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 5 o'clock
- 0:09shadow.
- 0:09And as always on a Thursday, I speak to David Shapiro from Sasson Securities,
- 0:14currently in Manhattan,
- 0:16and Viv Govender from Ransuisse, currently in Durban.
- 0:19Viv, last week you spoke about the war and you were very sombre and you were very
- 0:23sober
- 0:25and you were slightly more pessimistic than I think either myself or David were
- 0:28at the time.
- 0:28time.
- 0:29Now, things may have changed because it seems to me, and I'll start with you
- 0:34again, Viv, if I may,
- 0:36it seems to me that things are getting worse and Mr.
- 0:37Trump's got a bit of a hole to dig himself out of.
- 0:40Would you say that's right?
- 0:42Yes.
- 0:43And again, I've never been like somebody that's very anti-Trump, you know, it's not
- 0:48like I try and call balls and strikes.
- 0:50And like, as you say, this is so stupid.
- 0:52He starts this war, right, at a time where he did not full up the US oil reserves.
- 0:58The oil reserves were depleted under Biden.
- 1:00Trump promised to fill them up.
- 1:02Trump chooses to go to war with Iran.
- 1:04Trump did not fill up the oil reserves in the months leading up to the war.
- 1:08How stupid was that?
- 1:10I mean, that is like the most, that is like one of the dumbest moves ever.
- 1:13You could explain to a five-year-old, you know, what you would, what you would do in
- 1:19war and the five-year-old thing, let's stock up on the stuff that's going to be
- 1:21cut off because of the war.
- 1:23I mean, it is such a stupid thing to have done, number one.
- 1:25The next thing is that I think the Iranians.
- 1:27As you go, you know, irrespective of the morality or whatever, from a game
- 1:34strategic point of view, what they're doing is the only logical thing they can
- 1:36do.
- 1:38They have to keep on fighting for as long as possible, because should they stop,
- 1:41they are just going to be attacked next year.
- 1:43You know what I mean?
- 1:45The way this is going at the moment, there is no deal that they can make other than
- 1:50abdicating that's going to basically let them, you know,
- 1:52not be attacked.
- 1:54And given what they've done in the past, they can't abdicate because they will not
- 1:57survive for long in the country.
- 1:59after what they've done to that country.
- 2:01You know what I mean?
- 2:03There's enough, I think, ill will towards them, real ill will towards them, the
- 2:05leadership of the Iranians,
- 2:07that they won't be a viable life in the country if they basically give up
- 2:11leadership.
- 2:12So from their point of view, they are going to probably fight a lot longer than
- 2:16you think.
- 2:17From Trump's point of view, he can't really stop this thing until he gets some
- 2:22real concessions from the Iranians.
- 2:24And so I don't see how this ends, you know, quickly unless there's some outside
- 2:30force acting here.
- 2:32Exactly.
- 2:34It's not going to end quickly.
- 2:36In fact, and if he does put troops into the region, then I'm sorry, you've got
- 2:38another Afghanistan on your hands.
- 2:40David Forrest Gump once said that his mother told him, stupid is as stupid does.
- 2:45Okay, now this applies to Mr.
- 2:47Trump.
- 2:48Viv, who's not an anti-Trumper, unless it's a strike.
- 2:54But he really did do something stupid this week when talking about the school.
- 2:58This is the latest in a string of gaffes that he's made.
- 3:01He said, no, it was definitely the Iranians from what he's seen and heard, he
- 3:06said.
- 3:07And he talked about the fact that America sells Tomahawk missiles to other
- 3:12countries,
- 3:14almost implying that America had sold the Tomahawk missile to Iran that hit the
- 3:19school.
- 3:19Now, the only countries that they've sold it to is Australia, the Netherlands,
- 3:22France.
