Latest / Strictly Business / The 5 o' Clock Shadow with David Shapiro and Viv Govender
Transcript
- 0:00You're listening to Strictly Business Podcast with Lindsay Williams.
- 0:05The JSC has closed its doors for another day, so it's time for the five o'clock
- 0:08shadow.
- 0:08And as always, on a Thursday, I speak to Viv Govender from RAND Swiss in
- 0:13Johannesburg,
- 0:15David Shapira from SAS Fin Securities in the same city.
- 0:17And David, I'll start with you because I read a LinkedIn article from you just a
- 0:23few hours ago, actually.
- 0:25And it was all to do with the American.
- 0:26stock market versus other stock markets in terms of market capitalization.
- 0:30And I thought, there's David being US-centric again.
- 0:34But not at all.
- 0:34You make some very, very good points.
- 0:36But I would like to say big is not always best.
- 0:41And rather, the best thing is the bigger they are, the harder they fall.
- 0:47The more money they make.
- 0:49Yeah, very good.
- 0:52Yeah, what I'm trying to illustrate is.
- 0:55just the size of these businesses.
- 0:58We mentioned it a week or two ago when the results came out, you know,
- 1:03when I was just overwhelmed by the actual amounts of money,
- 1:07the absolute amount of money that these companies generate.
- 1:11And this is just an extension of it.
- 1:13You know, I was just extending, listen, this is how big the U.S.
- 1:17is.
- 1:18You know, there are a lot of people in the stock markets and everybody's got their
- 1:22own opinion.
- 1:24And a lot of people like to play at the bottom end of the market in small caps.
- 1:26And they can trade to their delight and make money.
- 1:29It doesn't mean you're not going to make money.
- 1:31I think what I'm trying to illustrate is just how powerful economically the U.S.
- 1:37is and how much more powerful they're getting through the size of these
- 1:43businesses.
- 1:45And it's quite remarkable that the U.S.
- 1:47market is I'm just giving this for You know,
- 1:51for Viv to say that the US market is something like $73 trillion.
- 1:57I mean, that's an enormous amount of money.
- 1:59And if you look at the other markets, like the Chinese market is $16 trillion.
- 2:04Sorry, did I say $73 trillion?
- 2:07Yes.
- 2:08So the Chinese market is $16 trillion.
- 2:12Europe is a lot less.
- 2:16I'm just going to look it up, the number now.
- 2:18I've forgotten where Europe is.
- 2:19but It's, Europe is, hold on here, 14 trillion.
- 2:25So you've got China, sorry, 17 trillion, 14 trillion, you know, together.
- 2:31And Switzerland, 2.4, UK, 3.
- 2:34Put those markets together, you don't come close to the US.
- 2:38And if we take the top five stocks, Nvidia, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft,
- 2:44Amazon,
- 2:46collectively around about 20 trillion, which is bigger than the Chinese market.
- 2:49and certainly a lot bigger than Europe.
- 2:51So this is the size of those businesses that we're talking about.
- 2:55And I'm just illustrating how much they generate and how important they are in the
- 3:01global context.
- 3:02And they're not slowing down.
- 3:04They just continue to drive forward.
- 3:06And they've got the kind of money that can invest in where things are going.
- 3:14You know, I didn't even mention Tesla.
- 3:15But, I mean, that's...
- 3:17That's the point that I'm trying to make.
- 3:19Everybody gets very upset with the US.
- 3:22No, they don't get upset with it.
- 3:23They're just probably jealous of it.
- 3:24Viv, at what point do the companies become too big and then they start influencing
- 3:31political thought and political direction and the sort of thing we're seeing at the
- 3:36moment?
- 3:36I'm not talking about ballrooms being built because that's a lot of nonsense.
- 3:39But at some stage, someone will sit down with the US president or the governor of
- 3:46California and say, listen.
- 3:48my company produces more than your GDP in terms of revenue every single year.
- 3:52Viv, in the future, might that happen?
- 3:55What do you mean in the future?
- 3:57Still as a United, my friend, there's actually a U.S.
- 4:00court case that came out that basically said that corporate speech is part of free
- 4:06speech.
