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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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With me is Viv Govender from RAND Swiss and also David Shapiro from SAS for
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Insecurities.
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It's not the five o'clock shadow because of me, we missed out on that this week but
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we're going to have a look at,
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well obviously the tech sector but also some geopolitics as well.
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And Viv one of the things that I've been speaking to David about in the couple of
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times that I've spoken to him since we as a threesome
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last spoke is his review of, not review of, look forward to 2026.
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And one of the things he says, and he'll back me up on this, is that AI will still
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be there,
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will still be very prominent and an increasing part of our lives,
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but the stocks may not be quite as ebullient as 2025.
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Would you agree with that?
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That is possible.
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But I would, remember, I told you a while back that there's only two ways that AI
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can really make
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GDP growth needs to be around 5 percent to justify the spending that we are getting
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at the moment.
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And since we last spoke, what's happened is there is actually developments in that
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front.
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So we are seeing for the first time AI getting smart enough to do actual new
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science.
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So there's things called these Erdos problems and they're mathematical problems
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and AI solving them on its own or just one of them on their own.
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This is the kind of stuff that you expect to see before you know, things really
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start taking off.
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Because if we can do science like mathematics and so on, it can do science
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like AI research.
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And that is the point in which things become, you know, parabolic.
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And so yes, it might slow down, you know, but if we do hit these technical limits
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whenever they occur, maybe this year,
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maybe in a decade's time, whatever happens at that point in time, you know, things
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are gonna go crazy in a very, you know,
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visible way.
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Let me say that.
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I think one of the reasons that people have kind of got a little bit like, you
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know, less impressed by AI recently is because you got too smart.
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People don't understand how good it is.
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You need to be one of the world's best scientists to actually use the AI you can
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get from like
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Gemini or from, you know, open AI at the moment to its fullest ability.
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Most people are literally not smart enough to actually use these programs to what
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they can do at the moment.
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Speaking of not smart enough, and that's me, not you, David,
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but does that convince you to almost mentally rewrite your 2026 scenario?
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No, you know, I called it the year of AI adoption.
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And what Viv's saying, look, I can't talk at that high level.
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But what I do know is that a lot of companies have held back from introducing
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it into their
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operations.
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And my view is no, you can't, you're just not smart enough, you just don't
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understand it.
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And therefore, if I take it at a low level to Accenture, to ServiceNow, to...
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companies, Salesforce, businesses like that, Adobe and that, which have been
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ignored and where people are saying, no,
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you don't need those companies.
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It's, you know, you can do it yourself.
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Forget it.
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You know, forget it.
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And I think you're going to need a lot of high level people to to actually get the
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best out of it for
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you.
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So coming from a different angle, from a very much lower level, I still think that,
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you know,
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they're businesses who understand it.
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are going to be needed in order to get the best out of it.
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Okay, let me look at it from a different angle.
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And I just want to go to Viv on this one before we come back to you on a couple of
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specific stocks examples, David.
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But Viv, what particular sectors do you think lend themselves to the sort of AI
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development that you're seeing at the moment?
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I mean, is it the healthcare sector?
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Is it aviation?
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Is it retail?
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What do you think is the one that could really bolt itself onto AI?
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Yeah.
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Look, I think the healthcare sector is one of those things that basically it's not
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being held by the tech.
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It's been held by either, I would say, inertia in the sector, regulations and
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other factors.
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Because at the moment, you can go and use your Gemini.
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It'll give you a better result than most doctors you talk to.
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At the moment, the average doctor is not as good as Gemini or Chakraborty.
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That's just a fact, right?
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I can attest to that, by the way, but that's another story.
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Everyone, I had a health issue.
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You had a health issue.
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in the last little while and we've, and in both those cases, right?
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You know, and this mine was like a year ago, but you know, it's gotten better
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since then.
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These things are as good as your doctor, you know, at least, and they have better
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than the doctor because you can talk to that like 10
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o'clock at night if you wanted to just to go through like thoughts that you might
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have about, you know, test results or whatever.
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That's already here.
