South Africa's rand steadied on Thursday as investors assessed the impact of US backing for protesters in Hong Kong on its trade negotiations with China, while stocks fell. At 1508 GMT, the rand was trading flat at 14.7500 per dollar.

Largely ignoring local signals of an increasingly weak economy and fiscal position, the rand has moved in-step with swings in sentiment driven by the tariffs tussle between China and the United States. Beijing told Washington it would take "firm counter- measures" in response to US legislation backing the anti-government protesters in Hong Kong.

"Investors are concerned about the possible impact on the trade deal as China has threatened some sort of retaliation," said Andre Botha, senior currency dealer at TreasuryONE. On the bourse, the benchmark JSE Top-40 index was down 0.88% to 49,470 points while the broader All-Share index fell 0.62% to 55,823.80 points.

Retailer Woolworths and food and retail business Bid Corporation (Bid Corp) were the biggest losers on the blue-chip index. Woolworths fell 3.39% to 52.17 rand and Bid Corp was down 3.38% to 324.66 rand. In fixed income, the yield on the benchmark paper due in 2026 rose by 4.5 basis points to 8.475%.