- 4:07There's a huge kind of shift in the U.S.
- 4:11system in terms of...
- 4:12Just the amount of money being spent on some of these things.
- 4:14I mean, you have governor races in the U.S.
- 4:17where they spend more money than you would have in any, like, you know, political
- 4:21race in Europe.
- 4:23You know, we're talking about, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars, sorry, in
- 4:26some cases.
- 4:27Mayorships, I mean, you know, in like New York City or Los Angeles, you're talking
- 4:34the kind of money you would normally spend on a presidential, you know,
- 4:36race happening there.
- 4:38And then along the billions, literally billions that are spent on a U.S.
- 4:38presidential race.
- 4:39What occurs in this scenario is that You get so much money being spent here that
- 4:45the only way you can compete is to
- 4:47have the money and therefore you become indebted to the people that give you the
- 4:48money.
- 4:49And so this has already occurred in the US and I think that there was a study done a
- 4:56few years ago.
- 4:56I can't recall who did it, but it said that the relationship between what the
- 5:02electric wants and what the
- 5:04politicians actually do is not that strong.
- 5:04The relationship between what I think the top percent of contributors want and what
- 5:10the politicians do is, you know, almost one to one.
- 5:12And that is that is the way the world works, quite frankly.
- 5:16It's already there.
- 5:17But the one thing I have to say in terms of the U.S.
- 5:19is that it's such a massive outlier in terms of how big its capital markets are.
- 5:23So, I mean, we talked about A.
- 5:25China, Europe, India, these are all places that have stock markets roughly equivalent
- 5:32to the size of their economy.
- 5:34The US is like multiple the size of its economy.
- 5:35It's a very unusual stock market.
- 5:37And the number two thing is that the advantage of this is that it becomes the
- 5:41deepest capital pool.
- 5:43That means if you want to go and do something in the world, and you really
- 5:46want to raise funds to do it, unfortunately, the US is the only way to
- 5:48go.
- 5:50You really can't raise the money you need to raise to do what, for instance,
- 5:51let's say you want to spend the $100 billion, billion that they, or 200 billion
- 5:58that these companies like Facebook and
- 6:00Amazon are spending in the U.S.
- 6:02per company on AI. There's no way to raise that money in China except for the
- 6:06government.
- 6:07You just don't have the capital markets deep enough.
- 6:09You just can't do that in Europe.
- 6:12You can't do that in India.
- 6:14And this is a huge advantage that the U.S.
- 6:15has that kind of compounds itself, like David says, that the further ahead you
- 6:21are, the further ahead you get.
- 6:23And that's kind of what's been happening in the U.S.
- 6:25at the moment.
- 6:27What about private credit?
- 6:29Because I asked somebody the question the other day.
- 6:31Maybe it was David, actually.
- 6:33I don't know.
- 6:35But it was somebody and I said,
- 6:37how do they raise between 700 billion and 1 trillion for CapEx for AI?
- 6:39These are the big tech stocks.
- 6:41Where does the money come from?
- 6:43They've got the money.
- 6:43Obviously, they've got a lot of money.
- 6:45They're generating cash.
- 6:46They're printing cash, but they have to raise some money somewhere else.
- 6:50and Viv is private I'll stay with you Viv, is private credit a dangerous thing?
- 6:55Because there's been a lot of red flags been flying in the last few months about
- 7:00private credit.
- 7:02Look, they aren't going to the bank and getting $700 billion loans.
- 7:04Let's be frank about that.
- 7:06Look, a lot of it has been like, you know, sovereign wealth funds that put money in
- 7:10the US.
- 7:10A lot of international investors are pumping money into the US.
- 7:14And that's just because that's where the growth is, unfortunately, for the rest of
- 7:17the world.
- 7:18Europe has kind of, whatever reason, I know you're sitting in the Netherlands.
- 7:21We're the only company in Europe that basically seems to be involved in AI, you
- 7:26know, ASML.
- 7:28But the way Europe has gone over the last couple of decades is amazing in terms of
- 7:33just how much it's abdicated
- 7:35its role in the world.