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Okay, so healthcare is salt.
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When it comes to aviation, if you can basically navigate a
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uh it's called a uh a busy city streets with pedestrians and whatnot you could fly
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a plane there's nothing out of the air update what i mean uh
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there's all these things that are already at a point where the technology is come to
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a point where it can be adopted it's inertia it has the industry
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as well as regulations that hold things back but speaking of what i was talking
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about i don't know if this year the market will go up or not on the ai
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I'm just saying that we are approaching a point where if the spark takes off,
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whenever it does take off,
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you won't see like five or six years time period for it to really go off.
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It'll happen in a year because AI is the only technology in the world that adopts
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itself.
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So if you have AI that's smart enough, you don't need somebody to adopt it for you.
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You don't need to have a smart guy coming and telling you what to do in order to get
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into your company.
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The AI could do it for itself.
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It's almost like self-extracting, if you know what I mean.
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when that does occur and like i said i don't know if it's this year or 10 years
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time but we are kind of seeing the slight sparks right now that this
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this thing is getting smart enough to do these kind of things at some potential
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time in the future david this utopian world that has just been described
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by viv govinda you're
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an artistic person you're a great artist and a very very accomplished writer i must
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say
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is it all over for people like you is it over for me not at all Not at all.
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I think that from that point of view, it's helping me enormously,
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absolutely enormously, you know, to craft something easier.
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And, you know, when I'm looking for I will write a paragraph or two paragraphs or
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something and I'll say this just
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doesn't gel.
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And I go into AI and it corrects it for me and, you know, just makes it like having
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an editor.
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And the editors there, I mean, nobody writes a book.
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Everybody in their book, they always thank the editors.
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Simply, we can't write like that.
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We haven't got the same kind of skills.
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But I think where it also helps me is sometimes in humor.
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You know, it's like here's 10 jokes or 10 statements.
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I say, oh, this is good.
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You know, but I do adapt it.
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You've got to adapt it.
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You know, you, but I mean, it's like having a good friend.
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So if anything, it's helped It hasn't changed your style,
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has it?
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Not at all.
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No?
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No, not at all.
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In fact, it's enhanced to a large extent.
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The art side is difficult.
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You know, I don't like AI-generated stuff, not at all.
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You know, I don't think they can come close to proper art as somebody who sits
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there with
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an easel or something.
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You know, it becomes very flat sometimes.
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And especially the kind of stuff I do, which is painstakingly elaborate, you
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know, kind of,
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I mean, etching, I mean, stroke by stroke.
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So it can't really help me unless I want to construct, say, listen,
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give me a picture of this that I can copy it or blend it in or use it as a
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reference.
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But from a writing point of view, unbelievable.
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Really?
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I'm still not convinced, but yes, I can understand if you're disciplined and not
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lazy.
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And I know you're not.
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You enjoy your writing.
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So you're not going to say, right, write this for me because I want to watch a
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football match or something and I need to get it out for tomorrow.
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You're not going to do that.
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I know.
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Viv, a stock that came up earlier this week, in fact,
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it was yesterday that David's been banging on about correctly for so long now and
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successfully for so long now is
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ASML.
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which is TSMC.
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If you look at those two companies, they epitomize AI investing, don't they?
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Yes, and I own both of them.
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And for the longest time, ASMR was, I was completely, I did not understand why this
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company was not more valuable.
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It just made no sense to me.
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It is literally the irreplaceable company in the world.
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There is nothing on the planet that comes close to what ASMR can do.
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And it's foundational to this whole kind of technological craze we are seeing right
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now.
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And yet it's the cheapest company.
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It's the same price, in fact, might be cheaper right now than OpenAI is.
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And OpenAI has all these competitors.
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ASML on the other hand has no competitors.
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The entire Chinese economy cannot do what ASML does.
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And so for the first time that we are seeing it as it is breaking the half a
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trillion dollar mark,
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it was quite pleasant because I've owned it for two years.
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And you can see it hasn't really done that much until very recently.
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They don't have as much as a boat, as ASML,
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but they do have the execution ability that makes them almost unique in the
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world.
