South African rand recovers some losses, weakness persists

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) -South Africa's rand traded stronger on Tuesday but remained above the 19.0 mark after two days of heavy losses last week.

At 1508 GMT, the rand traded at 19.1100 against the dollar, almost 1% stronger than its previous close.

The dollar index was up about 0.05%.

There were no major South African data releases on Tuesday. Producer price inflation, M3 money supply and private sector credit extension, trade and budget balance figures for January will be released later this week.

"The ongoing volatility in market expectations around U.S. interest rate cuts has led to marked volatility in the rand... with a trend of overall weakness for the domestic currency," said Annabel Bishop, chief economist at Investec.

The rand has also suffered from political risk ahead of national elections in May and negative sentiment following last week's annual budget speech.

On the stock market, the Top-40 index and the broader all-share closed about 0.7% lower.

South Africa's benchmark 2030 government bond was stronger, with the yield down 4 basis points to 10.200%.

(Reporting by Nellie Peyton; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Tomasz Janowski)