- 3:24and the united kingdom and those those people are really not involved so the the
- 3:30way he keeps on putting his his
- 3:32foot in it and says in kentucky last night the war's over we've won it and then at
- 3:37the end he says but we're still going to continue
- 3:39anyway david you have to come in on this one because you're at the heart of it
- 3:44reading all the american media that we don't oddly
- 3:46enough the striking of the school hasn't caused as much fuss as i thought it would
- 3:51um and i think that's
- 3:53That's why.
- 3:55simply because of what the Iranians are doing, raining down on their allies, you
- 3:58know,
- 3:58being indiscriminate about their targets and the kind of missiles that they're
- 4:02using as well.
- 4:04So that I thought it would make more of a headline, you know, particularly in New
- 4:09York,
- 4:09which is hugely anti-Trump.
- 4:12But I must say something else that the public support is starting to wane.
- 4:18And particularly when they talk about, you know, ground troops.
- 4:23And this is grinding on.
- 4:25You know, this is not going to be over in a week or two or where we now going into
- 4:30almost three weeks.
- 4:32You know, this could go on for a month or even longer than that.
- 4:34And the longer it goes on, the more the upper hand shifts towards Iran.
- 4:39As much as we don't want to say it, you know, it really shifts towards their
- 4:45incredible resilience.
- 4:47the You know, the new...
- 4:49Khomeini came out now, I don't know, within the last hour or so and gave a
- 4:56statement saying, listen, you know,
- 4:58we're going to keep the Straits of Hormuz closed.
- 4:59And of course, that's why oil is shot up like it has and equity prices and
- 5:06everything else has come down.
- 5:08You know, that's because they're not giving in.
- 5:09And I don't think they are going to give in.
- 5:11I think they're just going to keep grinding away.
- 5:15And I think this is starting to...
- 5:17worry, you know, really get to people and worry.
- 5:20Okay, so what do we do now?
- 5:22Who's going to win?
- 5:23Is this going to be a truce?
- 5:24Is this going to be a draw?
- 5:25Whatever it is.
- 5:26And if it comes out as a draw, you know, with both kind of teams standing down,
- 5:33then Iran's going to claim victory.
- 5:35You know, they're going to say, listen, you know, we stood up to these, to
- 5:40America.
- 5:41So Trump has got to do something big.
- 5:44He doesn't want to hit the energy sources.
- 5:47Meaning electricity.
- 5:48You know, I'm not talking about oil reserves or anything like that,
- 5:54or oil tanks or anything like that.
- 5:56But really, he can put down their power source,
- 6:03meaning electricity source on the grid and everything.
- 6:05He doesn't want to do that because he doesn't want to stop a new regime coming
- 6:09in.
- 6:10And he says it will set them back a lifetime, almost take years and years to
- 6:15do that.
- 6:15But he's got to do something.
- 6:17You know what I mean?
- 6:18He's got to do something big now to show that he's in charge and that he is really
- 6:23winning the war.
- 6:25And I'm not saying he is.
- 6:27I'm just saying he's got to do something.
- 6:29If he doesn't, I think it's going to play against him as well.
- 6:30You're going to find more and more opposition to where he is now and calling
- 6:36for
- 6:37Congress to intervene and so on.
- 6:40I think he's backpedaling.
- 6:41He's backpedaling.
- 6:42He's got another problem as well, and in the form of Russia and China.
- 6:45And he said that he's had a call with, what's his name, Putin.
- 6:52And Vitkov said, we trust what Putin says.
- 6:56He says, we believe him, we take him on his word that he hasn't been feeding
- 7:02intelligence to Iran.
- 7:04Now, how anyone can say that about Putin, doesn't matter what the subject matter is,
- 7:06how anyone can say that we believe what he said is beyond me.
- 7:10But the thing is about Russia is that if the Iranians can't export their oil to
- 7:17China, 98%
- 7:19of their oil goes to China, a little bit to Syria, a little bit to Venezuela,
- 7:23funnily enough, but 98%.
- 7:25And Viv last week was talking about Karg Island, which is the main refinery, which
- 7:30they haven't hit yet because that would be disastrous.
- 7:32Then oil would be at 125 to 150. So Russia is now probably saying,
- 7:36or China is probably saying to Russia, look, We've got 88 days left of reserves.