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It's a combination of the Taiwanese culture that makes people willing to go
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with it, like whatever time to get things done.
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Also, the fact that they're kind of isolated so you could have these super
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genius
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engineers being paid good but not incredible salaries that they'd get to the
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U.S.
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for other jobs, etc.
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And so you have this combination, this kind of special perfect storm situation.
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that allows you to produce the world's best chips using machines from ASML.
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So both these companies are owned by me, and like I said, until very recently, ASML
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has been quite disappointing, but really,
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I think for the first time, people have very suddenly seen the true value coming
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in here.
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And just one thing I want to point out about these things: when people talk about
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these two nanometer chips that these guys are making,
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do you know what two nanometers means?
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No, not actually.
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Two nanometers is about 10 atoms.
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Think about it.
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When they say two nanometer chips, we're talking about 10 atoms wide.
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That's what we're talking about.
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Okay?
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We're talking x-rays being basically used to etch these things, not like normal
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light lasers,
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x-ray lasers effectively in your mind.
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That's the kind of technology we're talking about and ASML is the only one in
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the world that can do this.
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It's an incredible company.
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Surely though.
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given what you've been talking about over the last seven and a half minutes,
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someone's going to replicate this though, Viv.
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And then I'll come to you, David.
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I mean, someone, of course, by the, because of the nature of AI, someone will
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come up with something and there will be a new company,
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a new startup that will replicate the business that ASML is in.
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Viv?
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Okay.
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Let me explain to you what the technology looks like.
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First of all, what ASML does is the most complicated, how, high-end science, or
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engineering rather,
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that humans have ever done.
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There is no company in the world that comes close to what KSML does, in terms of
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that kind of thing.
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When you're basically using X-rays, you can't use lenses to focus these things.
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What you are using is levels of little sheets of metal that reflect the X-rays in
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like interference patterns that
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actually edge onto the chip.
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Think about that.
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But here's the thing.
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The Chinese have been trying to do this.
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They know it's the company that they have to replace.
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China has been trying for over a decade to get ASML, to do what ASML is doing.
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This is the world's largest manufacturing entity.
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This is China as a whole.
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And they've been trying.
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They have not done it yet.
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It's not because they have some patents that the Chinese are expecting beyond
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anything else.
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It's not because they have some legal protection.
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It's just because the actual technical skill required to do this is their moat.
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And you can't go and just replicate this technical skill out of nowhere.
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It is an incredibly how can I say?
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An incredible achievement for you Dutch, I can say that to Lindsay.
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That you have created a company that is just so good that even the world's largest
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manufacturing country, China,
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cannot do what you do.
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Okay David now the human factor comes in.
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Someone's landing at this moment at Schiphol Airport Amsterdam and they're
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going to get on the train to Eindhoven and they're going to knock on the door and
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say Mr ASML let's go and have a cup of coffee and they're going to nick a couple
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of those ASML people surely
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after what Viv just described, somebody might be tempted.
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Why not?
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I'm sure they've been trying to do this, but I mean, I don't think it's one
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particular scientist.
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This has been developed over a long time.
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And in fact, if you go into the history of ASML, which I think came out of Philips,
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its early stages,
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its early life was very dramatic.
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It didn't make profits.
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It was battling along.
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So to get to where they've got today,
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took a huge amount of effort and pain and suffering so it's a wonderful story and i
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think it could
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have only been um netherlands or the hollanders you know that could have done
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something like that
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doer but persistent and
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uh no you you understand what i'm saying americans are too kind of you know all
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over the place capricious phlegmatic whatever you
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want to say It hasn't come overnight.
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It's been a long battle, but I agree with Viv.
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And you know that I've been saying this.
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You know, I found the same thing and I used to drive me mad every time they
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published results because they're not known for their
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exuberance.
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You know, their CEOs don't get up and put on leather jackets and put on a show like
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Jensen Wang or someone like that or the Apple boys.
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You know, they just get on with it.
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give you a very matter of effect where they are and what they're doing.
