Latest / Strictly Business / Shapiroworld by Strictly Business
Transcript
- 0:00You're listening to Strictly Business Podcast with Lindsay Williams.
- 0:05It's Monday, so it's time for Shapiro World with David Shapiro from SAS for
- 0:09Insecurities,
- 0:11and he's back on terra firma in Johannesburg.
- 0:13David, you've got a long trip to the United States.
- 0:16Just quickly sum up the mood there, if you would.
- 0:18We've done it a couple of times, but now you're back and you can look back.
- 0:22How do you feel about it?
- 0:23How do people feel about it?
- 0:26It's all politics.
- 0:27and it's so...
- 0:29When I say dynamic, I'm talking about, you know, there's so many different subjects
- 0:36that you have to discuss.
- 0:38I'm trying to summarize it in my head.
- 0:41People are turning to the right.
- 0:42There's no doubt that business now is significantly behind Trump.
- 0:48And I think you can understand why when you see the market up again today.
- 0:52They're making money.
- 0:53There are lots of deals taking place.
- 0:55Not so much pressure on regulation.
- 0:57so I think business has turned quiet.
- 1:00No one's willing to go at him if he does criticize them.
- 1:04So they tend to support whatever he does, you know, at a time where you need people
- 1:11to speak up,
- 1:13certainly against his attack on the constitution and, you know, weaponizing.
- 1:16I like that word.
- 1:17It's used a lot, you know, the judiciary and to all the state institutions, you
- 1:23know,
- 1:24particularly against his old neighbor.
- 1:25I mean, his old adversaries or even sometimes past supporters like Bolton.
- 1:30But I think that… And Comey.
- 1:33Comey and Bolton are the ones that he's got in his sights at the moment, aren't
- 1:37they?
- 1:38Yeah.
- 1:39So that kind of attitude, you know, you went for me, I'm going for you.
- 1:42And they try and find… He influences the institutions to take action against them.
- 1:48So, yeah, there's a lot to, you know, look into.
- 1:51But on the other hand, you've got the Democrats that are going nowhere.
- 1:55They've got no leader.
- 1:57They've got absolutely no leadership at all.
- 2:00So where I had the conversations in Boston,
- 2:04there's certainly a swing towards from center-left to center-right.
- 2:10I don't want to even call these people left, although Boston is a lot more left
- 2:14than New York.
- 2:16So you've got the markets moving.
- 2:18The economy is still a little slow.
- 2:23you know, needs interest rate cuts and everything.
- 2:25But politically, I think wokeism is dying.
- 2:29You know, no one focuses it.
- 2:30No one cares what you call them anymore.
- 2:33The thems and the that's and the those and, you know, all that nonsense.
- 2:37I think it's past its prime.
- 2:41But a lot of stories.
- 2:42But in New York, it's very interesting.
- 2:45You know, with Mondani now in the lead for the mayoral election.
- 2:50And this is a big story.
- 2:51You know, he's...
- 2:55What I find about New York is it's a rich city.
- 2:58Now, New York has always been a capitalist city.
- 3:01From the time that the Dutch bought it from the tribes, the Indian tribes, I
- 3:08don't know what they,
- 3:10you know, maybe for a bottle top or whatever they used to buy it.
- 3:12I mean, they bought it for nothing, which is today Manhattan.
- 3:15New York has always been unapologetically capitalistic.
- 3:20Yeah.
- 3:20And that's what it is.
- 3:21It's a rich city.
- 3:22And the concern is that this Mondami is, I don't know what definition they use for
- 3:28socialism.
- 3:30You know, he's left, but all his policies are very
- 3:341960s socialist type policies.
- 3:36You know, look after the people, the downtrodden people who have been ignored
- 3:42and, you know,
- 3:44give them free education.
- 3:44Well, they do get free education, you know, but help them with free rides,
- 3:50with free groceries.
- 3:52You know, everything, all those socialistic policies that you've heard
- 3:56from the left before.
- 3:58The problem is that you do that, the taxpayers have to pay and they leave as
- 4:02they did during COVID.
- 4:04So there's a big outcry.
