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The 5 o' Clock Shadow with David Shapiro and Viv Govender · Strictly Business

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You're listening to Strictly Business Podcast with Lindsay Williams.
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The JSC has closed its doors for another day, so it's time for the 5 o'clock
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shadow.
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And as always on a Thursday, I speak to Viv Govender from RAND Swiss in
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Johannesburg and David Shapiro from Sassfin Securities,
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currently in Boston.
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David, how was your trip from New York to Boston?
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Any problems?
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Or you went on the train, didn't you?
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No, I went on the train.
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I'm back in New York at the moment.
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I came back on Monday, so I'm back here.
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But nothing's changed.
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Still a very confused northeastern United States.
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I'm a prolific watcher of the news.
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Yes.
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And it's obvious that Mr.
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Trump is in a very difficult position.
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He's stranded in the middle, criticized by the right and criticized by the left,
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and not quite sure how to appease even the center.
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So, the certainty is certainly not in his favor, but he's just like one of those
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bunnies that you see at a fair.
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You know, you shoot it, it goes the other way.
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You shoot it, it runs, keeps reversing.
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You know, he's, I think, a lot of confusion at the moment.
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And I'm surprised that markets are holding up as well as they are, you know,
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considering the circumstances.
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But I think people here are getting very impatient.
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And, you know, want to know what he's thinking is, and that's not easy to
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establish.
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So it's very difficult.
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I was hoping, I was saying, oh, I hope Lindsay doesn't phone or I don't have to
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speak to Viv.
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I'm sitting here just looking at my screen.
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Did you hear that, Viv?
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He didn't want to speak to us.
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Did you know that?
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Even David Shapiro, even the implacable David Shapiro, Mr.
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Media himself.
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doesn't want to talk about it.
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That is how it is affecting people.
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That's how confusing, yeah.
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I agree with you.
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Lindsay, you know, that's how absolutely confusing it is.
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And, you know, clients ask you, well, what do we do?
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And, you know, from one minute to the next, it's all, when I say it's all over
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the place, you know,
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you wake up in the morning and markets can go up and down many times during the day.
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Yesterday we had a good day because there could have been some talks today.
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There's no talks and so on.
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Anyway, I just have the last word.
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Just before I came on to this, I was looking at YouTube, and I wanted to get
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the
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Holy Grail extract of Monty Python's Holy Grail
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YouTube piece of when they go to a castle and they want to
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seek shelter for the night, and it's a Frenchman's castle.
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I remember when he starts, insulting them that they smell like, you know,
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their mom smells like endelberries or whatever.
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It's hysterical.
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And, you know, the whole negotiation, and this is just Trump looking up at the
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Iranians and the Iranians,
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you know, sending down chickens,
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dead chickens and cows and melting them with anything they can find.
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And, you know, it just reminds me of the futility of where we are at the moment.
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It's futile, but it's unfortunately a little bit more dangerous than a few
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smelly chickens in a Monty Python film.
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And I know the clip you're talking about is still a classic.
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Viv, while David's looking that up, it is very dangerous indeed,
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because it's a war that was conceived and initiated on the whim of a
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person who's never had anything to do with being a soldier, has no military
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experience.
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and thinks he knows everything.
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So even when someone like Pete Hegseth, who's his Secretary of War, as he calls
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it,
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but still legally the Secretary of Defence, also hasn't really got the
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experience to be where he is.
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And so therefore they go in blindly because, as they say, they've got the best
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military in the world.
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You can have the worst military in the world and the best strategy and you've
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still got more of a chance.
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Viv, it's out of control now, don't you think?
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Yeah, look, I mean...
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The thing is that the problem is that they do have the best military in the world.
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That's the temptation, because you have this immensely powerful weapon.
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You can do anything you want militarily, virtually.
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And that's the temptation that Trump has, I think, kind of gotten into.
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The problem is that, as you mentioned, strategically, there's no way out of this
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thing.
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The straits of Amur, it's going to be very difficult to close that off.
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I'll get boots on the ground because you need to basically stop, you know, these
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small drones, these waterborne drones,
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even just flying ones.