- 7:37China, of course, you know, you say the wrong thing and suddenly you are Jack Ma
- 7:41and disappear for a few months and come back and become an English teacher or
- 7:43something.
- 7:45India is just not rich enough yet.
- 7:47Japan has its own massive things.
- 7:49The U.S.
- 7:51is the only place in the world that you can really find.
- 7:53It's got a huge amount of talent and huge amount of capital to invest in.
- 7:55And that's what's happening.
- 7:57And, you know, at the moment, the AI spend, I know that I'm invested in AI.
- 7:59I mean, I was just looking at my portfolio.
- 8:01We did 20% the last month.
- 8:03You know, we haven't exactly been lagging, but we did 20% in the last month.
- 8:07And the reason for this is, quite frankly, just that the amount of money flowing into
- 8:13AI right now is insane.
- 8:15But the only place this could happen was the US.
- 8:16There's no other capital market in the world that could.
- 8:18absolve this kind of investments.
- 8:20Isn't that strange that you say all these things and you're extolling the virtues of
- 8:26the United States of America and David as
- 8:28well.
- 8:30He's US-centric when it comes to investing, but he doesn't like going to
- 8:32America because he's breathing the same air as Donald Trump.
- 8:36I know somebody who's an incredibly successful interior designer in New York,
- 8:43has had an apartment in Midtown, David,
- 8:45and you know how expensive Midtown apartments are.
- 8:46She's had it for 30 years and it's now worth goodness knows how much.
- 8:51And I said, what are you going to do now?
- 8:52You're in your 60s.
- 8:53She said, I'm moving to southwest London.
- 8:55I'm moving to Putney.
- 8:56I'm moving in with my sister because I don't want to be in America anymore.
- 9:01So it's almost like there's two Americas.
- 9:02I mean, three or four Americas actually, David.
- 9:06Yeah.
- 9:06Yeah, I can understand that.
- 9:08But how do you explain where it's going?
- 9:13I'm a mess.
- 9:14I was listening to the Milken interviews on Bloomberg at the Milken Institute.
- 9:19And I think one of my regrets is that I can't go to these seminars.
- 9:24You know, I don't know how much they cost on the other side of the world.
- 9:28And I'm not in that kind of mood.
- 9:30But when I listen to the interviews and I hear what is happening,
- 9:35where the world's going and where America is going,
- 9:39where America is leading it and going into space and the...
- 9:43You know, I was listening to Cathy Wood talk about Elon Musk.
- 9:48I mean, it's quite phenomenal where this is going.
- 9:52And just to go back to what Viv says, there's only one place that can finance
- 9:57that.
- 9:59And that's the US.
- 10:01No one else is going to lay out that kind of risk capital to do these kind of
- 10:04projects.
- 10:04But when they get it right, of course, they're ahead of the market and everybody
- 10:09becomes a buyer, not a seller.
- 10:11You know, the rest of the world is buying from them, which allows the US to dictate
- 10:15terms of anything.
- 10:17So it's the Americans.
- 10:19I don't know whether it's it's you know, we British by background.
- 10:22I mean, even though we're South African and that we were brought up in the.
- 10:26Westminster system of schooling and so on of parliament.
- 10:30And, you know, at the end of movies, we'd get up because then they play God Save the
- 10:35Queen at that stage.
- 10:37You know, that kind of thing.
- 10:39Are you listening to this?
- 10:41Viv, are you listening to this?
- 10:43You know, with caps.
- 10:45You know, we had little school caps and short pants and played cricket and, you
- 10:48know, so on.
- 10:48But so, you know, that's how we brought up.
- 10:50And to an extent, the same kind of humor.
- 10:53We understand what irony is.
- 10:55America is a totally different culture and it's not easy to get into it.
- 11:00But if you're an entrepreneur, if you've got that kind of spirit,
- 11:08and the Indians make it a lot, I mean, there's a massive amount of highly
- 11:14educated
- 11:16Indians in America making it big.
- 11:18Wherever you look now, you'll see high-level people that have come from
- 11:23India.
- 11:24And I say it because they had the kind of education system that the U.S.
- 11:28produced, I mean, that the U.K.
- 11:30produced.
