Mbhokota, Vongani2020-12-042020-12-042020https://hdl.handle.net/10539/30265A research report submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Management in Finance and Investment (MMFI) to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, Wits Business School, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2020Since the introduction of the Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) in the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), there has been huge interest from both local and international investors to invest in the SA REIT. The reason for this rise in interest is that the SA REIT offers investors ownership of tangible assets that are backed by rental income and capital growth in the underlying asset value. In recent years this has been a good diversification strategy for investors, especially in emerging markets like South Africa. Whilst the SA REIT has given investors good returns since its inception in 2013, there is still not enough literature on the factors that affect the performance of the SA REIT in relation to monetary policy movements. Capital market movements in most emerging countries are dependent on macroeconomic factors like monetary policy movements, political stability, the input and output of production, etc. Most studies on how these macroeconomic factors impact on the performance of the REIT have been done in developed markets, and most of them have focused on monetary policy variables, e.g. interest rates, inflation, exchange rates, and GDP. This has necessitated this study on “The impact of monetary policy related variables on the performance of the South African Real Investment Trust (REIT)”. The purpose of the study was to determine the impact of monetary policy related variables in the short and long run on the performance of the SA REIT to assist investors and other role players as a tool to make investment decisions. The data gathered consisted of information on the overall performance of the SA REIT in the last nine years, and the source of this information was the SA REIT Association, which is a statutory body of the SA REIT that represents international REIT. SA REIT data was taken from the SA REIT Association’s database and was compared against each monetary policy variable taken from Statistics South Africa, which is deemed to be a reliable source. Unit root testing, the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ADRL) model, and Bound tests were utilised to test if the monetary variables impact the performance of REIT returns in the short and long run to answer the hypothesis. The findings were presented in a graphical representation of the analysed data using time series plots in the short and long run. Methods used are as follows: unit root testing, the ADRL model, and Bound test . The outcome of the research results showed that none of the variables have a significant relationship with the performance of the SA REIT in the short run, but interest rates and exchange rates have a significant relationship with the performance of the SA REIT in the long run. This may prompt other studies to investigate how interest rate and exchange rate can be used positively to maximise returns in the SA REIT for investors, since it has been established that the two variables impact on the performance of the REIT.enReal Estate Investment TrustJohannesburg Stock ExchangeMonetary policy related variablesSDG-8: Decent work and economic growthDissertationUniversity of the Witswatersrand, Johannesburg