- 7:41We might need to keep on topping it up.
- 7:43Can you sell it to us?
- 7:44I don't know how oil trading works.
- 7:46I don't think anyone apart from those right at the top do.
- 7:49But Russia is a problem and China is a problem.
- 7:52And Viv, you've been probably watching that as well, given the fact that you
- 7:57brought up the Karg Island issue last week.
- 7:59What do you make of it?
- 8:01It's playing into Russia's hands to a certain extent.
- 8:01In other words, boosting their foreign reserves.
- 8:04Yeah, look, I mean, there's something called the shadow fleet.
- 8:06I don't know if you've heard of that before.
- 8:07But Russia has a shadow fleet that basically it uses to move oil around the
- 8:12world, right?
- 8:13And recently, the shadow fleet had been under a huge amount of pressure.
- 8:15The U.S.
- 8:16has attacked a few.
- 8:17The Ukrainians have attacked a few.
- 8:18Now, I think with what Trump is doing, he knows that he wants to have the Russian
- 8:24oil in the market because it kind of helps him.
- 8:26So the Russians are effectively allowed to move their oil quite a bit more easily
- 8:32than they did in the past, which is going to really fill up their coffers.
- 8:34It's going to, you know, if you're strangling somebody and you let them
- 8:36breathe as much as they want to.
- 8:38Suddenly, they basically have a lot more time.
- 8:38A month of breathing allows them many months of continued resistance after this.
- 8:44So the Russians right now are selling to the Indians.
- 8:46They're selling to the Chinese.
- 8:48They're always moving more freely than it was in the past.
- 8:51And they're going to be selling oil when the oil price is $100.
- 8:55A discount even here is going to give them $80, $70 a barrel, which is way higher
- 9:01than they were getting in the past.
- 9:03So it's going to be a huge windfall for the Russians, number one.
- 9:03Number two.
- 9:05You know, if they do have a draw, like David said,
- 9:08it makes total sense for the Russians and the Chinese to rearm the Iranians.
- 9:13Once this stops, they will be pumping as much as they can into Iran.
- 9:16Why?
- 9:17Because they know Iran acts as a distraction to the U.S.
- 9:22Should something happen in Taiwan, should something happen in Ukraine, the Americans
- 9:28can't just focus on that because now you have this Iranian regime
- 9:30that's rearmed and dangerous again, if you know what I mean.
- 9:32So it really...
- 9:33does not make sense from a geopolitical point of view, this whole kind of thing
- 9:39that the Americans have done at the moment.
- 9:41It really is a very silly thing to have done.
- 9:41But the one thing I would mention about Cog Island, yes, the Marines are
- 9:48important, but 20% of the world travels through the Straits of Hormuz,
- 9:5020%.
- 9:52If you had to look at the last, I think, six, you know,
- 9:54crisis energy crisis we've had in the past ukraine the one with the uh the
- 9:581970s and so on the current shutdown per day on a daily basis is worse than the
- 10:05next
- 10:05five combined that's how bad it is it's it's not just the biggest it's bigger than
- 10:12the next five combined
- 10:14so it is it is by far the worst energy crisis we've ever seen in the world and if
- 10:20this lasts a month or two i mean we are talking uh
- 10:22places like south africa places that are importing oil Thank you.
- 10:23are going to be a real problem.
- 10:24I mean, we're talking rationing.
- 10:26What does rationing of oil look like in South Africa?
- 10:28What does our economy do if this goes on to June or July?
- 10:32We're not talking about years.
- 10:34We're talking three, four months from now.
- 10:37We are going to have a very different South Africa at that point in time.
- 10:39It's very interesting.
- 10:42Sorry, David, go on.
- 10:43No, you go on.
- 10:45No, I was going to say, I've been trying to do some work on what Viv is talking
- 10:50about,
- 10:50particularly from the South Africa.
- 10:52African economy.
- 10:53And we are incredibly vulnerable to this.