- 11:30But they've got that kind of, well, how do you explain it, Viv?
- 11:36You know, they're very, very ambitious and hardworking.
- 11:42And they can make it.
- 11:43They can tolerate that kind of culture and they just go ahead.
- 11:47So I'm absolutely, you know, I'm absolutely bombed out by how many.
- 11:54successful Indian entrepreneurs and business people there are in the US
- 12:01because the system has allowed them to do
- 12:03what they can't do in India.
- 12:05What about China?
- 12:07Six days a week, children on the Sunday on their day off are doing mathematical,
- 12:09studying maths and doing maths exams online, David.
- 12:13I mean, China and India are very similar when it comes to education, I think.
- 12:17Oh, education, yes.
- 12:19But...
- 12:19The Indians play cricket, you know, I mean, or they were brought up British way.
- 12:25They're not going to go to China.
- 12:28I'm not talking about that.
- 12:28I'm just talking about two nations that are ahead of a place like Britain, which
- 12:35has an education system,
- 12:37which is quite frankly, it's probably Dickensian in its nature.
- 12:39Have you been champing at the bit?
- 12:41I know you want to say something because David kept on going on about Indians doing
- 12:48well in America.
- 12:50Yeah, look, I mean, there's a couple of things to mention.
- 12:51Firstly, a stack will blow your mind.
- 12:53Elon Musk is worth roughly two times South Africa's GDP.
- 12:56Okay?
- 12:58Elon Musk alone is worth about $850 billion.
- 13:01South Africa's GDP is about $480 billion.
- 13:04So not quite, but roughly.
- 13:05It's significantly more than South Africa's GDP one man is worth.
- 13:08Now, Elon Musk was South African.
- 13:10He was born here, got the education here, and he went to the U.S.
- 13:12Why did he do so well in the U.S.
- 13:14versus South Africa?
- 13:15It's because of the system.
- 13:16It's that system makes it.
- 13:18so much easier.
- 13:19Americans, I mean, they're perfectly nice people.
- 13:21I know plenty of Americans and they're nice people.
- 13:23They're not special.
- 13:25They're not exceptional.
- 13:26They're not like, you don't speak to Americans and come away thinking, my God,
- 13:30these are the world's best whatever.
- 13:32But what you do get is that a lot of people from around the world go to the US
- 13:38and they do very well for themselves because the Americans literally have the
- 13:40world's best
- 13:42system.
- 13:44And the interesting thing, you talk about Indians and Chinese.
- 13:46Did you see Donald Trump's tweet this week about immigrants and whatnot?
- 13:48And he had immigrants from North America making half a million dollars
- 13:50contribution.
- 13:52immigrants from like you know japan three hundred thousand dollars contribution and
- 13:54you know um and then from somalia negative million and from
- 13:56like different like you know countries negative negative negative so basically
- 14:01north america europe and japan all positive
- 14:03uh all the darker countries like in the south america africa and so on all
- 14:06negative what's
- 14:08weird about that he's left at two countries no countries left out china and
- 14:13india why because the average india basically contributes
- 14:15like three times as much to America's taxes.
- 14:17Like 1.6 million versus like the number you put as number one, the North Americans
- 14:23of like 500,000.
- 14:25And the average Chinese is about 800,000 to 900,000 as well.
- 14:27So significantly above that.
- 14:28And the reason being is a couple of things.
- 14:30Firstly, when you take the best off to effectively 40% of the world, they're
- 14:35going to be pretty bloody good.
- 14:37You know what I mean?
- 14:39The top 1% in India, the top 1% in China is basically a huge chunk of the world's
- 14:42population.
- 14:42It's tens of millions of people and they are going to be exceptional.
- 14:45And that's one of the reasons.
- 14:47And the second thing is this.
- 14:48I don't know if you know this, but roughly 60% of the hotels in America are owned by
- 14:54the Patels.
- 14:56There's a, there's a, there's a, no, it's like real, like six, zero percent,
- 15:00over half of the hotels in the US are owned by this little group from India
- 15:05called the Patels, okay?
- 15:07It's the, it's the advantage that you get when you have social networks that kind of
- 15:12like, you know, reinforce each other.