- 4:06You know, you don't want to bring, you don't want to.
- 4:06If there's an outcry, then don't vote for him.
- 4:07I mean, who's voting for him?
- 4:10The people that are going to get the free groceries.
- 4:12Yes, yes, yes, yes.
- 4:14That's exactly, you know, which is the Bronx and Queens areas, you know, Brooklyn
- 4:20areas of.
- 4:22Generally, lower income earners.
- 4:24So I watched it with great interest.
- 4:28But the big worry, and you've seen it in Joburg.
- 4:33You've seen it in Johannesburg.
- 4:34Joburg was a rich city.
- 4:36It was where industry took place here.
- 4:39This was the golden city.
- 4:41And you've seen what the ANC have done to it now.
- 4:43It's a poor city.
- 4:45It's falling apart.
- 4:47And the problem is when you start to turn the parks into...
- 4:50Either squatter camps, I don't think that's a politically correct word anymore,
- 4:56homeless camps or whatever you call them.
- 4:58But you're allowed to say anything you like.
- 5:00You just said so.
- 5:02Work is dead.
- 5:04No, what I'm trying to say is, you know, everybody puts nice words around these,
- 5:06but they're nothing more than, you know,
- 5:08squatter camps.
- 5:10No electricity, no sewerage, nothing.
- 5:11They just spring up with and it's a shame.
- 5:14You know, it's an absolute shame.
- 5:16But they convert green areas, growing areas, you know, and given the property,
- 5:22they'll just squat anywhere.
- 5:24And you see it all over Joburg wherever you go.
- 5:26You know, you run through parks, which might not be Give me an example because I
- 5:32haven't been to Johannesburg for
- 5:34ages and starting that sort of zoo lake area.
- 5:35Yes.
- 5:37Is that being used now as, let's call it temporary shelters?
- 5:43You'll find vagrants there sleeping.
- 5:46You know, many of the parks that I run through in the morning, you find vagrants
- 5:53sometimes in the gutters or the sluice,
- 5:55whatever you call them, the streams, you know.
- 5:57So there's plenty of people around here.
- 5:58I don't know.
- 5:58There's a park that I run through in Melrose, just off Turret Avenue.
- 6:03and that you know it's not It's not fenced in, it's not, but you'll find, and they're
- 6:10harmless people.
- 6:12I don't think they're necessarily going to attack you, but you don't know.
- 6:14You know, certainly there's a lot of crime around this area that I'm in now,
- 6:21simply because there's a big park which is monitored, which is guarded, but a lot of
- 6:28people go there,
- 6:30so they prey on the people going there.
- 6:32You know, it's...
- 6:34There's a lot of green around where I am,
- 6:36and you do find a lot of vagrants or homeless people sleeping there.
- 6:42But anyway, we've gone from the mood in the United States to harmless homeless
- 6:48vagrants in Johannesburg.
- 6:50I'm saying that if you don't regulate these things, in other words,
- 6:59if you… If you take away its richness, in other words, when you start to lower the
- 7:04bar,
- 7:05then the city starts to deteriorate.
- 7:07You know, it can come like a Detroit.
- 7:09You've seen it in many other large cities.
- 7:13I asked a chap in the same business as you, but just in a different form.
- 7:18He lives in Manhattan.
- 7:19And I said to him, what do you think about
- 7:24Trump? What do people that you speak to think about Trump?
- 7:28And he says they don't give up, you know what, as long as they're making money.
- 7:33They don't care in New York.
- 7:35That is what New York is all about.
- 7:37And that's what I've learned since I've lived here.
- 7:39And you're more or less saying the same thing.
- 7:41I'm saying the same.
- 7:42They carry on.
- 7:44But what they don't want is, you know, they don't want it to become,
- 7:50they don't want it to become poorer.
- 7:53They like it rich.
- 7:54You know what I mean?
- 7:55They like to have it rich.
- 7:56You know, they put up buildings, they put up new housing,
- 8:03the upper west, or sorry, the midtown is a better way.
- 8:08I would say from the 20s to the 40s, those are the streets, which has always been
- 8:13business.