- 10:56You know, we import the finished product.
- 10:58You know, most of our refineries have been mothballed.
- 11:02So we don't refine any.
- 11:03We don't refine crude.
- 11:04We bring in the product.
- 11:06And when you bring in the product, you haven't got the storage facilities for
- 11:09that.
- 11:10And if nothing else is coming in, you know, you cause clog ups.
- 11:13And if you can't store anymore or you can't take anymore, you know,
- 11:19you're going to cause all kinds of issues with the supply chains.
- 11:22But my big issue is that if we can't get this finished product, and
- 11:29I lived through this in the 70s, where there was fuel rationing and also speed
- 11:35limits imposed on the country,
- 11:37we couldn't go more than 50 k's an hour or something.
- 11:39Even if you were traveling, I think if you were traveling down to Durban, you
- 11:43couldn't do 120.
- 11:45I think you had to do 100 k's an hour, slow speed to conserve fuel.
- 11:50So we have, and also you could only buy a certain amount.
- 11:54So we've lived through something like this before, which was the other previous
- 11:59crisis.
- 12:01But I think South Africa, from an inflation point of view, there are many
- 12:05areas in which, you know,
- 12:07the knock-on effect of higher oil prices for our economy are quite disastrous,
- 12:10including a possible shortage.
- 12:13Yes, that's very interesting.
- 12:14and someone said to me that they had South Africa's head two months of stock
- 12:20available.
- 12:22And that was 10 days ago or something like that.
- 12:24But anyway, the markets are not panicking,
- 12:28but there's something a little bit darker about the way that they're trading at the
- 12:33moment.
- 12:33When the markets open at midnight, I've just finished watching a Champions League
- 12:37football.
- 12:38David and Viv.
- 12:39So I'm awake.
- 12:41I can't sleep after watching that.
- 12:43So I put the markets on and immediately oil spikes.
- 12:46And it's been going up gradually ever since.
- 12:49And when Khamenei came on or his spokesperson came on and said,
- 12:54we're going to keep the straight closed, then it goes up a little bit more.
- 12:58And the way that the futures, the index futures, started ticking down, it wasn't a
- 13:05big spike down.
- 13:07it was general selling and david just stay with you on this one because you've looked
- 13:12at markets and the way they behave longer than we have
- 13:14that's that's the way that a sort of a bear market behaves not a big rush just a
- 13:19quick just a slow
- 13:21grind lower yeah it's a it's a drip and there are no stories coming out at the
- 13:26moment all the
- 13:28corporate stories are just falling on
- 13:30kind of uh deaf ears nobody's watching them the everybody's occupied with
- 13:35the oil price.
- 13:37Most of the discussion is around that.
- 13:41I just wanted to add one point to Viv, which is quite interesting to you as well.
- 13:46Sorry, Lindsay.
- 13:47In the sense that, no, why I say that about America's oil reserves,
- 13:53I don't think it's about America's oil reserves because they're net exporters.
- 13:57I don't know the qualities.
- 13:58I don't know all of that.
- 14:00What Trump is worried about and that's what it comes down to.
- 14:04I think what he says about allowing Russia to supply oil, he wants the price down.
- 14:11It doesn't matter where it goes.
- 14:12You know, Russia can supply anybody, but as long as the supplies are coming out,
- 14:18the price will go down.
- 14:20So I don't think America is going to be short of oil.
- 14:21He wants that price down because he's promised the public, you know, the oil
- 14:27price was
- 14:29$45, sorry, a barrel, whatever it was.
- 14:31And he promised that the pump, it will be $2.
- 14:34below.
- 14:35You know, that's it.
- 14:36It's now 360.
- 14:37So, you know, and as I've said before on the show, and, you know, to you, Lindsay,
- 14:43in America,
- 14:45everything at the moment in the US is about affordability.
- 14:47Jobs are being lost.
- 14:48People are battling with their...
- 14:51With their budgets, the last thing they want as we go into summer is to pay more
- 14:57for gas, you know,
- 14:59more for petrol.