- 15:14When you have, for instance, in like South Africa, where you have like, you know,
- 15:17nepotism or whatever,
- 15:19it is negative because overall it kind of feeds against each other.
- 15:21But when you get nepotism and other guys are not using it, bloody hell, it's a
- 15:25rocket.
- 15:25shipped to the top, you know what I mean?
- 15:26And, I mean, it's not just, you know, Indians, Chinese.
- 15:29There was, like, I mean, the famous case of, like, you know,
- 15:32Jewish diamond sellers in New York and how they could do handshake deals because if
- 15:39you basically cheated somebody,
- 15:41your mother would talk to his mother and there'd be trouble.
- 15:42Yeah.
- 15:44And that's the kind of stuff that happens here.
- 15:46And I think that's one of the advantages of being in the US is that, you know,
- 15:52obviously the things that may be holding you back at home help you out.
- 15:54But the US system, like I said, is the greatest wealth creation system that's
- 15:56ever been created.
- 15:58And I honestly think that in terms of what, you know, if you are super talented,
- 16:03no matter what you are in the world,
- 16:05there's dancers, singer, entrepreneur, you know, electrician, whatever, there's only
- 16:10one place in the world that you would go to maximize that money,
- 16:12that talent, that's the US.
- 16:14And that is why even someone like Donald Trump can't break the US.
- 16:16That's why even, you know, the things we've had in the past, like the leaders of
- 16:22the past, is that that system is so strong, you know.
- 16:24Capitalism just is the winner, quite frankly.
- 16:25Anyone can do anything,
- 16:27and that is borne out by the fact that one of the world's greatest and most cruel,
- 16:34stupid, arrogant, narcissistic men in history is the President of the United
- 16:39States.
- 16:39Anything is possible in the United States of America.
- 16:43David, I want to get back to Earth now.
- 16:46And last week or the week before, I called you out and I said, clicks is down 10% and
- 16:52you said...
- 16:52I haven't read it.
- 16:53Now, that said something to me because it means you were making money elsewhere and
- 16:59you didn't really care.
- 17:01It's not that you didn't care, but it wasn't one of your priorities to read a
- 17:06Stock Exchange news service announcement from the JSC.
- 17:08Today, there have been two, one from Life Healthcare and one from SAPI.
- 17:10Both share prices down double digits.
- 17:12Have you looked at either of those trading statements?
- 17:15Well, I'm not surprised with SAPI, I think.
- 17:20Whenever it comes out, it's a surprise on the downside.
- 17:23I don't know how they managed to survive, you know, but life health care, not
- 17:29really, because
- 17:31I'm a little surprised that it's down double digit.
- 17:33But once again, I haven't really dedicated myself to...
- 17:39No, it's okay.
- 17:40...to whatever.
- 17:41Where is this now?
- 17:43I'll give you a quick summary.
- 17:44No, you don't have to.
- 17:45I was just asking if you had, and it doesn't matter at all.
- 17:48So I'm just saying...
- 17:49You know, Chimpy is...
- 17:51is very disappointing.
- 17:52You know, it's just one of those companies that is battling against just the world
- 17:58economic system.
- 18:00You know, people don't have newspaper anymore.
- 18:01They don't use fine papers, very little printed material anymore.
- 18:06So it's been very difficult.
- 18:07They have made kind of money on Viscos, which is used in clothing, et cetera.
- 18:12But it's just, and they're not dominant.
- 18:16It's one of those industries where you can't be dominant.
- 18:19You've got a huge amount of competition and there's always price issues.
- 18:22There are always cost issues.
- 18:24So it's not one I always look at the chart and say, okay, that's my sappy, you know,
- 18:30or whatever.
- 18:32I don't know.
- 18:34But life health care, I'm a little surprised because, you know, what would
- 18:38have brought it down?
- 18:40I don't know.
- 18:4211% fall.
- 18:44Anyway, we'll discuss that another time maybe.
- 18:46Viv, now all the big companies have come out with their results, all the big tech
- 18:46companies.
- 18:48Are there any on the fringes?
