The South African rand retreated today on speculations that US politicians will not be able to raise the debt ceiling and as such concerns deterred investors from buying riskier assets.

Amid all the euphoria on the Forex market yesterday, it was hard to believe that the decline of some currencies at the beginning of today’s session was anything but a small correction. Yet now it looks like optimism was short-lived and as one problem of the United States (the fiscal cliff) was resolved traders just turned their attention to another (the debt ceiling). The Standard & Poor’s GSCI Index fell for the first time in three session, sapping appeal of currencies tied to commodities.

USD/ZAR rose 8.4893 to 8.5915 as of 13:53 GMT today.

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