- 15:01So I think he's, I don't think with him it's a supply issue.
- 15:03I think it's a price issue.
- 15:05It very much is.
- 15:07He focused on the local economy last night when he was in Kentucky.
- 15:10He looked wider than normal, by the way.
- 15:12I don't know if he's...
- 15:13He looks shiny.
- 15:14He's enormous and he was sweating.
- 15:17I mean, it's probably hot in Kentucky at this time of year, I don't know.
- 15:19And the chap that he introduced with the beard, did you see him, David?
- 15:22Did you watch him?
- 15:23Did you see how he was sweating under his arms through his suit?
- 15:26I don't know what he was on.
- 15:27I thought he had some cream on his face.
- 15:29He was on something.
- 15:30I don't know.
- 15:31But anyway, what was I talking about?
- 15:32Oh, yeah, he said, chinks, cheese, milk.
- 15:34He says they're all down.
- 15:36And he didn't say by how much.
- 15:37He said a lot since he's been in.
- 15:40And The Economist on CNN.
- 15:42Sorry, David, I watch CNN.
- 15:43It's all I've got here at the moment.
- 15:45The woman on The Economist, she said, what's he talking about?
- 15:48I mean, this one's up 16%, that one's up 12.5%, et cetera.
- 15:52He sounds like a broken record from his pre-Elections era.
- 15:57And I don't know, people in Kentucky may be believing it, but I think people are
- 16:04going to get fed up with him just like they're going to get fed up with the war.
- 16:06The Standard Bank today, we had a couple of good ones from the short-term insurers
- 16:10like Outsurance and Santam.
- 16:12Viv, anything that's caught your eye outside of what we've been talking about?
- 16:15Yeah, I mean, Sunarm, I think, is interesting here.
- 16:17You know, they say volumes are at records.
- 16:20I do think that, you know, obviously, you know, if you have the asset management
- 16:27operations in Africa over the last year or so,
- 16:29you are smiling at the moment.
- 16:31We've had a very good, you know, return last year, the best we've had in several
- 16:33years.
- 16:33And obviously, if you are in that business, you're looking quite good.
- 16:37With regards to, you know, Standard Bank's results, I think they are, again, you
- 16:41know,
- 16:41in an overall environment.
- 16:45they are seeing gains in the digital retail sector.
- 16:48The one thing I have to be concerned about, especially with the banking sector,
- 16:54the shift to digital is happening,
- 16:56but it also means that they're much more vulnerable now to these new banks out
- 17:01there because you don't have that mode of your branch network to
- 17:03help you out.
- 17:05If customers are moving more digital, any digital bank can be your competitor out
- 17:06there.
- 17:07That's going to be, I think, quite an interesting overall environment in a
- 17:10decade or so.
- 17:10David, you're not a big fan of the banks, are you?
- 17:13In South Africa, anyway.
- 17:15So I know you've had a look at this is what I normally say to David.
- 17:20David, have you looked at these results?
- 17:22And he'll say, yes, I had a look at the headline and I had a look at the summary,
- 17:29but I can't go through 105 pages of standard banks in an afternoon.
- 17:31Is that exactly what you're going to say?
- 17:31You've got to believe it.
- 17:32You've got to believe it.
- 17:33But I think the one thing that captured my attention I'm not big on Africa
- 17:39investment.
- 17:41I confine my investments, as we've spoken so many times before here,
- 17:47to the world's biggest companies, where the growth is coming and so on.
- 17:50I'm not going to repeat that.
- 17:51But I looked at Standard Bank and I think if you want to invest in Africa,
- 17:57then go for our banks.
- 17:59Because I think something like 40% of
- 18:04Standard Bank's profits are now coming or earnings are coming out of Africa.
- 18:08Or, you know, in the region, not international, not outside, you know,
- 18:14outside the continent.
- 18:16So I'm saying if the only thing that struck me is that, OK, it's a fairly
- 18:20respectable earnings,
- 18:22but they're making good money outside Africa.