- 18:50of tech, the AI, big tech, the high tech, the companies that we can't even
- 18:54understand because they're so big.
- 18:56Any of the companies on the fringe that David has alluded to on many occasions,
- 19:00you know,
- 19:02the auxiliary industries even.
- 19:02I mean, AMD is not an auxiliary industry, but it came out with a sparkling set of
- 19:07results.
- 19:07And the share price, when I looked at it after a couple of hours trading, was up
- 19:12like 17%.
- 19:14Have you caught any results that have really said, this is a company that I need
- 19:17to look at?
- 19:19I'm going to use a bit of a pun here, sparkling, use the word sparkling.
- 19:22I just thought of this company off the top of my head.
- 19:24I've heard of Toto Toilets.
- 19:27I know Toto Toilets, yeah.
- 19:29Go on.
- 19:29Yeah, Toto Toilets.
- 19:30Okay, so they make ceramics, of course, toilet ceramics, but ceramics also are
- 19:35used for making what?
- 19:37Computer chips.
- 19:39Ah.
- 19:41And this company is up 53% in the last, since the year to date, it's up 25%
- 19:44in the last five days, okay?
- 19:46Goodness.
- 19:48And where the real thing is happening right now is that because the demand for
- 19:54AI spending is so high,
- 19:56what you're really finding is, yes, we have NVIDIA up, we have AMD up, we have
- 19:59the Microns up, and Micron used to be one of the small guys in the past as well.
- 20:01What you're really finding now is a lot of these little tiny guys that are basically
- 20:07out of nowhere, this little small little company that, or in this case, not that
- 20:09small,
- 20:11but I mean, these little companies that are unknown,
- 20:13but developed a huge amount of expertise in particular areas of science that now
- 20:15are suddenly very useful for
- 20:17AI or useful computers.
- 20:19These companies suddenly find themselves with monopoly pricing power and suddenly
- 20:21huge profits coming through.
- 20:23And I think that that's the kind of stuff that I think the next level is that you're
- 20:28finding these little tiny companies that are supplying into the
- 20:30ecosystem.
- 20:32And when you have these hundreds of billions being spent on AI, and suddenly
- 20:35you are making something that nobody else in the world can make,
- 20:37and it's essential to the AI ecosystem, suddenly you find yourself, like I said,
- 20:40doing 50%
- 20:41in the first four months or five months of the year.
- 20:44exactly the same.
- 20:46Have you seen there's a big deal that NVIDIA has done with corning and one of
- 20:52the
- 20:53reasons and Viv's going to have to explain this, is that these very high level chips
- 20:59today,
- 21:01I mean, copper can't handle the speed at which they're processing and therefore it
- 21:05melts
- 21:06or whatever it is and they have to
- 21:08use optics and corning is known for its optics and it makes the screens for Apple
- 21:14computers, et cetera.
- 21:16And NVIDIA is pumping in, I don't know how many billion, into, you know,
- 21:21pumping into Corning, which is a, I think it's a New York City,
- 21:26not New York State-based company.
- 21:28We know Corning, Corningware, and all things like that.
- 21:31But it's also an object of that.
- 21:32Isn't that a kitchen product, Dave?
- 21:34It's Corningware?
- 21:35I think so, yeah.
- 21:36I think it's all to do with the kind of ceramics that they make.
- 21:41But I think that Corning is also...
- 21:43I have to look at this now because I just saw it flash across the screen.
- 21:47But I mean, and I couldn't understand the significance of how high speed that you
- 21:53can't use
- 21:54copper.
- 21:54If you're going to use these chips, and I think this applies to the Rubin chips,
- 22:01correct me if I'm wrong,
- 22:03that they're going to have to use fiber optic.
- 22:06They can't use copper.
- 22:07So this fits in with what Viv has been saying.
- 22:12But there is a deal with Corning.
- 22:16I don't know how you two keep up with it.
- 22:17You know what?
- 22:18You must sit down every single day, and I'm talking to both of you now, and say,
- 22:23right, where is it going to go?
- 22:25We've got the big ones.
- 22:27We've got the big 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 of these companies.
- 22:29Now we have to find something else.
