The source for this piece is a Moneyweb RSG Geldsake radio segment titled, in Afrikaans, “Mark spring ondanks hoër VSA-rentekoerse”, which translates to “Market jumps despite higher US interest rates”. An earlier version of this post misread “mark”, the Afrikaans word for market, as a person’s name. There is no individual called Mark in this story: the subject is the South African market’s own resilience.
According to the Moneyweb segment, aired 17 September 2026, Dr Steve Minnaar, a portfolio manager at Abax Investments, discussed the local market’s performance even as the US Federal Reserve holds its benchmark rate elevated, touching on movements in individual counters including Clicks Group‘s share price.
Separately, Ahmore Burger-Smidt, head of regulatory affairs and director of competition at Werksmans Prokureurs, added regulatory context on the same programme, noting that South African legislation often takes a considerable amount of time to pass, a factor that can delay market-wide reforms or new financing structures aimed at responding to shifts in global interest rates.
Why a resilient local market matters despite higher US rates
Higher US interest rates typically pull capital toward dollar-denominated assets and away from emerging markets like South Africa, since investors can earn a safer return in the US without taking on emerging-market currency and political risk. A local market that holds up, or advances, despite that pull suggests domestic factors, company-specific earnings, commodity prices, or local investor sentiment, are outweighing the usual capital-flow pressure, at least for now.
For South African businesses, the practical read is not that borrowing conditions have eased. The Reserve Bank sets its own repo rate independently of the Fed, and a resilient JSE does not by itself lower the cost of a business loan. What it can signal is investor confidence that is not purely a function of global rate cycles, which matters for companies planning a share issue, a listing, or any capital raise that depends on market appetite rather than bank lending.
Burger-Smidt’s point about legislative lag is the more directly actionable one for business owners: any policy response, whether tax relief, a new funding instrument or a regulatory easing, aimed at cushioning the impact of tighter global credit conditions is unlikely to move as fast as the market itself does. Businesses should plan around currently available financing options rather than anticipating a swift legislative fix, and can use the commercial funding suite to model financing costs under current, rather than hoped-for, conditions.
Readers can track the Reserve Bank’s own policy stance directly via the South African Reserve Bank, and the US Federal Reserve’s decisions via the Federal Reserve. For further analysis of how global rate moves flow through to South African financing conditions, see our Markets & Finance coverage.
Analysts covering South African market resilience against higher US interest rates have generally pointed to two offsetting factors: a relatively attractive real interest rate differential that continues to draw foreign portfolio investment into local bonds, and a current account position that, while not without strain, has not deteriorated sharply enough to trigger the kind of capital flight seen during previous emerging-market stress episodes tied to US monetary tightening. The Reserve Bank’s own monetary policy commentary tracks how domestic rate decisions are being weighed against this external backdrop. For related coverage, see this site’s Markets and Finance coverage.
Foreign portfolio inflows into South African government bonds have historically been sensitive to the gap between local and US real interest rates, meaning any further US rate move that narrows that differential would be watched closely as a potential trigger for reduced local bond demand, even without a change in South Africa’s own fundamentals.