- 18:23That's whether you believe it's going to continue.
- 18:25I think they're still growing.
- 18:26They're very small areas.
- 18:27But, you know, somebody wants to invest in Africa, in inverted commas, rather than
- 18:34going for the shop riots or.
- 18:36or the retailers and that, I think the banks are doing okay, and it's propping up
- 18:39their numbers.
- 18:41But on a broader scale, I agree 100% with Viv.
- 18:44This is a very competitive area, where you're handheld,
- 18:48instead of going and bowing in front of the managers, we used to do in those old
- 18:53days,
- 18:53go into the marble halls of the big banks, you just do it on your phone,
- 18:59and you've got no loyalty anymore, you know, service.
- 19:02And The way that fintech is taking over, there was a company called Home Choice,
- 19:09which is pay now, buy now,
- 19:11pay later.
- 19:13I mean, very good results showing that, you know, how they use credit.
- 19:15You buy over three, I don't know, you know what I mean, buy now, it used to be like
- 19:19lay buyers.
- 19:21You want a pair of shoes, you get them now and you pay over three or four
- 19:26installments over a week.
- 19:28Seriously.
- 19:30So it's huge in the world.
- 19:32There was a, what's it, Viv Klarner?
- 19:34Yes, Klarna, exactly right.
- 19:36Klarna is massive.
- 19:38Every time you go and buy something online, it gives you the choice of Klarna.
- 19:38They've completely monopolized that part of the market.
- 19:43But this is undermining the traditional banking offering.
- 19:48So, yeah, but our banks don't lend money.
- 19:51That's why they're making so much money.
- 19:53You know, they don't want to grow the economy.
- 19:54They just want to make sure that they get a good return on equity.
- 19:58So if you want to start a new business in South Africa, you've got no chance of
- 20:02getting money.
- 20:03Come to America where you've got just piles of it.
- 20:09This is good.
- 20:10You should be in advertising, David.
- 20:11Come to America.
- 20:12We've got piles of money.
- 20:13Nice.
- 20:14Let me give you some.
- 20:16Let me give you some prices here.
- 20:17The dollar-rand has spiked in the wrong direction.
- 20:20The dollar has spiked, rather.
- 20:211676, that's a percent move for the dollar against the round.
- 20:242236, that's three-quarters of a percent gain for the pound.
- 20:29And the euro-rand is, what is the euro-rand?
- 20:32There it is.
- 20:321930, that's a 0.8% move.
- 20:35Euro-dollar is 11530.
- 20:39A bit of a rush to the dollar.
- 20:40Not a rush, but again, a steady buy that I was talking about earlier on the gold
- 20:44price.
- 20:44has fallen $55 with that stronger dollar.
- 20:47$5,119 per ounce, down a percent.
- 20:51Platinum down 2.5% to 21.48.
- 20:54David's been calling the top in the commodities for a couple of weeks now.
- 20:58Palladium, David, well done, down 13% to $16.26 per ounce.
- 21:05Now let's have a look at the all-important oil price, which has slowly made its way
- 21:11now above 101.
- 21:13Brent Crudewell, $101.17.
- 21:14exactly 10% on the day.
- 21:1610.9% is the gain for the West Texas, which is $96.75.
- 21:22Natural gas prices up one and a half.
- 21:23Gasoline prices in the States wholesale $2.94, up five and a quarter percent.
- 21:29Heating oil, terribly important.
- 21:30I didn't know that one and a half million homes in the UK still use heating oil,
- 21:37mainly in rural areas, but nonetheless they use it.
- 21:39It's an 8.1% gain.
- 21:41So that's an important thing.
- 21:43And everything's going up.
- 21:45Soybeans, wheat, coal.
- 21:47all up over two percent uh copper price going the other way bad for south africa
- 21:50down 0.9 south african
- 21:5210-year bond was gosh look at it now 867.