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But they would quietly say, we're going to grow 30% per year and we've got good
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demand.
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They would say it in the low tide.
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And no one believed them, you know.
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And I agree with Viv.
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And I'm so pleased that they've just taken off like they have.
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And look, you've got TSMC, it's the same kind of situation as well, you know, which
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makes up the whole chain.
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From there on, you get NVIDIA.
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And I think a lot of people are underrating NVIDIA as well.
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You know, that's where I heard for the first time the two nano no, no,
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it was at ASML's presentation when they spoke about reducing chips from
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like what's it from?
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Two nano 10 nanos to two nanos or something like that.
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I said, you know, they're not going to stop.
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You don't everybody thinks technology just comes to a a stencil.
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These businesses are developing all the time,
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as you heard from Viv in the early stages of this conversation, just what lies
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ahead.
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So you want to go down to value?
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You know, you want to buy some bank or you want to buy some chap who makes nappies or
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makes
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cream for your face or something like that?
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Yeah, well, go ahead.
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Good luck.
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This is at a different level.
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Okay, so no one can stop.
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Go on.
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There's one more thing about One more, you talked about ASML, you talked about
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NVIDIA, you talked about AMD and those kind of guys, right?
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And TSMC.
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The best performer in my AI portfolio in the last year has been what?
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Micron.
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They make the memory.
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Yes, it is.
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SK Hynix.
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We're talking like tripling to the last year.
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These are the companies that make the high because the chips do one thing,
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but the memory is important because if you want to have these AI things do things,
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you want them to remember stuff and have this huge what they call contact windows.
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What you do is you have all the new information you have, you've got to apply
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that information across the model To do that, you need a huge amount of memory.
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These memory companies have gone ballistic.
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In the last basically month or so, Samsung is up 40 percent.
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People forget that Samsung is also one of these guys as well.
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Micron, SK Hynix and Samsung are the guys that make the memory that you're looking
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at.
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They have gone like I said, ballistic in the last.
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Micron also up almost 40 percent.
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Of course, all these memory companies have gone crazy because you're going to have to
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need this memory.
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Before these things actually be useful, they have to be applied in the world and
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then So yeah, that's another just one little extra thing to note there.
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That it's these guys actually be the best performer in the sector.
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Okay, so AI is not going to be stopped by anyone, least of all President Donald J.
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Trump, the 47th president of the United States of America.
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And David, he's becoming more and more bizarre.
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He's becoming more and more radical.
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He's becoming more and more rabidly racist, more authoritarian.
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He even said in a Reuters interview in the last 36 hours, that he doesn't see why
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there should be any midterms,
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because every midterm the president, the sitting president actually loses.
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I mean, he's actually said this to Reuters, a respected news agency with a
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fairly decent audience.
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David, he's gone completely bonkers.
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Yeah, yeah.
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I'm trying to find a word.
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I know that you've got Trump derangement syndrome.
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I've got fatigue syndrome.
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I don't know how to put it into something like that.
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But I'm...
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I'm getting very worried.
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Yes.
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You know, I'm getting worried about where the United States is going and where it's
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heading.
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And also why no one is standing up.
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Why haven't there been much louder voices to his attack on Powell?
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You know, calling everything from a moron to whatever.
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No wonder this lady has a go, Pira has a go at him.
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She says she thinks that she's furthering his aims and that she'll curry favor with
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her boss.
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You know, Apart from that, the Greenland, Venezuela, all these issues.
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You know, why aren't people standing up to this?
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One day he's going to bomb Iran.
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He's not going to bomb Iran.
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You know, it's just almost impossible to read him.
18:11
But I know the markets are just disregarding and saying this is all noise.
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But from a personal point of view, from a person who has children in America,
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who's going to please God, have great.
18:24
grandchildren there.
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I don't know where this country is going and why people are not standing up to this
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mad syndrome that is
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developing.
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I also find it depressing.
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I was asked by a California organization, a small organization that wants to rebuild
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America.
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And they said, could you write something not about Trump,
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but about how to counteract his mania?