- 8:13They're turning a lot of the office areas now into housing or into flats, into
- 8:20apartments and that.
- 8:22And demand is increasing.
- 8:22It's very difficult to get rentals now in Manhattan.
- 8:26So it does attract or it's re-attracting, if that's a word, because a lot of people
- 8:32left it COVID,
- 8:34quite a few people coming back in.
- 8:35So I spoke to a developer.
- 8:37Well, he's more a builder.
- 8:41He does renovations within the buildings and so on.
- 8:44He doesn't build anything new, but he'll come and do your kitchen or do your
- 8:50bathroom and things like that.
- 8:52He says he's never been so busy in his life.
- 8:53He's been incredibly busy.
- 8:55Here is a man.
- 8:56who came from Eastern Europe, and I think from Kosovo or somewhere around there.
- 9:04And he's done incredibly well working hard during the last 20-odd years,
- 9:09to a point where he's built an hour out of New York.
- 9:14He's built this fabulous home.
- 9:16He'll tell you that his kids don't do anything.
- 9:17He can't get them to work.
- 9:19But he worked like anything.
- 9:20But he's very, very busy.
- 9:23And you get your guidance from him how busy he is.
- 9:26and what he's doing, and he's telling us all the renovations he's doing.
- 9:29So things are happening, but you don't want this to go down.
- 9:33You know, you don't want to introduce socialistic policies and that and kind of
- 9:40degrade the city.
- 9:42So I think there's I might be exaggerating.
- 9:44You know, I might be kind of over the top,
- 9:48but you want to maintain Broadway.
- 9:51You want to maintain those areas.
- 9:53You know, at a high level, restaurants that people can go into restaurants, don't
- 9:58feel threatened.
- 10:00Remember New York in the 70s, how before Giuliana came in?
- 10:02It was a no-go zone.
- 10:04Yes, you don't want her to return to that.
- 10:08And that's a worry if you lose control or administration over the city.
- 10:15Right.
- 10:15So the other thing is, the other story, I mean, we're going on here, sorry,
- 10:21but the other story is
- 10:24I was asked by a friend to buy an Apple Watch.
- 10:31Where did you go, Fifth Avenue?
- 10:33And the reason is because...
- 10:36an Apple Watch here, the 17 Pro can cost you about R29,000, R30,000.
- 10:42Whereas in New York, the conversion is R21, which is the lower level here in
- 10:48Joburg.
- 10:49So this friend said, well, can you buy me that?
- 10:52You know, I was going to buy the 17, but for the same price, I can buy the upper
- 10:58one, you know, the better model.
- 11:00So I said, fine, you know, I'll go look around.
- 11:01In total, it comes to about a little under.
- 11:04$1,200.
- 11:05You can do your own conversion at $1,726, whatever it is.
- 11:09But anyway, that's not the story.
- 11:11The story is there are four big Apple stores in Manhattan.
- 11:17There's one about three blocks from where I stay and another one across the park,
- 11:24which is about a 15 to 20-minute walk away,
- 11:26not even.
- 11:28So I go in there, and this is the 17 Pro, which has just been released.
- 11:30I say there are three colors, blue, silver, they're all metallic and like an
- 11:37orangey color.
- 11:39So, you know, the gentlemen, they're very jacked up there because as you come in,
- 11:42they're ready to serve you and you don't have to go to a counter.
- 11:44Everything is done, you know, at the desk, wherever you are.
- 11:48They process the invoices, we pay, package, whatever.
- 11:52So he says, sorry, we're out of the two.
- 11:55I can give you the metallic orange or something like this.
- 11:58So I'm not sure.
- 12:00I was asked to get a blue one.
- 12:01I go back.
- 12:02And it's overnight, so I have to wait until the next morning, come back.
- 12:05Sorry, we're out of all of them.
- 12:07No more 250s, gone.
- 12:09But you can go to Fifth Avenue.
- 12:13Yes, at the top, that store which is underground.
- 12:17You go in the glass dome and then go underneath.
- 12:19That's the one I went to, yeah.
- 12:22Yeah, so I go there.
- 12:24I cross town, first of all.