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There's ones that's basically unmanned boats that can go on the water, that you
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need to stop that.
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And you get on the basically the shoreline of some islands, as well as on maybe the
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Iranian shoreline as well to stop that.
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You also have, you know, in fact, the Iranians now, strangely enough,
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are in a better fiscal situation in some ways than they were before the war.
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Because not only are they selling a little bit more oil than they were before, but
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they're selling at a significantly better price.
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And also their big allies in Russia are effectively.
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You know, I think the Russians are pretty much out of the stranglehold.
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You know, they've made a fortune with oil.
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They've made a fortune with fertilizer at the moment.
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And that, I think, is a big issue.
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And then finally, I mean, they should be keeping an eye on what's happening in
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China.
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Because the Chinese are looking at this and waiting for the Americans to get boots
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on the ground, get really tangled up in a quagmire, and then suddenly Taiwan's in
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trouble.
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And if you think the problem with oil is bad, wait till you see what happens when
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you take out 90% of the world's, you know,
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high-end chips.
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I mean, the world becomes a very different place.
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And all because, like I said, I think Trump and maybe Hexer, but I think Trump
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mainly,
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because we want to gather most people in the administration, with a few exceptions,
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who are very much against this thing.
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They don't know why Trump did it.
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They don't know exactly what made him do it at this point in time.
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And basically, yeah, it's a massively self-inflicted wound that he's done here.
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We're going to lose the midterm elections by a lot more, possibly lose the Senate.
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We're certainly going to lose this Congress, possibly lose the Senate.
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We lose those two houses.
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And given all of Trump's issues, I expect the next few years of his life are going
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to be a lot of, you know,
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interrogations in front of Senate committees and Congress committees, you
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know, like Bill Clinton was about the Mani Kulikwinski thing, you know,
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about Ronald Reagan was, you know, about Iran-Contra.
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And, but taken to another level.
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It's going to be a very, very tough period for the next couple of years, given stuff
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that he's done here.
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David, is anyone in New York or on any of the channels that you watch or any of the
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pages that you read,
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is anyone saying anything about Trump's health?
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Because it looked really, really bad when he was at that GOP fundraiser last night.
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I don't know where it was, but it was somewhere in Washington because he's back
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now.
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He looked awful and was slurring so badly.
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Surprisingly not.
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You know, I haven't, nothing's been like that.
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And I'm...
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Just surprised that everybody's been so calm, that they're just asking questions,
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but no direct criticism around him.
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It's coming in the, you know, you get it in places like I read The Atlantic or you
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read The Free Press or you read
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maybe The New York Times and places like that.
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You know, there's massive criticism, but nothing around his health.
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But it's, he pittens the blame now on Pete Hexeth.
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you know he he He put him in front of the firing squad by saying, oh, well,
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Pete came to me with a few generals, you know, worried about the nuclear bomb.
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And they were a short distance away from doing it a short time.
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You know, and funny enough,
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Pete Hexeth is a lot more articulate when he's asked to speak than Trump.
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You know, if he's put in front of a mine, he was a media person.
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So he's pretty articulate and he's...
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You know, his mind is well framed on the arguments,
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but you can see that Trump is floundering.
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You know, I don't think he was fully familiar with, he couldn't really make a
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decision and said, OK,
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I'll go with you boys, you know, let's bomb the hell out of Iran.
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So that's what it's come down to.
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But he's struggling to backpedal.
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You know, he's struggling to get himself out of this kogma.
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And I...
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Lindsay, the other thing is I'll wait for someone on the Democratic Party to rise.
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You know, there's no one coming through who's a powerful voice.
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Chuck Schumer, certainly not.
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Or Hakeem Jeffries, you know, on the House side of it.
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They're not the personalities that can actually stand up and really swing the
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Democratic Party,
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even though, and Viv is correct, I think.
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He's going to be swamped in the midterms should things continue like this.
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But that's at a different level.
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You know, it's a state level or sorry, it's an individual state level or
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alternatively,
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maybe in the House or Senate.
