Despite falling into recession, Moody’s decided to downgrade SA by only one notch, leaving us at investment grade. But that does not mean we can relax, there is nothing stopping them from downgrading us again in a couple of months (weeks if we do something stupid). Our local market managed a third of a percent gain thanks to a late afternoon bounce. PPC was in demand after they reported on Thursday. UK and European markets ended higher as May wasted no time announcing an alliance with Democratic Unionist Party, but that seems to be unravelling as news broke over the weekend that DUP hasn’t yet agreed to support May. Comey’s testimony hasn’t had a hugely negative impact on the US markets: Dow Jones was up 0.42% but tech stocks got sold off after Goldman Sachs’ CIO commented that there was more risk in tech stocks than investors were accounting for. Nasdaq was down almost 2%.

 

Global Markets & Downgrades