- 12:26So I cross town, they go there, and someone greets me, and I said, okay.
- 12:31Um, you know, okay, I'm looking for a blue, sorry, we're out.
- 12:37I said, but they just said you've got, he says, look downstairs, look.
- 12:41Lindsay, I promise you there were four to 500 people in the store.
- 12:46Admittedly, it was a long weekend.
- 12:48And I said, is it all, you know, is this because of the long weekend?
- 12:51He said, no, it's always like this.
- 12:54So when I said, you know, where's the blue ones?
- 12:56This is gone.
- 12:56I said, why?
- 12:57Have a look.
- 12:59There were.
- 13:00Out of the silver, I had to take the orange.
- 13:03I just took one.
- 13:04But this thing has been out for over a month now, hasn't it?
- 13:07You cannot believe, you cannot believe the demand.
- 13:11And I was the oldest by probably 40 years.
- 13:16Youngsters, but packed, packed, packed.
- 13:20You know, I try to count, so I counted all the desks and how many people were around
- 13:25the desk.
- 13:27But I promise you, I estimate anywhere between 400 to 500 kids.
- 13:30or young people in the store.
- 13:33And I've just seen that Apple sales of this watch are up about 14% on the 16,
- 13:39this is the 17.
- 13:41But it's just something to behold, you know.
- 13:44And they handle all of them.
- 13:45You know, people are there, boy, they've got plenty of assistance.
- 13:49You know, I came out with it within 10, 15 minutes of the call.
- 13:52Maybe they should get more phones and less assistance.
- 13:55I mean, yeah.
- 13:57It's unbelievable what you just said.
- 14:00I suppose it will calm down.
- 14:01But then you're going into the Christmas period, and of course that won't… Yeah,
- 14:07yeah.
- 14:09That's exactly what they were saying.
- 14:09You know, just wait until you're going to get Black Friday coming up in November.
- 14:15You're also going into November, which is now they've brought Christmas forward.
- 14:20It becomes a very, very busy shopping time.
- 14:24I was also there.
- 14:25The other thing which is quite astonishing is just, you just see these little
- 14:31tricycles.
- 14:33Well, they're a little more complicated than a tricycle, but they're specially
- 14:34built for Apple.
- 14:36The whole day you've got these Apple, you know, delivering packages to the buildings
- 14:41in New York.
- 14:43And as I've said, I think before on the show, that our building had to introduce a
- 14:48new packaging system,
- 14:50you know, that scans and then tells you.
- 14:53sends a notice to your email that there's a package for you.
- 14:56But they're piled, and I'm a small building, relatively speaking, in New
- 15:01York.
- 15:01It's only 26 stories, and it's not, you know,
- 15:05but the number of packages that come in on a day-to-day basis from UPS, from all
- 15:12over,
- 15:12and super efficient.
- 15:14You know, whatever you order.
- 15:17is delivered within a day or so, maximum.
- 15:21You see the dynamics, how they've changed.
- 15:24And then you've got the groceries that come, anything that you want.
- 15:28The result is that there's a lot of retail space that has opened up,
- 15:32a lot of retail space as people have shifted
- 15:39towards e-commerce.
- 15:41uh especially on the upper width what you're saying is what you're saying is is
- 15:48is that the place is booming i mean okay there's a lot of tourists there
- 15:50that are doing it but um yeah i'm just looking now if you've maybe got the train
- 15:55down to birmingham alabama
- 15:57alabama they've got stock of the of the iphone pro iphone
- 16:0017 pro i've just had a look so you got what you got to do david is get a train
- 16:07down south to
- 16:09i mean to obviously across the whole country No,
- 16:13my daughter told me.
- 16:14She says, you're so dumb.
- 16:15Here we go.
- 16:15Yeah, go on.
- 16:16She says, you're so dumb.
- 16:18She says, you order it online.
- 16:20Exactly.
- 16:20And you go and collect it.
- 16:23That's why you haven't got it, because people have ordered it online.
- 16:27Exactly.
- 16:28And they take priority, unfortunately.
- 16:30You walking in, you're a second-class citizen.
- 16:32It's the online orders, David.