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But you need you need the cabinet.
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You need a strong leader who can actually get the vote for president.
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And no one's come across there.
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There's still a lot of dissension within the Democratic Party itself.
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How long can...
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Viv, I'll put this one to you because David's surprised that markets have held
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up so well.
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How long can markets hold up so well?
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S&P, I look now, down 0.7%. Oil price $106.07 a barrel.
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Every single economist worth his or her salt is now putting out their predictions
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for 2026.
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Brave people.
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If the oil price goes here, then inflation in the United States will go to 4.7%.
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All those little numbers.
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which, of course, are completely spurious because we don't know what the war is
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going to bring or how
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long it'll take to bring it.
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But at some stage, someone's going to say, you know, everything's negative now.
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The big tech companies are getting hit because children are depressed, that sort
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of thing,
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because of that lawsuit that came to fruition last night in Los Angeles.
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Everything is suddenly negative.
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Is it going to crack at some stage, i.e.
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more than 0.64% like we're seeing now on the S&P?
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Almost certainly.
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Look, I mean, what you can understand, of course, is that it's going to be...
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very uh you know regional as well if you just look at the differential between say
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for instance all prices in the us versus all prices in the middle
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east you know it's quite a massive differential and that basically comes
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through like in you know all prices are significantly higher
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than yours all prices so india and asia more completely affected so you're looking
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at things like philippines save emergency
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thailand they basically say work from home uh you talk about
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rationing of fuel etc that's possible out there these places are being much more
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effective The U.S.
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might have high inflation.
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It might have, say, 7%, 8% inflation.
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But they had the Biden administration, 9% of the highest.
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It's not really going to be much more than an irritation.
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But there's places in the world where this is going to be existential, especially in
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Asia and in Africa as well.
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Because, I mean, we talked about it before we started, but the fertilizer situation
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is horrendous.
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And somebody phrased it.
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I think it was a New York Times podcast.
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Somebody phrased it.
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They said, what we're going to have to do is we're going to have to.
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Find a price for oil that's going to destroy something between 10 and 20
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percent of global demand.
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Oil is a very inelastic commodity.
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You have to raise prices quite significantly, drop demand between 10 and
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20 percent.
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What's going to happen if you do that is that places like China, Europe and
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definitely the U.S.
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are going to be able to afford it much better than places in like, you know, for
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instance, India or, you know, some other poorer countries in Africa.
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And what's going to happen is that you're going to find a lot of oil being diverted.
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from these places to places that can pay the money number one number two when it
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comes to fertilizer we are going into you know
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springtime in the northern hemisphere look at a world map see how much of the world
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is in the north and how much of the farmland is in the north you know what i
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mean
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it's quite a bit um and then you're going to find these places not being able to get
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enough fertilizer maybe under fertilizing their crops
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lower yield it's sowing season viv i live in a rural area and all the tractors are
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out now they're plowing the fields and the seeds are
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going in and for that they need fertilizer and it's being choked off as you quite
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rightly say food prices will go through the roof if it
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continues and exactly and again people somewhere in the world are going to be
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much better able to
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pay that food price increase europe um north america etc
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some places especially sub-saharan africa it's going to be killing people i mean not
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i'm not to be hyperbolic here We are talking...
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the possibility of famine.
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And not just one or two thousands.
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It could be huge.
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And this is a global disaster.
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And the problem is that I don't, honestly, like I talked about a couple weeks ago, I
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don't see how this ends.
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I just don't know how it ends.
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There's a very good point that I just want to...
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I did the translation, particularly for South Africa.
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You're buying petrol here at 360.
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a gallon.
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It might be going up, you know, each petrol station can put their own price on.
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That's how free it is here.
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But let's call it 360, which translates to 16 rand a litre.
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You know, that's what it is.
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So that's what they pay.
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We're going up to 26 rand a litre in Johannesburg in South Africa.
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But there's another thing, and you mentioned it, you actually pointed out
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this, they can afford it.
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They earn four times more.
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than we do.