- 22:31We have to find the next one that's going to go up 200%, 300% over the next five
- 22:34years or something.
- 22:36And then suddenly David says Corning.
- 22:38Suddenly Viv's talking about toilets.
- 22:38And it's incredible, the amount of effect.
- 22:41It's spreading out.
- 22:42It's like an airport being built.
- 22:44And everyone says, do you buy the airlines or do you buy the airport company?
- 22:47No, you buy the land around it because they're going to build hotels there and
- 22:53there will be infrastructure and everything.
- 22:55So it's exactly the same principle.
- 22:56David, quickly go on before the markets.
- 22:58Why I have to laugh at Toto
- 23:01Toilets is that they make the Japanese toilets.
- 23:05Oh, they're wonderful.
- 23:06Have you...
- 23:08Have you been to a Tokyo hotel?
- 23:10No, no, but you can get them in America.
- 23:12You can buy them there.
- 23:13And you've got this, you can sit there and play with the buttons all day.
- 23:17And it does all kinds of things.
- 23:20No, it really is extraordinary.
- 23:22I mean, when I first went to Tokyo and I saw the toilet, I had to phone down to the
- 23:29reception to say, listen,
- 23:31because, you know, they thought of you.
- 23:31They thought I wanted the TV sorted down.
- 23:34No, I wanted the toilet sorted down because it's incredible the stuff that it
- 23:40does, and I don't even want to talk about it.
- 23:42Anyway, gentlemen, the dollar round is 1634.
- 23:43The British pound against the rand is 2225.
- 23:46And the euro round is 1923. What else have we got?
- 23:52Let's get on to the commodities now.
- 23:53The gold price is up 1.25% to $47.47.
- 23:57That's a $58 move to the upside.
- 24:00And on the white metals, I've got platinum up 0.8%
- 24:03at $2,079 an ounce and palladium down,
- 24:10funnily enough, down 1.4% to $15.31.
- 24:14Now, I'm going to go to the other commodities now because I have to talk
- 24:17about copper.
- 24:19because of the South African connection through Anglos and other things.
- 24:24Copper 360, one of my stocks in the crystal challenge.
- 24:29Copper is $6.16 per pound in New York at the moment on the Commodity Exchange New
- 24:36York, COMEX.
- 24:38It's up just a third of a percent.
- 24:39What else have we got?
- 24:40Of course, the energy sector.
- 24:43It doesn't want to go down.
- 24:45I don't know.
- 24:46People don't believe Trump.
- 24:48I think everybody on the trading floors or on the trading desks of oil
- 24:55trading companies have a lot of salt there because they take everything with a pinch
- 24:59of salt.
- 25:01And Brent crude oil is only down two and two thirds percent at the moment at
- 25:05$98.56.
- 25:07OK, it's well off its highs at $20 higher, but it's still
- 25:1170 percent higher than it was from the lows of last year.
- 25:14West Texas crude, $92.41 per barrel.
- 25:17which is down 2.8%.
- 25:20The South African 10-year bond yield is an interesting one, 8.58%,
- 25:26which is four basis points weaker.
- 25:29That's the bond market going up, the yields going down.
- 25:32The US 10-year, interesting one as well, 4.36%.
- 25:37Doesn't really believe it was 4.45% a couple of days ago,
- 25:42but that 10 basis points doesn't convince me.
- 25:45S&P 500 futures, though.
- 25:47Yeah, convinces me after last night's performance.
- 25:507,402 at the moment on the June futures, which is up 0.2%.
- 25:58Bitcoin, I have to do that one, apparently.
- 26:01It's dipped below 80,000, 79,826, down 2.3%.
- 26:08David, I know you don't look at the JSE much until after hours.
- 26:13Yeah.
- 26:14But did you see anything that...
- 26:16caught euro today otherwise i'll give you the top five bottom five oh no i'm looking
- 26:22at them now obviously sassel has come down
- 26:24dramatically over the last couple of sessions that's been down and the pressure
- 26:29continues on
- 26:31uh consumer stocks and on the banks even though the banks are slightly steady today
- 26:36nothing
- 26:38dramatic there but there is this worry about where rates are going and also the
- 26:43health of the consumer.