- 16:36Can we talk about markets, please?
- 16:37We had a wobble.
- 16:38Yeah.
- 16:39We had a wobble.
- 16:39The gold price went to $4,391.
- 16:42It went down to $4,251.
- 16:45That's nearly a $150 swing.
- 16:47It's shooting back up again today, up nearly
- 16:502%. But there's these constant wobbles and people talking about an asset class called
- 16:56private credit,
- 16:58which has caused a couple of large-ish companies to go under
- 17:03in recent weeks.
- 17:06I don't know, what's the next wobble going to be?
- 17:09And will the next wobble be the one that doesn't recover quickly?
- 17:13You know, the headlines are all around wobbles.
- 17:18And there's virtually every major newspaper calling for,
- 17:26warning, sorry, warning about, and that included, what's her name, Gita
- 17:32Gopinath, if that's right.
- 17:35Yes, the World Economic Forum. I've been reading some of this stuff.
- 17:41No, no, she's the IMF.
- 17:41That's the same thing.
- 17:42I think deputy chief, CEO, I don't know what her exact title is, but she's number
- 17:48two there.
- 17:50And she wrote an article in The Economist, you know,
- 17:52warning that this could be a $35 trillion bubble simply because so many foreigners
- 17:58now own
- 18:00U.S. equities.
- 18:01And that's the reason is that their economies don't hold much hope.
- 18:05No, there's not much opportunity within their economy, so they shift to the United
- 18:09States.
- 18:11So, you know, in her world, she's concerned.
- 18:14But, you know, yeah, I have to take heed of the warnings and I'll watch very, very
- 18:20carefully.
- 18:22And yet today, you know, NASDAQ up another 1%.
- 18:24Results are coming out very positive.
- 18:26When you talk to the companies, The building of the infrastructure continues,
- 18:33the development of faster, better chips continues.
- 18:37All of those things are not stopping in any kind of way at all.
- 18:42And so I think there's, you know, how when that does come to an end,
- 18:49we're not quite sure, or whether it does come to an end.
- 18:52But certainly the media are, you know, are certainly pumping that side of it.
- 18:59It's, Lindsay, you've got to be, you never say never, and you don't want to be
- 19:05arrogant, and nobody wants to be in that position.
- 19:07And you always have to remain vigilant, and you've always got to remain on your
- 19:10toes.
- 19:11That's the market.
- 19:12It doesn't matter what you're trading in.
- 19:13You've been in markets, you know.
- 19:15You can't go back and say, no, I'll worry about this in a month's time or two
- 19:19months' time.
- 19:21So we're very conscious of every...
- 19:23every day of what it means comes out.
- 19:24The AI stocks have been very resilient.
- 19:26I watched the pricing video and it stays in the 180s no matter whether Trump's
- 19:31putting 100%
- 19:33tariff on China across the board, whether people are protesting.
- 19:38They said 7 million.
- 19:39Some other people said 2 to 3 million on the No Kings March.
- 19:44It doesn't matter.
- 19:44You can have as much social unrest as you like.
- 19:47And as many tariffs on China as you like, it's all absorbed by the companies that
- 19:54are importing the stuff.
- 19:56That's been proven already.
- 19:58Whether they can continue to do so, I don't know.
- 19:59But these things are going up because people know it's the future.
- 20:03OK, they're overvalued and they need to come back 10%, 15%, I would say.
- 20:08If you ascribe old valuation techniques like P-E ratios, David,
- 20:15that's what you were brought up on, wasn't it?
- 20:17I bet your father would turn in his grave if he saw his son invested in something
- 20:23that's got something
- 20:25like a what is Ford PE and video?
- 20:27Do you know?
- 20:29Look, if you go one or two years forward, it's not that.
- 20:34I mean, it's not ridiculous.
- 20:39We don't know what the I'm going to look for you now as we talk.
- 20:43I'm going on to fact test.
- 20:45And if I look at the Ford PE one year out on NVIDIA,
- 20:50if my internet would work a little faster here.
- 20:53Yeah, you are.
- 20:54So the PE on NVIDIA two years Ford is 29.
