S.Africa rand reverses gains, stocks rise on miners

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's rand was slightly firmer against the dollar on Thursday in a choppy session where it gave back most of its earlier gains, dictated mostly by overseas trends and shrugging off local manufacturing data.

Stocks notched up a third straight day of gains, boosted by miners as firmer commodity prices attracted buyers.

The JSE Top-40 index of blue chips gained 0.59 percent to 19,893.64 points and the broader All-share index was up 0.65 percent to 22,157.88 points.

By 1531 GMT the rand traded up just 0.61 percent versus the dollar at 8.1450 compared to Wednesday's close at 8.1950, after earlier gaining nearly 1.5 percent to a session high of 8.0700.

"It was quite a volatile session, We made a turn at around 8.07 but the rand has given back most of those gains now. It remains dictated by dollar movements to a large extent," said Ion de Vleeschauwer, chief dealer at Bidvest Bank.

"Euro and sterling have given back most of the gains they had managed to make and so has the rand."

Market watchers said the local currency paid scant attention to data showing manufacturing output contracted by 17.1 percent in the year to May, attesting to continued depressed demand for South African products both at home and abroad.

"Unfortunately local factors are not going to influence the rand at the moment. It's going to be driven by global sentiment towards emerging markets as a whole more than anything else," said de Vleeschauwer.

On the bourse, diversified miner African Rainbow Minerals jumped 4.17 percent to 125.01 rand, Anglo American added 2.35 percent to 216 rand and Impala Platinum improved by 1.64 percent to 163.13 rand.