- 26:45And, you know, even though, Lindsay, even though you say that that oil has come
- 26:51down, it's still
- 26:53$90. That's what I said, it's still 70% higher.
- 26:55Yeah, yeah.
- 26:56And this is going to hurt us.
- 26:58So I think there's still this deep fear about, you know,
- 27:01what's going to happen to this economy and whether we'll be actually able to grow
- 27:07this year.
- 27:09So that pressure still remains on a lot of local stocks as well.
- 27:14So, you know, that's dominating.
- 27:15I think there are a lot more losers today in the market than there are gainers.
- 27:19And what gainers there were came from the miners on that gold price that you
- 27:24mentioned.
- 27:26And that's where most of the action today is in that area.
- 27:29Data tech up 6%, pan-African resources up 4.6%, harmony at four and a quarter,
- 27:34Anglo gold three and three quarters percent higher on the downside, life
- 27:41health care.
- 27:4311% weaker.
- 27:45Sassell down 6.25%.
- 27:47Carew down nearly 5%.
- 27:49MTN a 3.9% loser.
- 27:51And that's it.
- 27:53Viv, on the commodity side, and if you were looking at a commodity exposure on
- 27:54the JSC,
- 27:55you have to pick your commodity first.
- 27:57I'm going to give you three choices.
- 28:00PGMs, gold and copper.
- 28:06Which one would you choose, Viv?
- 28:07Given your AI experience and David talking about copper melting.
- 28:12Look, I mean, copper is still going to be used.
- 28:13It's just that we need to be, and this is mostly used for the high, you know, the
- 28:19training stuff.
- 28:21We need to have the huge data sets being transferred.
- 28:22I mean, you don't really need those kind of like those kind of capacities when
- 28:28you're looking at the infrared side.
- 28:30And it's still going to come into play.
- 28:32Copper is still going to come into play when you build the robots because fiber
- 28:34optics does not do the magnetic stuff.
- 28:36copper does to move motors and stuff.
- 28:38When you're transporting electricity over large distances, copper is still going to
- 28:41be there.
- 28:42So copper, I think, is the industrial base.
- 28:43I'm not that negative on gold.
- 28:45I'm very negative on PGMs.
- 28:47I think that what's happening right now with regards to the petrol price, et
- 28:53cetera,
- 28:54is going to push a lot of people to go towards electric vehicles.
- 28:57And once you switch, I don't think you're ever going to switch back.
- 28:59And the amount of demand for PGMs that goes towards fossil fuel driven vehicles
- 29:06is the number one source of
- 29:08demand for that group of metals.
- 29:09So longer term, I think it's a bit of a dead spiral PGMs.
- 29:14That's a nice way to end the show.
- 29:15Gentlemen, thank you very much for your time.
- 29:17Wait a second.
- 29:18I forgot the indices.
- 29:20David, you said you were looking at the JSC.
- 29:22Can you give us the closing indices, please?
- 29:25It ended literally flat, I think, down.
- 29:2712 points at 119, 154.
- 29:30Miners were slightly better.
- 29:32Resource index up just under 1%.
- 29:35Financials also flat,
- 29:41up 0.10%.
- 29:41Banks slightly better as well.
- 29:43And mixed performance in industrials with a negative bias.
- 29:48Consumers up.
- 29:49The broader financial industry, broader industrials were down.
- 29:53I'm talking about the heavyweights.
- 29:55Property down as well.
- 29:56And it was there's quite a bit of trade taking place of 30 billion day to day.
- 30:01Still a lot of speculation and trading around gold and the mining stocks.
- 30:07But we ended flat.
- 30:09Yeah.
- 30:09OK, David, thank you very much for that.
- 30:11David Shapiro is from Sasson Securities.
- 30:14Viv, thank you very much as well.
- 30:15Viv Govender is from Rands Swiss in Johannesburg.
- 30:18And that was the five o'clock shadow.
- 30:20The views and opinions expressed in these podcasts are those of Lindsay Williams and
- 30:25various contributors.
- 30:27and do not reflect the policy, position, or opinion of any other agency,
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