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And he said, come up with some good examples of how you can start from the
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bottom up rather than the top down.
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In other words, how to have a go at Trump.
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Forget about that.
19:01
Just how to build from the bottom and, as I say, counteract him.
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And I sat down and I just thought it's futile because there's nothing that can
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stop him
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for the very reasons that you've just said.
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People are too scared of him and nobody stands in the way.
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I mean, okay, 11 central bankers have signed some letter to say we stand with
19:25
Jay Powell but he doesn't care about that.
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He doesn't care about Greenland.
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He didn't even know the name of the president of Greenland or prime minister
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of Greenland whatever it is.
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But there are only five people these, you know.
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Well, 57,000 technically.
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But yeah, Viv, you've been...
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This is why AI is probably Trump proof and recession proof because...
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AI doesn't care about what David and I have just been talking about.
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Do you care?
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Yeah, look, I'm going to bring something in here.
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And I think that it sounds crazy right now, but I've mentioned a while back to
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you guys as well.
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I don't know if it's Trump.
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You know what I mean?
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What I'm saying is, I'm saying that he's declining.
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He's declining right now.
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You can see that quite clearly.
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Like you mentioned the stuff is forgetting.
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And people think Trump is dumb.
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Go watch an interview for Donald Trump from the 1990s, was not a dumb guy, right?
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It's just that as people get to the age that they're getting to,
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obviously you can see the signs of lack of capacity growing, if you know what I mean.
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David's the same age, and he's not showing any signs.
20:29
Are you, David?
20:31
No, David, you're not 80, are you?
20:33
Nearly.
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Three years.
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I understand exactly what Viv is saying.
20:39
I know what he's saying.
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Carry on.
20:42
You have guys like Stephen Miller who actually are… That's the one.
20:45
Stephen Miller, this guy, if we go back in history, he's like a cartoon villain.
20:50
He used to throw stuff on the floor at school.
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And they asked him, why are you doing this?
20:55
It's for the janitors to pick up.
20:57
It's their job.
20:57
Yeah.
20:58
You know?
20:59
He basically would not be friends with any Mexican or people who are darker skinned
21:05
in high school and saying that, you know,
21:07
you were like subhuman or something.
21:09
This is in high school.
21:11
This guy has been like an avowed racist forever, from the time he was a kid.
21:14
J.D.
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Vance, who I did say, like, you know, when Trump was elected, is probably going to be
21:21
president before the end of the term because of, you know,
21:23
There's a one in three chance of that happening.
21:24
I think it's probably like 50-50 at the moment, that by the end of the term, Jenny
21:29
Baird is president.
21:31
Basically, he's, I don't think as innately, you know, misaligned,
21:37
let me say, as Stephen Miller, but he seems to be a craven coward when it comes
21:43
to power.
21:43
I mean, do you see this?
21:45
I mean, he's married to an Indian woman, right?
21:46
And do you see the stuff that goes on with the Republican Party and all that kind of
21:49
stuff?
21:50
And he's not stepping up.
21:51
I mean, it's like people have mentioned the fact that he doesn't step up to people
21:58
and say really bad things about his wife, you know what I mean?
22:00
And his kids.
22:02
I mean, that is pretty like, you know, I would say craving, but he's probably going
22:08
to be, like I said, the next person in there.
22:10
I don't, listen to what the Aka had to say, I don't think he'll be the next
22:13
president elected.
22:15
That being said, because even if you look back at history of the US, right, go back
22:20
all the way to like, you know, the last 40-something years.
22:22
You're not going to find anyone besides Reagan that had a VP be their successor.
22:27
Obama was super popular, his VP couldn't make it.
22:30
Clinton was even more popular, his VP couldn't make it, right?
22:33
So Trump put his unpopularity.
22:35
I don't think Jeannie Bads becomes the next elected president of the United
22:40
States, but I do think he becomes the next president.
22:42
Or at least a 50% chance of it happening because of health issues and so on.
22:44
But the thing is that this is what really worries me.
22:48
And this is speculation, of course.
22:49
But should we have the AI takeoff?