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You know, an American, the average American, in Rand terms,
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the average American salary is around about a million Rand a year, plus 1.1
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million.
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In South Africa, it works out at 300,000 or something.
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So that's the mean across all the income earners.
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I doubt it's 300,000 plus Africans.
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Well, I'm being generous.
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I'm being very generous.
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Yeah.
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You know what I mean?
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I'm being very, from that point of view, you know where I'm going to.
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because obviously even those who are earning a few million only fill up their
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tanks.
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You know, they use as much petrol as the person at the bottom end of the scale.
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So from a South Africa's point of view, and we've mentioned emerging markets,
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emerging countries,
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they're going to take one hell of a slam.
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And even the JSE is actually holding up a lot better than I thought it would.
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You know, Lindsay, the governor spoke today.
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I think he was very well balanced in that.
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But hawkish.
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You know, rates obviously didn't go down.
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Yeah, yeah.
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But I think he's got a very there are two things in South Africa.
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It's obviously, number one, supply.
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And the other is price and how this translates and how this filters through to
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our whole economy.
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Particularly where we use you know, people use taxis every day to get into town,
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to get to their jobs, you know, backwards and forwards and so on.
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I mean the impact on the low level of earners is going to be enormous.
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Tell me something, it's open to both of you.
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Inelastic demand for oil is one thing.
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You've also got a relatively inelastic demand for food you have to eat.
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Also shelter, you have to have a roof over your head.
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So that's essentially, I suppose,
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the three areas that can't be skimped upon in your household budget.
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If, therefore, one of them, oil, goes shooting up...
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It takes away from the discretionary spend on other things, you know, like David
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going off to having a cappuccino, etc.
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So there are certain areas of goods that are going to experience lower demand and
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therefore deflation.
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So the oil price going up, although statistically means CPI goes higher, in
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reality,
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certain people's baskets go down because prices are going down because they're not
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buying the stuff anymore.
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David, you're agreeing with me here.
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Absolutely right.
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pitch.
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That's what we don't understand.
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You know, the bulk of the people can handle it.
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I mean, sorry, very few people can handle it.
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But for the bulk of the people, it's going to have an enormous impact on, you know,
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maybe those who get a social grant of a few hundred rand a month or so on, you
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know,
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they'll continue to buy their vegetables and hopefully places like
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Checkers or ShopRite and that will keep those prices of absolute essentials down.
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you know, won't pass it on as they have done in the past.
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But I mean for, but even if you take logistic companies,
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if you take getting everything to harbor or something,
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the increase in price just eats into margins dramatically.
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And the other one, as Viv said, is fertilizer and chemicals.
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You know, we underrate, we underestimate the impact that this has on the chemical
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prices as well because
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Oil always is a massive input into that area.
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Okay, it all looks very grim.
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It really does.
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It really does.
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And I think there'll be strategists and people even cleverer than you two sitting
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down and saying,
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what does this mean for our portfolios?
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I've spoken to two portfolio managers, one in London and one in South Africa,
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who have been long of this market in various ways, whether it be copper, gold
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or...
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Platinum Group Metals producers, and they've all, they said, we've been really
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active in the last month.
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We have now gone overweight here and underweight there, etc.
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And I won't say what it is and who they were, but there have been significant
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changes.
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People are positioning themselves for a different future.
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People that think they're clever anyway are positioning themselves for a different
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future.
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Viv, I'm going to go to you now because I'm going to ask you, have you positioned
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yourself?
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differently over the last month since this war began yes i mean look uh uh on a
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personal level i
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bought an electric car um you know um which one have you got please tell us
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which one you bought what did
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you buy if you're going to get the chinese brands i've got a cherry uh so it's
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basically
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quite cheap it's it's it's it's like cheap cheap for like you know obviously we do we
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are more present in our point here
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But compared to what you would consider the comparable kind of things out there
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from a BMW or a Toyota.
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This is a hybrid, though, hey?
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It's a hybrid, yeah.
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It's a hybrid.
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Yeah, it's a hybrid.
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It's a plug-in hybrid.
