S.African rand steady vs dlr, stocks up for 6th day

JOHANNESBURG, Nov 13 (Reuters) - South Africa's rand steadied against the dollar on Friday and local stocks ended slightly higher, maintaining positive territory for a sixth day in a row in a lightly traded session. The Johannesburg Top-40 index rose 0.1 percent to 24,074.94 points, while the broader All-Share index added 0.03 percent to 26,695.24 points. "The volumes were very thin, the gains were pretty mixed. It was a boring sideways market, nothing too exciting," said Michael Carlsson, a portfolio manager at Consilium Capital. After trading in a tight range for most of the session, the rand stood at 7.4525 to the dollar at 1546 GMT, not very far from its previous New York close of 7.4650 on Thursday. "We've seen good selling from offshore. Offshore (investors) are buyers of rand and they've been fighting with our importers so the rand has been in a tight range," said Jim Bryson, chief dealer at Rand Merchant Bank. Bryson said the rand could test 7.65/68 if the euro fell. The dollar edged higher against the euro after data showed U.S. consumer sentiment fell in early November to the weakest in three months, denting risk appetite. On the local bourse, Johannesburg-listed Swiss luxury goods maker Richemont was the top performing blue-chip climbing 5.07 percent to 23.43 rand, after posting a better than expected decline in first-half operating profit. Africa's biggest mobile operator MTN, seen as undervalued by some investors, also had a good run advancing 1.53 percent to 119.80 rand, to a two week high. But South Africa's fixed-line operator Telkom was the biggest loser, shedding 3.55 percent to 40.75 rand and lagging a 1.16 percent stronger JSE telecoms index Telkom said it expects headline EPS to fall between 45-55 percent in the six months to end-September. Gold Fields and Harmony Gold fell 2.67 percent to 105.60 rand and 2.14 percent to 77.28 rand, respectively as the bullion rally seemed to have run out of steam. Gold traded at $1,107.25 an ounce, having hit a record of $1,122.85 an ounce on Thursday. South African government bonds weakened. The yield on the 2015 bond was up 3.5 basis points to 8.425 percent and that on the 2036 note increased 1.5 basis points to 8.685 percent. Dealers are looking forward to next Tuesday's interest rate decision, after a two-day monetary policy meeting, the first to be chaired by new Governor Gill Marcus. The central bank is expected to keep its repo rate unchanged at 7.0 percent given tentative signs of a recovery and concerns that an expected big rise in power prices will stoke inflation. (Reporting by Phumza Macanda and Phakamisa Ndzamela; Editing by Andy Bruce) (For more Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: http://af.reuters.com/ ) Keywords: MARKETS SAFRICA/CLOSE ([e-mail]; [phone]; Reuters Messaging: [e-mail]) COPYRIGHT Copyright Thomson Reuters 2009. All rights reserved.

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