- 20:58That's not bad.
- 21:00One year Ford is 40, yeah.
- 21:01It's the same as Capitech, for example.
- 21:05Yeah, it's not ridiculous.
- 21:07If you go to Microsoft or Alphabet in the 25, so these are not hundreds.
- 21:13You know, they're not ridiculous.
- 21:14If you go to something like Palantir or something like that, that's ridiculous.
- 21:18You know, that's 600% or, you know, whatever it is.
- 21:22So, yes, the PEs are high, but the growth rates are around there.
- 21:28I reckon when we talk about...
- 21:30the bubble bursting, I would look for a 5% to 10% correction.
- 21:37Something like that is due relative to where we've been.
- 21:41And I don't think we'd be uncomfortable if we saw something like that happening.
- 21:46You want to get rid of those peripheral traders,
- 21:52all those people who have been over-speculating.
- 21:55You need to flush them out every now and again.
- 21:58So, um...
- 22:00It's, you know, I'm not saying it's going to happen.
- 22:02What might happen is that earnings catch up with PEs and, you know, nothing happens
- 22:08in the market.
- 22:10Earnings grow nicely, but the market price does nothing.
- 22:12That's also a way of correcting the market.
- 22:15But this, you know, you never want to say never.
- 22:19It's not going to happen this time.
- 22:20It's different.
- 22:21That's nonsense.
- 22:22You've got to remain vigilant and you've got to be aware of what is happening, what
- 22:27the news is.
- 22:29You've got to look at results.
- 22:31carefully you've got to look through them not through rose-tinted glasses you've got
- 22:36to look realistically you know through through what is
- 22:38happening so um yeah but for the meantime we got another good day on wall street
- 22:43today
- 22:43that's another good day everywhere gold price as i said so look at the bond market
- 22:50look at the south african 10-year david yeah the the 52-week
- 22:52range on this thing is a high of 11.27%.
- 22:56It went to something like 11.07% after Liberation Day.
- 23:00And it is now 8.90, 8.9015%.
- 23:05So let's call it 8.90.
- 23:06So let's go from 11 to 8.90.
- 23:09What's that?
- 23:10That's 210 basis points.
- 23:12It's a massive, massive move for the bond market.
- 23:15Normally, conservative bonds have been tracking equities in terms of performance
- 23:22in some cases.
- 23:24Everything's going up.
- 23:26Our market's dangerous, huh?
- 23:28The JSC is dangerous in the sense that if you look at what happened today,
- 23:33platinum price down nearly 8%, you know, palladium price 9.5% lower.
- 23:40I don't know what the news around that is.
- 23:41Not at all.
- 23:42That's been going down.
- 23:43Because, you know, we've seen the silver price come back.
- 23:46Gold is holding at 4, I don't know where you've got it, what's it, 4,000?
- 23:52I've got on my CRB index, I've got it at, where's gold?
- 23:53$4,327 up 1.3%,
- 23:59$77.
- 24:01And the high was $43.91 on Friday, or Thursday or Friday, whenever it was.
- 24:07And that's when it came crashing down again.
- 24:09So it had a big reversal day.
- 24:11But goodness me, it's just...
- 24:14For me, I can't get to the bottom of what's driving gold.
- 24:18You can give me all the excuses.
- 24:20It's not inflation.
- 24:22It's not any of those kind of things.
- 24:25Lindsay, what's also interesting, and if we go back,
- 24:31because I'm trying to look at gold's performance and saying, why is it doing
- 24:36what it's doing now?
- 24:38If we go back or all the way back to, remember, the Thai baht and long-term
- 24:43capital,
- 24:45all those crises that we had that started there.
- 24:47Remember that we had the internet bubble, then we had various wars, and then we had
- 24:5307, 09,
- 24:55the financial crisis.
- 24:57We've had banking crises, European banking crises, all of those.
- 25:00And in every one of those instances, gold at best was up maybe 30%,
- 25:07something, you know, then came back or something.
- 25:10It's nowhere near doubling that we've seen in 2025.
