The South African rand tumbled today, demonstrating the biggest drop among most-traded currencies and touching the historic low. The reason for the dive was yet more bad news from China.
The Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index sank 7 percent at the start of today’s trading. This prompted China to close markets as a measure to prevent further slide. Chinese policy makers also devalued the yuan to the lowest level since March 2011 in a bid to shore up the economy. All the bad news led to the tumble of risky assets, including commodities and currencies of emerging markets.
USD/ZAR was up 1.25 percent from 15.8598 to 16.0540 as of 10:56 GMT today, touching the all-time high of 16.2031 intraday.
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