- 21:54it's not as bad as it was a couple of days ago 867 but still a 19 and a half basis
- 22:01points higher the yield going higher
- 22:03the bond price coming down the us 10 year was 397 10 days ago where is it now um
- 22:074.24 s p 500 futures are down what one point 1.2%
- 22:14if my screen, that's me making it up like Donald Trump, because I haven't got a
- 22:18screen in front of it.
- 22:20It's just gone off.
- 22:22But last time I saw 1.2% down and Bitcoin just below 70,000.
- 22:25Viv, before David gives us the indices and the movers on the JSC, can you give us any
- 22:31AI update?
- 22:33Last week, I sort of, I prompted you with the with the deep seek story, which hasn't
- 22:37seemed to come to fruition.
- 22:39Anything new this week?
- 22:41David, sorry, Viv, I mean, sorry, David.
- 22:44Yeah, look, I mean, with the AI stuff at the moment, I think we are waiting for the
- 22:50deep sink, the move to come out.
- 22:52I think that people are getting a bit more pessimistic about it because of the delays
- 22:54that have been occurring.
- 22:56And they do wonder whether or not it's going to be, you know, up to, you know,
- 23:02the same level in terms of what it was related to the American models.
- 23:04Some now suspect that it's going to be a greater, you know, fallback.
- 23:05There's also discussions about whether or where exactly it was trained and what is
- 23:10it trained on.
- 23:10And people are saying it was trained on NVIDIA chips, but outside of China.
- 23:13So basically, They had it done in some Southeast Asian countries that they
- 23:18trained this thing up in, using still NVIDIA chips.
- 23:20So that does mean that the
- 23:22Chinese chip ecosystem has not caught up yet to what the Chinese government wants
- 23:27it
- 23:27to be at.
- 23:28So yeah, I think the delays that are coming through, the fact that we have all
- 23:34the other rumors about the trading around
- 23:36NVIDIA chips, et cetera, these are not good news stories for the Chinese AI
- 23:40story.
- 23:41Okay.
- 23:42So we'll wait for a deep seek.
- 23:43I've actually downloaded the app on all my devices today.
- 23:46Sorry, David, go on.
- 23:47No, I'm just saying, if Tencent was up, I thought that was on some kind of release
- 23:54of,
- 23:56what's it, OpenClaw or something like that.
- 23:57I thought this was all related to that.
- 23:59But they shot up earlier on in the week, which gave Process and Asper's a bit of a
- 24:04lift here.
- 24:04Was that not connected with some release?
- 24:08Yeah, they have a thing called Crayfish.
- 24:11So open claw, right?
- 24:14So they use claw because of claw for anthropic, but it's not a T-A-L-W-E.
- 24:19And then they use molt because, you know, they changed the name like a lobster
- 24:23molts.
- 24:23And therefore it's claw, open claw.
- 24:25So it's crayfish with crayfish have claws.
- 24:27You know what I mean?
- 24:28Yeah.
- 24:28And so the Chinese are getting, are really switching on to this AI kind of thing.
- 24:35But it's very different from the other labs.
- 24:37So these agents have to use...
- 24:40somebody else's LLM.
- 24:42um so you you so if you have uh you know crayfish or you have open claw whatever it
- 24:49is you still have a a link into
- 24:51j deep seek or a chat gpt or clawed more likely and the clawed guys by the way are
- 24:56still
- 24:56considered to be the the for whatever reason these atropic guys seem to be able
- 25:03to punch way above their weight in terms of you know uh i think they are
- 25:05doing stuff that other people think is closer to agi than anything else and they
- 25:09don't have the funding the other guys do have They have less funding than
- 25:11Gemini, they have less funding than OpenAI, but they seem still to be the one
- 25:15that you'd work through.
- 25:17So where this works is you'd have this crayfish model fit into Kimi, fit into
- 25:21Open, Kimi, fit into
- 25:23DeepSeq, fit into Claw, whatever it may be, but you still have to have your local
- 25:27model or the LLM running it basically.
