.... Personally I wouldn't be surprised to have a decent sell-off going into December - particularly with concerns around structural problems in places like Greece, Spain, Ireland etc.

A great number of out of China with November Industrial Output up 19.2% - well above economist expectations. The recovery seems to be taking hold at all levels of the economy which is very encouraging for longer term investment stability

Anyways - I have a good feeling about today. Let's see what the day holds.