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So you can plug it into your electricity supply if you have solar, or you can put
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petrol in.
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But I think what I wanted to mention here is that we talk about petrol.
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The diesel price is going up more than 50%, 5-0% next week.
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Now, as much as petrol is, from a personal point of view, fuel petrol.
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But diesel is by far the most important source of power in the world.
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It's tractors, it's bulldozers, it's trucks, it's planes, it's ships, it's
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mining equipment.
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All these things are diesel.
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The price of diesel has been up 50 plus percent from 18 to 28 next week.
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That's basically well more than 50 percent, so it's about 60 percent up next
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week.
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Already we started to see in South Africa, there's questions about people basically
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you know stockpiling it because remember if you're on a farm or you're in a in a
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construction place not taking your bulldozer or your tractor to the
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petrol station you're taking a tank you know what i mean and filling it up there
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and these guys have the ability to go and buy if you had a thousand liter tank uh
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basically you're paying 18 000 runs this week next week you'll be paying 28 000
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runs for a thousand liter tank of diesel
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that's a huge huge uh you know so we obviously come through in a very big way
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but in terms of my own personal thing i
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I've got a lot more cautious for clients.
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I've argued like in the last like week or two, the last month or two actually, that
20:04
I think that, you know,
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Having things that are more capital protected, you know, basically capping
20:12
upside for protection of your capital is probably a good idea right now.
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The last year we had the local stock market going 50% in dollars, 5-0% in
20:17
dollars.
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We had, you know, huge returns in Europe.
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We had, you know, even the US, which is basically the laggard in the world, was
20:25
still up double digits, you know, which is unusual.
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You know, usually positive in terms of like just how the average return of the US
20:31
markets usually are.
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But this...
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next couple of years, it's probably not going to be like that, unless we have the
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AI revolution coming about and really pushing things to new levels.
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But I do think this is the case.
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We are going to see uncertainty really skyrocket over the next couple of months,
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because I still think when you watch big traders in the US,
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you watch people in the markets, they're still talking about a quick solution to
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this.
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Like I said, I don't know what the quick solution is.
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I think the Iranians right now are looking at themselves and saying, we now control
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20% of the world at right we are the
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The largest, you know, have the control of the large amount of oil in the world, more
21:09
than the US, more than Russia, more than anybody.
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We basically are making more money now than people in the past.
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Like it's $136 million a day they're making at the moment.
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And also, if we give in to these guys, we are probably going to die.
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You know, that's the answer to it.
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Right?
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And that's just the Iranians.
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The Chinese are looking at us and saying, the Americans are about to get into a new,
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what do you call this, you know, Vietnam.
21:32
Or New York, I don't know what you're going to think about it.
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Russians are saying to themselves, well, we basically have ended all the stuff.
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The Indians are saying to themselves, we listened to the Americans and cut off our
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Russian supply.
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And now we have, by some measures, maybe a month or so of reserves left over.
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And Europe and Africa and the whole world is readjusting.
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And quite frankly, Trump, I think, like I said, after the next couple of months, is
21:56
going to be virtually a lame duck.
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So that's another aspect to look at as well.
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Unfortunately, as David said, the people that are coming on the other side, the
22:07
Democrats, are probably going to win the next election.
22:09
Unfortunately, not really going to Mars, the place you want to be.
22:11
You want some centrist people.
22:12
You want some people that are going to come about and basically be in the middle.
22:15
And unfortunately, what's happened here is that people are just going to the bases.
22:18
And you're going to have some of the most left-wing communist people ever being
22:25
elected to Congress and to Senate.
22:27
And the people that are going to run for the US presidency from the left are not
22:30
the central people.
22:32
There are going to be people that are going to be much more left-wing than
22:35
you've ever had in the past.
22:37
There's a good article by David Brooks, who I don't know if anyone's read him.
22:44
I think he wrote it in The Atlantic.
22:45
He calls it, America needs what he calls a trimmer, someone in the middle, you know,
22:52
who listens to both sides and adjusts, can swing, doesn't matter, you know, but still
22:59
does it for the people, you know,
23:01
can.