- 25:29And the fact of the matter is that right now it does seem that the
- 25:31Clawed model from the Anthropic seems to be light years ahead of what the Chinese
- 25:36have and the Chinese are not closing that gap.
- 25:38In fact, that gap is probably increasing.
- 25:40Yeah.
- 25:42Interesting.
- 25:44OK.
- 25:46All right.
- 25:48We'll keep an eye on that one.
- 25:50David, you're going to get the indices ready.
- 25:52I'm going to give you the movers and shakers to the upside and the downside on
- 25:54the JSC.
- 25:56Sassl, look at this thing.
- 25:58It's 50 rand a share.
- 26:00It's 172 rand a share, up nearly 6% today for obvious rand.
- 26:02Higher chemical prices, higher oil prices.
- 26:04Tungela up 4%.
- 26:06Goldfield's up 3.5%.
- 26:08British American Tobacco is weighing in with a 3.4% gain.
- 26:10On the downside, we've got Optasia.
- 26:12New listing on the JSC, 5.4%.
- 26:14Sounds like a Disney film, I've always said that.
- 26:16HCI down nearly 5%.
- 26:18AlphaMin down 4.5%.
- 26:19Sanlam down 3.7%.
- 26:21And GrowthPoint down 3.4%.
- 26:25David, I don't know how I'm doing in the challenge.
- 26:31I'm going to look now.
- 26:32No, no, please don't.
- 26:33I either want to be in the bottom quartile or the top quartile.
- 26:36I don't want to be in the middle.
- 26:37It changes all the time.
- 26:39It's quite remarkable how things change.
- 26:41But I think what I want to point out is that our market's now beginning to reflect
- 26:47an oil price of 100.
- 26:49Yes.
- 26:51And the impact that it's going to have on retailers and the banks and the property
- 26:52sector.
- 26:54Good point.
- 26:56And even though the oil share was only down 0.38 of a percent,
- 26:59some of the gold shares held up and also the rand provided some kind of a cushion.
- 27:04But I mean, overall, you're starting to see weakness.
- 27:08emerge in those areas.
- 27:10And I think it's going to be tough.
- 27:12You know, it's going to be really tough because we know when we never had
- 27:17electricity what it was like,
- 27:19and you're just going to get higher oil prices, higher diesel prices, higher
- 27:23transport prices,
- 27:25all of these things, I think, working their way into the price of food and
- 27:29everything that we use.
- 27:31So that whole business of me going for South African stocks, beating up South
- 27:36African stocks, the bottom five performers from last year,
- 27:38are they going to be the bottom five performers of this year?
- 27:39Are they, David?
- 27:40I was with you.
- 27:42I called that with you as well.
- 27:43I'm in the same kind of area.
- 27:45But I think it's going to hurt the consumer unless this war is over in a week
- 27:52or two and oil prices
- 27:54retreat.
- 27:56But we've just said it's not going to do that.
- 27:58Viv has got me very hungry with all that crayfish and lobster talk.
- 28:01So, David, can you just give me the closing indices, please?
- 28:04Okay.
- 28:05So the oil share ended down 0.38% at 116948.
- 28:09Top 40 down 0.29%, 109287.
- 28:13Resources just managed three quarters of a percent increase, but the rest of the
- 28:20market down quite significantly.
- 28:22Banks under a lot of pressure, as we mentioned now, and also some of the listed
- 28:26property down almost.
- 28:282% as well.
- 28:30And generally, industrials under pressure, even though they were supported by a
- 28:34weaker end,
- 28:36which helped British American, ABM, the processors, NASPERS, just on translation.
- 28:41And they're big in the index, so they do carry weight.
- 28:44Okay.
- 28:44Gentlemen, thank you very much for your insight, as always.
- 28:46David Shapiro is from SAS for Insecurities, speaking to us from
- 28:50Manhattan.
- 28:50And Viv Govender is from Ransuisse, speaking to us from Durban.
- 28:53And that was the 5 o'clock shadow.
- 28:55The views and opinions expressed in these podcasts are those of Lindsay Williams and
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