22:52
The AI takeoff is what they call, I mean, this is the term they use.
22:55
It's called FOM, F-O-M.
22:57
It happens when your AI becomes smart enough to start doing research on AI
23:01
itself.
23:02
At that point in time, you find huge exponential increases in power and so on
23:06
coming through.
23:07
If that happens during Trump's term, you will start to see jump ups in GDP that are
23:13
going to be spectacular.
23:15
You're going to start to see increases in like new technology that are going to be
23:17
quite remarkable.
23:19
That could actually be the thing that gets you the JD VATS elected presidency,
23:22
because who's going to not elect the guy that was vice president when your GDP grew
23:27
10% in the last two years?
23:29
Are we already seeing it with that print that we saw from the US GDP?
23:33
Or was that just a not a fudged number, but a skewed number 4.3% when the market
23:40
was expecting three and a half percent,
23:42
something like that?
23:44
Was any of that down to AI input?
23:45
I think it's starting to happen, but I think that's also a larger impact was
23:48
probably the shutdown.
23:50
Yeah.
23:52
You know?
23:54
So I think that was like a skewed number happening.
23:56
But I do think that, you know, I've seen people out there predicting between 4% and
23:59
6% GDP growth in the US this year.
24:01
Okay.
24:03
That is an insane number.
24:05
I mean, European Union can't do one and a half percent.
24:07
We as Africa can't do one and a half percent.
24:09
And how is the world's largest, most developed economy doing three times what
24:10
we are doing?
24:12
You know what I mean?
24:13
This is China numbers.
24:14
This is India numbers.
24:16
This is stuff you do not see in a large-scale economy.
24:19
And if you do have that happen, if you do suddenly have Americans basically living
24:25
in an economy where they are making, you know,
24:27
or the GDP is going up like 10% a year, the one thing that might come against
24:32
that, which might be even worse than Trump administration,
24:34
as shocking as it might be, is that what you do is you actually stimulate the envy
24:36
response,
24:38
which is what you get in California at the moment with that wealth tax.
24:41
Which is the most incredibly...
24:42
I mean, if I had to describe this wealth...
24:44
I don't know if you've seen it, Lindsay.
24:45
Have you seen this wealth tax in California?
24:47
No, no.
24:47
Tell me about it.
24:49
Okay, this is it.
24:51
It's a wealth tax, right?
24:52
But it's a tax of 1% of your net wealth, right?
24:56
Every year for five years.
24:57
So it's 5% of your wealth.
24:58
Except how do they measure your wealth?
25:00
It's not by what you own.
25:01
It's by the control you have of a company.
25:03
So the guys at Google, for instance, control more than half the company because
25:09
they have what they call super voting shares, right?
25:11
And so...
25:13
You don't count how much they actually own in dollar terms.
25:15
They count 50% of Google, which would be equivalent to something over the five-year
25:19
period, like half their wealth would be taxed.
25:21
But here's the thing.
25:23
They have to pay the tax in cash.
25:25
So first, they've got to sell those shares, pay capital gains, and take that
25:27
value and pay off the tax in California.
25:29
What's going to happen?
25:31
Obviously, the guys from Google have left California now.
25:33
Then you have guys that own things like, for instance, OpenAI or whatever, which
25:38
are untraded shares.
25:40
They still have to sell those shares somehow, get liquid and pay off this tax.
25:44
So California is destroying its Silicon Valley.
25:48
It may not exist in the next three years or so in California because of these three
25:52
attacks.
25:53
And why is this occurring?
25:54
It's occurring because people are starting to see inequality rise.
25:58
The same thing is Mamdani in New York.
26:00
He's the same situation.
26:01
And you're starting to see this happening in, there's a guy called Gary Stevens in
26:08
the UK, talking about the wealth tax.
26:10
The French just passed, the lower house was passed, I don't know if the French
26:13
political system as well,
26:15
but the French left has tried to pass a law basically making a wealth tax of a
26:18
minimum of 2%
26:19
of your wealth per year.