23:03
He gave an example, and I'm trying to think in politics of where he, you know,
23:08
he, oh, he went all the way back to
23:10
James II, when William the Orange.
23:11
Oh, yes.
23:16
Exiled to France, and William of Orange was invited to be King of England.
23:21
This is in the late 1600s, I think.
23:23
You know your English history a lot.
23:25
No, I drifted off when you mentioned English history.
23:27
Actually, sorry, David.
23:29
I didn't like my history teacher.
23:30
But, I mean, he mentioned that the Duke of Halifax was in the middle.
23:36
He supported both sides, and they called him a trimmer.
23:41
And I think America needs someone like that who can come in the middle and bring
23:46
both sides together.
23:48
There's one point I must make.
23:51
America's got as much oil as it wants, it's got as much diesel as it wants, but
23:57
you pay the international price.
23:59
There's no shortage.
24:01
It's just that because that's what economics is about, that's what free
24:04
markets are.
24:06
Even though they're producing as much as they need and they've got as much power as
24:09
they need,
24:09
you pay a much higher price and that is going to have an effect.
24:13
Also, they're almost immune from the rest of the world because they're not an
24:19
exporting nation in terms of it.
24:21
You know, they can't survive.
24:23
That's one of the dangers of all of this is that you don't feel it in the streets
24:26
here.
24:26
You know, you're not going to feel it in the streets as much as you feel it in the
24:32
rest of the world.
24:34
And I'm particularly, I think Europe is very, very vulnerable, you know, for the
24:38
reasons that we've discussed here as well.
24:40
And emerging markets, particularly emerging Africa.
24:42
Okay.
24:43
I think those are the weak points of all of this.
24:46
OK, the question that I put to Viv and he sidestepped it, except right at the end
24:52
when he said there was a note of caution,
24:54
he said he'd bought a cherry or something.
24:56
David, what about you?
24:58
Are you still stoically for your portfolio?
25:02
It's well positioned and you think it might even not be war proof,
25:05
but more resilient to the war and the effect of the war,
25:12
the long term effects of the war than most other portfolios.
25:16
I think so.
25:17
You know, I'm very concentrated in the choices that we make.
25:22
And I'm not quite prepared to forfeit them at these kind of levels.
25:26
Also, you know, when you forfeit them and sell, you pay huge amounts of tax.
25:31
And then when you want to come in, you know, you'll end up coming in at perhaps
25:36
higher prices than you went out.
25:38
But I'm not buying anything at the moment and I'm not putting fresh money in.
25:40
I'm staying where we are at the moment, you know, just just watching how this
25:45
plays out.
25:47
Viv was right, I think, saying that I think what the market is doing at the
25:52
moment, it's pricing.
25:54
Or is this you, Lindsay, pricing in a quick end?
25:55
That's why prices are holding.
25:56
I think it just looks back at previous experiences with war and other
26:03
geopolitical events and even liberation days.
26:05
And they say, oh, it doesn't matter.
26:07
It's all going to blow over.
26:09
I just want to read you something that came up on LinkedIn today.
26:10
And it's via TikTok.
26:11
So it's two social media platforms.
26:16
coming together and it says this is from
26:19
Putin listen carefully Mr Trump hitting hard very Iran hitting Iran very hard
26:27
uh let me start it again sorry it's going very quickly listen carefully because this
26:34
message is direct you speak you speak about hitting Iran
26:36
hard you talk about destruction more bombs let me remind you of something important
26:40
History has seen many leaders who believed they could control the fire of war, and
26:46
every one of them learned the same lesson.
26:48
Fire spreads, Iran must surrender, you say Iran is finished,
26:51
but war in the Middle East is not a television show, and it's not a business
26:57
deal that can be won with threats.
26:59
If the US continues this reckless path, if Washington pushes the region closer to
27:03
chaos,
27:03
then do not be surprised when the consequences travel far beyond Iran.
27:08
Russia will not watch silently while other nations are threatened with destruction.
27:12
The world is already standing on the edge.