- 25:15You know, so the 2025 doubling has kind of distorted
- 25:19the long-term returns because you've got everybody saying yeah you know gold has
- 25:26outperformed this but take
- 25:28away this doubling it it's been a long time coming
- 25:31Whether this can continue is very difficult because you can't get to the
- 25:38bottom of why gold price is going up like
- 25:40this.
- 25:42And Lindsay, I'm no chartist.
- 25:44I like to look at charts, but I don't draw lines and try and read various curves and
- 25:47all the definitions
- 25:49that you can use.
- 25:51I can give you a whole string of ways to look at charts,
- 25:52but I don't understand any of them other than the direction.
- 25:57But if you look at gold shares like Angus, gold and goldfields, I mean, they look
- 26:04scary.
- 26:04They look seriously scary.
- 26:05The gold price itself looks scary.
- 26:07It's almost a straight line.
- 26:09It's like a musk rocket.
- 26:11What are you talking about, sir, the white metals doing so badly, David?
- 26:17I don't know.
- 26:18I've got platinum up on the day.
- 26:20Which day are you looking at?
- 26:21Are you looking at Friday or are you looking at today?
- 26:23I think you've got some.
- 26:25Either your screen's wrong or my screen's wrong.
- 26:27Because platinum's up on the day-to-day.
- 26:31Yeah, you know, it happens.
- 26:32The one thing about FactSet that we use, their commodity pricing is terrible.
- 26:37And that's why whenever we used to talk, I'd say, Lindsay, you tell me, because you
- 26:43watch it, you've got a much better feel for it here.
- 26:45I don't know whether they haven't got the right licenses or whatever it is, but I
- 26:49never get the right prices.
- 26:51If I do, I have to go into Bloomberg's, you know, I go onto my phone.
- 26:53Look up the Bloomberg's app and get a much better feel for what's happening in
- 26:58platinum.
- 26:58Yeah, you have to.
- 26:59For the miners.
- 27:00That hasn't happened.
- 27:01What you just said, they're actually, platinum's up and palladium's just
- 27:07slightly weaker.
- 27:09So I think you're being given duff information there.
- 27:12Anyway.
- 27:13It doesn't work.
- 27:13You know, that's why I say I have to, the one thing that we can't get right on this,
- 27:18you know,
- 27:18where I fall behind and don't get the right price.
- 27:21So I've got to use my app, my Bloomberg's app, to find the right, you know, when it
- 27:27comes to pricing commodities and that.
- 27:29Okay.
- 27:31So nothing's changed, David.
- 27:33We've had a tiny wobble again on Friday, and then we're back up again.
- 27:35So it's all systems go.
- 27:37And I don't know how many times we've said it, just stick with what you've got.
- 27:39If you've got it and you like it, then stay with it.
- 27:42That is the only thing I would say.
- 27:44I've looked, you know, I try to do that all the time.
- 27:49You know what I mean?
- 27:50I try generally to say, okay, where should I go?
- 27:56What should we do?
- 27:57Where should we be?
- 27:58Is there anything that I should be going?
- 28:00And the more I look at Europe, the more I'm turned away.
- 28:04They can't get their act right.
- 28:09There's nothing to get excited about apart from, you know,
- 28:13I always say the Netherlands is the only place where there's some really dynamic
- 28:18businesses taking place.
- 28:20Give or take something else in the rest of Europe, maybe one or two businesses.
- 28:24UK, I don't know.
- 28:25If it wasn't for the Premier League, I don't know what would hold the country
- 28:28together.
- 28:31So it's a difficult place to be.
- 28:35And China, growth, he's battling along there.
- 28:39Retail sales were down, investments falling.
- 28:43Growth, what's it, 4.7?
- 28:45I don't know how they manufacture that, whatever.
- 28:48emerging markets, you don't want to be there.
- 28:52And South Africa is vulnerable because take away what gold shares have done, take
- 28:57away what
- 28:58NASPERS process, which is more 10 cent, and take away, there's a few gold shares
- 29:04and a few platinum shares.
- 29:06The rest of the market is tricky,
- 29:07although I see the weight of money is probably pushing into our market.
- 29:13I don't find it appealing in any way at all.