26:21
And if you try to leave, they want to make it five or ten years, you know, basically,
26:26
so if you live in France now,
26:28
you still have to pay for 10 years after you leave.
26:28
This is happening around the world, even though wealth taxes are known to be
26:34
terrible everywhere in the time it's been bad.
26:36
But why they're doing this?
26:38
It's because this inequality might be rising to an extent that it's going to
26:38
cause that.
26:39
So the thing is that we are approaching these points of huge growth, huge GDP
26:44
growth,
26:44
but it's probably going to result either in a Trump or GD Vance presidency, because
26:50
of course,
26:50
it's going to be said over the wall is wonderful, a utopia like you said, and
26:55
both for the guy that got it to us,
26:57
or it's going to result in a backlash which is going to bring socialism into
27:01
play, which unfortunately, you know,
27:03
even the world is bad as the right wing is.
27:05
The socialists are, as that is some cases, worse than them.
27:08
And I think that's the situation going forward in places like the US at the
27:11
moment.
27:11
Well, you two chaps stop making plans now if what Viv has just sketched out does
27:18
come to fruition.
27:20
Now then, David, I know you don't particularly like commodities.
27:21
You look at them with an indulgent eye.
27:24
But silver must interest you because I remember after Liberation Day,
27:28
the silver price was below $30 per ounce.
27:31
It dipped down below there because every market dipped down below every single
27:37
level that it had just very briefly.
27:39
Then I remember sending a tweet out, an X out, mid-October, I think it was, to say,
27:43
is it time to ring the bell on silver?
27:45
Because it was $51 per ounce.
27:48
You did say that.
27:49
And then it's now above $90.
27:53
So it's nearly doubled and then it's nearly doubled again.
27:56
Now, tell me something.
27:57
I remember the days of Bunker Hunt when Bunker Hunt tried to corner the silver
28:01
market.
28:01
Has silver got a use now, David?
28:03
And Viv, come in on this one as well.
28:04
Has silver suddenly become a PGM, if you like?
28:08
I think its only real use is on solar panels where it's used quite extensively.
28:14
But one of the driving forces was silver has always been I call it poor man's gold
28:20
But it's always been an alternative to gold for those who can afford it.
28:24
It's the only country that really accumulates a metal as a safe haven.
28:32
It's very closely associated to America.
28:36
But you know, Trump wanted to put all kinds of taxes on imported minerals and
28:43
metals and copper and so on.
28:45
And I think the fact that there was a fear...
28:48
that he would do it.
28:48
And for that reason, I think there's been a huge accumulation before this happens.
28:53
But its rise from, say, 50 to 90, I can't explain.
28:58
You know, the sheer pandemonium behind it, which we can explain for platinum as well,
29:04
I'm not quite sure who the forces are that have been accumulating in as much or the
29:09
frenzy
29:10
behind that.
29:16
I really don't know who's been paying those kind of levels for this.
29:19
I would imagine that there's massive speculation around this,
29:24
and my fear is that we've seen before that when this does slow down, it slows down at
29:31
an incredible pace.
29:33
So it's astonishing me.
29:34
I look more for the other metals to make any kind of decision,
29:38
but when you start to go into gold and platinum and silver at these kinds of
29:45
levels, or at this kind of pace,
29:47
you know that there's going to be pain somewhere down the line.
29:48
Yeah, Viv, the commodity cycle such as it is, I mean the oil price, even without the
29:54
oil price,
29:54
the Commodity Research Bureau index is at an all-time record high at the moment, or
30:00
just below an all-time record high.
30:02
So if oil started to go as well because of a reigniting of the Iran tensions between
30:08
Iran and the United States of America,
30:10
oil went to 75, 80 dollars per barrel, the metals kept on going, the dollar kept on
30:15
eking its way downwards,
30:17
then you've got a commodity cycle that's continuing to run, which means the rand,
30:21
of course, Viv, will go to 14,
30:23
14.50 from its current level of, what is it, 16.30, 16.40?
30:26
Who would have thought it, Viv?
30:29
Yeah, look, I mean, with regards to precious metals, I mean, have you guys
30:34
talked about the BRICS unit yet?