27:15
My advice is simple.
27:16
Stop speaking the language of bombs before the world answers back in the language of
27:21
war.
27:21
Because once that door opens, no president, no army and no superpower will
27:27
easily close it again.
27:29
Now remember that, Mr.
27:31
Trump.
27:33
And that is supposed to be what Putin said in the last 24 hours.
27:35
whether it's been...
27:36
claimed by him or not, whether it's true, I don't know.
27:39
I was thinking about a pot and kettle here, you know what I mean?
27:42
Yeah.
27:46
But it's very interesting that Donald Trump is the only person in the world that
27:53
can make you like Putin and make you think, oh, Mr.
27:55
Putin's actually right this time.
27:57
It's extraordinary.
27:59
I doubt whether he would have said anything like that.
28:01
No, I doubt it as well.
28:03
Who went on to Ukraine and who's battling at the moment, losing thousands of
28:05
soldiers a day.
28:07
but there was a lot of sense in whoever said that he's got yeah yeah but anyway i
28:13
i don't think he's got the energy to to
28:15
divert his attention elsewhere he's still trying to beat over ukraine which is now
28:21
four years old yes it
28:23
is four years and uh one and a half months actually it's horrible let's
28:25
have a look at the markets now the dollar around is 1704 that didn't last long did
28:31
it uh british pound against the round
28:33
2276 euro around 1968 euro dollar 115 50 the gold price This is weird.
28:38
It doesn't respond to it.
28:40
It responds in completely the opposite way that it should do.
28:44
In other words, geopolitical tension rises, i.e.
28:47
the war against Iran.
28:50
It should be rising.
28:51
But because the dollar rises, the dollar is now the recipient of safe haven funds,
28:58
and therefore the gold price goes down.
29:00
So gold is 44.50, down 1.2%.
29:02
Platinum, down another 4% now at 18%.
29:07
David, you were calling this three, four weeks ago.
29:10
Palladium, 1367, down
29:13
4.6%. Let's have a look at the all-important oil price and a couple of
29:18
other things as well.
29:20
Brent crude oil spot price, 107.78.
29:23
You'll see the market is in what's called a backwardation.
29:26
In other words, the spot price is higher than the futures price.
29:30
So if you look at your futures price on a site like investing.com, It's something
29:36
like $101.
29:38
But the actual spot price, if you want to buy oil now, it's close to $108 a barrel.
29:42
West Texas crude, $94.31.
29:44
That's 4.4% higher.
29:46
Brent incident is up 5.5%.
29:48
Natural gas prices up 2%.
29:50
Gasoline, $3.13 a gallon, up nearly 4%.
29:54
Heating oil up 6.5%.
29:56
Copper price down 0.8%, $5.48.
30:00
South African 10-year bond yield after the Reserve Bank today.
30:03
Lefty rates unchanged, 8.99%, which is also unchanged on the day.
30:08
U.S.
30:09
10-year, 4.39%.
30:12
Recent high about 4.45%.
30:14
S&P 500 futures down 0.7%, 65.94% for the June futures.
30:21
And the Bitcoin price doesn't know whether it likes war or doesn't like war.
30:25
It's 69,046, which is down 2.5%.
30:30
David, have you been looking at the JSC today or have you been worrying about
30:34
other things?
30:36
Have you seen any shares moving up or down that surprised you or didn't surprise you?
30:42
Well,
30:44
what's interesting is that exactly what we said when we were talking about who would
30:50
be
30:51
the best place to be would be in like ShopRite or Boxer.
30:55
or pick and pay at the bottom end of the grocery market or in the grocery market
31:01
rather than in clothing.
31:03
So on the top end, you've got ShopRite and Boxer.
31:06
On the bottom end, you've got Mr.
31:07
Price and TrueWorths and retailers like that who I think are going to clothing
31:14
retailers who are likely to suffer more
31:16
than perhaps the grocers.
31:18
So just a quick observation.
31:22
But the JSC was down just one and a quarter percent, which I thought held up
31:29
better than, you know,
31:31
I would have expected more of a sell-off.