- 29:17Okay, well, we'll continue our chats on a Monday, David,
- 29:22and we'll continue to say the same thing.
- 29:26I'm glad you're back in Johannesburg, in a way.
- 29:29How did you feel when you landed?
- 29:31Last question, how did you feel when you landed at whatever the airport's called
- 29:36now?
- 29:36Oliver Tambo, isn't it?
- 29:37Yes.
- 29:38To be honest, you know what it is?
- 29:43We've got these...
- 29:43um You know, we've got these WhatsApp groups around our area.
- 29:50Now, I'm at the Wanderers.
- 29:51I stay in a nice little apartment here.
- 29:54But it's a so-called wealthy area.
- 29:56It's Melrose, Elova, Birdhaven, all of that.
- 30:01Lindsay, I say this to you because you're not going to appreciate this.
- 30:06When I left about a month ago to go to America,
- 30:11the electricity was out here for four days.
- 30:14People had to… take away they had to take anything that was in their deep freeze and
- 30:20chuck it away
- 30:22because it had all melted you know the
- 30:23it's starting to rot huge amounts and uh you know we gave an instruction to the
- 30:30lady works for us
- 30:32just to just to give it away.
- 30:34But the point is that every week since then, there's been further crises with
- 30:40electricity.
- 30:42But that's a local substation, right?
- 30:43It's not an Eskom load shedding problem, right?
- 30:45Yes.
- 30:46It's not even load shedding.
- 30:48It falls apart where the repairs can take anywhere up to six to nine hours.
- 30:53Yes.
- 30:54Now, it's not load shedding.
- 30:56So load shedding, you'd go out for two hours, three hours.
- 30:59Here you go out.
- 31:00you know, until they repair it.
- 31:02But it affects major areas.
- 31:04It affects businesses within the area.
- 31:07Then you've got the biggest problem of all is the water, which is an absolute
- 31:13calamity.
- 31:15The water system here is completely collapsing.
- 31:17Every day there are pipes being burst, people out of water, and you just hear the
- 31:24moans and groans of saying,
- 31:26yeah, you know, posting, and that's Jobo.
- 31:30It's really deteriorating.
- 31:32That's what I'm saying when a rich city becomes a poor city.
- 31:35Yes.
- 31:36And that's why when I come back I say, am I really in the mood to handle all of
- 31:42this?
- 31:43I can't just brush it aside, just say no.
- 31:45There's no one you can talk to, that's the other thing.
- 31:48We've got to stop now, but there's no one you can talk to.
- 31:51It's not like talking to your Apple person and them telling you to, well, it wasn't
- 31:57them, it was your daughter.
- 31:59or your granddaughter or whatever, telling you to order it online.
- 32:01No one's got the answer because there isn't an answer.
- 32:03There's no way you can stop these rotting pipes that have been there for a long time
- 32:08and need replacing.
- 32:10Anyway, we're moaning away here.
- 32:11David, thank you very much.
- 32:12There you are.
- 32:13Thank you very much.
- 32:14You asked me.
- 32:14I said that's the one thing.
- 32:15I want to know.
- 32:17It's just sad to hear.
- 32:19It's sad to hear about Joburg.
- 32:21It's great to hear about New York.
- 32:23When are the mayoral elections?
- 32:25I said it was my last question.
- 32:26No, no, within the last...
- 32:27I think within two to three weeks.
- 32:30Okay, we'll watch out for that.
- 32:32And if it doesn't work in New York, he can come to Joburg, Mandani.
- 32:35Everyone would love him here.
- 32:38Well, that's what Trump is celebrating.
- 32:40If he's elected, he says, because it'll turn the blue city into a red city,
- 32:44meaning from Democrats to Republicans.
- 32:47Yeah, very quickly.
- 32:48Okay, David Shapiro is from Saxon Securities, and that was Shapiro World.
- 32:52The views and opinions expressed in these podcasts are those of Lindsay Williams.
- 32:56and various contributors and do not reflect the policy, position, or opinion
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- 33:08Assumptions made on the analyses are not reflective of the position of any other
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- 33:24please do not hold us to them in perpetuity.