30:36
No.
30:38
The proposed there's a thing called the BRICS unit we propose, which would be like
30:42
a way for it's called the unit UIT.
30:44
And it's a 40% gold-backed, 60%
30:47
currency-backed kind of currency,
30:51
like de facto currency being created between the BRICS countries and so on for
30:56
cross-border trade.
30:58
Right.
31:00
And of course, that requires a lot of gold.
31:02
I think one reason that gold is doing so well is because of course what's happening
31:02
with Powell and the US Fed, etc.
31:04
But with regards to silver, firstly, a couple things today.
31:05
This is maybe again, because I'm coming across like the guy with the tinfoil hat
31:09
all the time.
31:10
But there's been speculation about silver's market manipulation for a long
31:15
time.
31:15
I mean, people would like a bit of history, because I mean, only David Yeo
31:22
was in the river business, was the silver market manipulation 1980s, you know what I
31:24
mean?
31:26
So yeah, there has been that kind of stuff happening in the past.
31:26
And so there's rumors about silver manipulation at the moment.
31:29
But when it comes to oil, I mean, you see Iran blowing up.
31:32
If Iran blows up, you'd be lucky to see $180 oil.
31:36
Forget about $80 oil.
31:38
And in that scenario, I'm almost certain we'd have a recession in South Africa.
31:42
Because, I mean, because what Iran controls is what's called the Straits of
31:46
Hormuz.
31:46
If you look at the percentage of Middle Eastern oil that goes through that place,
31:51
it's huge.
31:53
And here is the thing that people forget.
31:55
This oil does not go to America.
31:57
It goes to where?
31:58
It goes to China, right?
32:00
So the US has the ability to blow up
32:03
Iran and cause oil to spike in a way that will directly harm China.
32:09
The incentives are scary.
32:10
On the other hand you could say that if the regime changes then there's more
32:17
investment in the oil industry from foreign companies and therefore the oil
32:19
starts to flow even more than it is now and therefore that's bearish like some
32:23
people were saying that a medium term
32:25
the Venezuela situation is bearish for the oil price.
32:27
And initially, there was a little bit of a spike up from about 61, 62,
32:32
up to 65 with Brent crude.
32:35
So I would say that, in fact, the bullish people would say exactly the opposite to
32:40
you, Viv.
32:41
But we'll wait and see.
32:42
At the moment, oil still… By one point, when did we last had a peaceful regime
32:48
change that immediately resulted in more
32:50
GDP growth?
32:52
That has not happened in the Middle East in a very long time, right?
32:54
Very true.
32:56
And the other thing is, the Shah of Iran's son really does look like his father,
32:58
doesn't he?
32:58
If you've been seeing interviews with him, David, he looks remarkably like him.
33:02
And he keeps on saying, I'm the best person to lead the country.
33:05
I can tell you something.
33:06
If I were him, I wouldn't sit for 10 hours.
33:07
It's climbing down quite a bit, hey?
33:10
We don't know any information.
33:11
Nothing new has come through from that.
33:14
And this seems to suggest that they've got this under control.
33:20
We haven't heard of any more deaths.
33:22
No more videos that come through or anything.
33:24
So I don't know where we are, but it's out of the limelight.
33:28
It's not in the headlines anymore, which I find is quite sad because
33:34
I think most people, most of the world would have wanted some kind of change
33:40
there,
33:40
particularly understanding who's in charge.
33:43
So I don't know.
33:44
I don't know.
33:45
It seems pretty quiet at the moment, which I think is a bad sign.
33:49
Gentlemen, welcome back.
33:51
Thank you very much for your time on a Friday.
33:54
You've terrified me brilliantly, by the way.
33:58
Thank goodness I can sit down and watch some football over the weekend.
34:02
We will be back at our normal time next Thursday for the Five O'Clock Shadow.
34:06
David Shapiro is from Sasson Securities in Johannesburg and Viv Govender from the
34:11
award-winning RAND
34:13
Swiss. We'll see you
34:18
next week.
34:21
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