31:31
But it's widespread right across the board.
31:34
Everything's down.
31:35
Volume's still quite good for Lindsay.
31:37
We're seeing $28 billion.
31:39
trade there.
31:40
But there's a lot of speculation on a day-to-day basis.
31:44
And naturally, with that gold price not performing, I think it's done.
31:52
It's more likely to be $3,000 than it is going to be $5,000 or $5,500, any new
31:58
highs.
31:59
Same with platinum.
32:00
I think once the speculators get hurt, they don't come back quickly.
32:04
And also, they've got to lick their wounds.
32:06
caught by a modern...
32:07
You're quite right, yeah.
32:09
It's a psychological thing now.
32:10
Once you've lost once, you don't go straight back in there.
32:13
Once bitten, twice shy, I think the phrase is.
32:16
On the board on the day, we've got ShopRite up three and three quarters
32:20
percent, Boxer up 3.3,
32:22
Tungela is either up or it's down this thing, depending on Mr.
32:24
Trump.
32:25
2.4 percent higher, Sassel up nearly 2 percent, 219 rand and 50 cents per share.
32:31
Mr.
32:31
Price down 3.7, Anglo-American down three and a third, Valtteri, 3.2% in the red,
32:38
Impala Platinum,
32:40
same thing.
32:42
And Nusper is coming in with a 2.9% loss.
32:44
Viv, if you were a social media tech company,
32:45
if you were a Google or a Meta or even YouTube, would you be worried about what
32:52
happened yesterday,
32:54
that ruling in Los Angeles?
32:56
Yes, I would.
32:58
I mean, remember, there's been cases in the past.
32:58
I mean, remember the Tuffington Power case for Johnson & Johnson.
33:02
You can recall the Because the breast implant cases as well back in the day,
33:08
especially mental health,
33:10
it's going to be very hard to prove things.
33:12
And in those cases, the talcum powder case and the breast implant cases, the science
33:16
was quite weak in terms of proving causation.
33:18
And yeah, I mean, how are you going to prove causation in terms of why are you
33:21
depressed?
33:21
It's a social media.
33:23
How can you be certain that the social media caused your depression?
33:26
But I do think that, first of all, these guys are unliked.
33:29
And so they are likely to face some kind of thing.
33:31
You saw Elon Musk, for instance, recently lose the case.
33:33
uh for the twitter you know acquisition where there's two billion dollars there i
33:40
think that uh they went against him for um again i think
33:42
it's basically a case where you're unpopular you're not going to get too much
33:47
support for the public uh and therefore you probably face a lot of
33:49
these kind of cases coming forward and jury cases are going to rule against the
33:54
rich guy in favor of the poor young support person that you can
33:56
say was harmed by this thing so yeah i do think it's going to be an issue um and you
34:01
know if you call back i mean people have mentioned the tobacco
34:03
cases I think that's the kind of stuff that you might find happening here as
34:04
well,
34:04
especially as these companies become more and more powerful with AI in the future.
34:09
Thank you very much for that, gentlemen.
34:11
Thank you very much.
34:12
We went around the houses today, didn't we?
34:15
We had fake TikTok Putin speeches.
34:18
We've had doom and gloom.
34:20
We've had electric cars and everything.
34:23
It's really interesting.
34:25
And I think a lot of the things that we've said today are going to come to.
34:29
to fruition in in other words this is not going to be a quick in and out like
34:36
venezuela it is going to become protracted just a
34:38
question of who who cleans up the mess and how the how the markets react but i i
34:43
firmly believe that there's there's
34:45
more to come it's there's there's too much sanguine behavior from the really big
34:50
players like blackrock with 14
34:52
trillion and i saw an interview with one of actually
34:53
the ceo of blackrock yesterday and he almost said if it continues
34:58
then our policy changes completely.
35:00
So anyway, we'll find out.
35:02
Thank you very much again.
35:03
Viv Govendous from Ranswiss.
35:05
David Shapirius from Sasson Securities.
35:07
And that was the 5 o'clock shadow.
35:09
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