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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 is closed at stores 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 Randsuisse in
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Johannesburg and David Shapiro from Sassvin Securities,
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also in the City of Gold.
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Now I've got a, I'll start with you actually, Viv, I've got a quiz for you.
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And who said this comment?
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Now, it's either the president.
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of the united states the 47th president of the united states or lindsey williams
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that's me
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or david shapiro south africa's favorite south africa's favorite stockbroker now
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this is it
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who who said this uh
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where are we now i'm just trying to find the quote now um oh goodness me
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what am i doing here now i've lost it here at 10 34 this morning so i'll edit all
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this out um because
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Gosh, gentlemen, found it nearly because it's such a long, it's such a long.
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Let me start this again.
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Sorry, I'll do the intro again because I've lost the quote from, you know, at 10.
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It was at 10.34 this morning.
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Donald Trump was in the Oval Office.
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Because millions of people,
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Donald Trump does what he always does.
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The outcome slips.
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Oh, God.
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Okay, I've got it.
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Finally.
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Excuse me.
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As everyone knows, that's it.
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I'll do it all again.
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Okay, three, two, one.
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The JC has closed its doors for another day, so it's time for the 5 o'clock shadow
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with Viv Govender from Ranswiss and David
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Shapiro from Sasfin Securities.
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Now, Viv, I'll start with you because I've got a quiz for you.
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Who said this?
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The 47th President of the United States, that's the first answer, Lindsay Williams,
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as you know me,
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talking, or David Shapiro from Sasfin Securities.
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The quote is as follows.
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As everyone knows, I am an extraordinarily brilliant person.
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That's it.
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As everyone knows, I am an extraordinarily brilliant person.
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Obviously, Viv, it's a rhetorical question.
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It was truly David.
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Of course.
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I feel a little bit slighted there, by the way, Viv.
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But this is the man in charge of the nuclear buttons, Viv.
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I don't want to go on about this because I tend to get a bit obsessed by this sort of
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thing.
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But he sent this out at 10.34.
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And it's the most absurd, childish, ridiculous thing I've ever heard in my
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life.
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I am this brilliant person.
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What's going on?
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Aren't you scared, Viv?
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Look, I mean, there is the idea that he's playing 7D chess or something maybe
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because he acts crazy and everyone is scared of him.
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That's one possibility.
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But I would have to say with regards to Trump at the moment, this is something
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that we've discussed in the office.
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If there's a statement coming out and one comes from the Iranians and one comes from
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President Trump,
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I will trust the Iranians 10 times out of 10 versus what Trump says.
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Trump's declarations on
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Truth Central or whatever it's called there literally have nothing predictive
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involved with them.
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If he says he will not do a deal, if he says he will not extend a ceasefire, if he
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says, you know,
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we are going to blow bridges and power plants up tonight,
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they literally have nothing to do with how the world is going to be changed in the
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future.
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So you can almost ignore them.
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You know, you can't determine anything about the actions of the U.S., about the
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current state of negotiations.
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It's just meaningless.
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On the other hand, when the Iranians do talk, they tend to have been, you know,
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speaking the truth, you know, weirdly enough.
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And we live in a weird world right now where literally the Iranian government is
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more trustworthy in terms of what they say to the President of the United
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States.
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Can you imagine that?
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Yes, I heard that comment as well.
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Isn't it a strange world where you have to believe the Ayatollah rather than the
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President?
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David, over to you on this one because I can see your shoulders sagging here.
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You know, I just think he's in deep trouble.
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I think Trump is just lashing out all over the place.
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Everything's falling around him.
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Even Tucker Carlson has now withdrawn his support,
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said he has remorse about backing him in 2024.
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Yes, I know Tucker Carlson is not the kind of person that you want to associate with,
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but I mean,
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that's what's happening to the right of his party.
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To the left, it's even worse.
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I think that he's just imploding.
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He doesn't know what to do.
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He's got no answers.
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And, you know, even around his small, the small circle of people around him, I
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think,
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are in a similar kind of position.
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Nobody's got a solution.
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And, you know, the Iranians are just looking at him.
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Do you remember that cut from, what's the name, from Monty Python,
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the Holy Grail?
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When King Arthur's riding through and he comes across a castle and it's the French,
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you know,
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and they start throwing down insults at him and throwing down all kinds of things,
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cows and chickens and everything.
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Basically, that reminds me of Trump at the moment.
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He's just facing this castle where people are just insulting him and belittling him
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and,
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you know, just confusing him.
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I'm I'm I'm genuinely worried and I'm not sure he's going to last I'm not sure he's
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going to
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get through the next few months
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but this is what I want to this is this is the phrase I wanted from one of you two or
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from anyone that I've spoken to
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I'm genuinely worried and that's what you said because I am genuinely worried
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because I don't know where what will happen because with
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him in charge it's disastrous and potentially dangerous without him in
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charge you
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it's disastrous and potentially dangerous.
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If you get someone like Hegseth, not Hegseth, J.D.
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Vance getting in, and he's got Miller in charge as well with him, et cetera,
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and it goes on and on.
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And Viv's is sitting there looking at his spreadsheets and analyses of AI, and
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that's brilliant.
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And, David, you're the same.
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But on the other hand, we've got to think about our children.
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grandchildren and everything else because something is going on, Viv.
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Look, I don't think J.D.
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Vance is the same kind of chaotic force that Trump is.
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I don't think Vance would do these kind of things.
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He did serve in the military, Vance.
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I don't think he's a combat soldier, but he was a military person.
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And I don't think anyone else, with the exception maybe of Pete Hegsett, might be
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or Stephen Muller might be this crazy,
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but they're not in the line of succession here.
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So it would be Vance if Trump was removed.
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But one thing I want to point out, an interesting fact, is that It's coming to
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very unpopular Trump and it's actually hurting him in ways that are
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already affecting him.
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For instance, there was an election in Virginia, you know, just I think
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yesterday, where he lost.
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And what that does is effectively means that Virginia becomes, I think,
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like almost an even split between Republicans and Democrats, becomes like 11
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or 10 to 1, it's called
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Democrats versus Republicans for the next election.
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And this kind of move basically right now where...
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States are going off and redistricting basically based on responses to what Trump
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did in Texas, right?
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So Trump basically pushed Texas to redistrict and become much more
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Republican.
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It's prompted the Democrats to go against him.
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And it just so happens that while they're doing all these elections and all this
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maneuvering, they are actually doing it while Trump is, I think,
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underwater two to one in terms of favorability.
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So it's actually pushing through.
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Did you see his response?
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It's horrific, of course.
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Did you see the response to this?
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All of a sudden, right at the last minute, the Democrats come and unload ballots,
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boxes of ballots.
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The same kind of response.
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This is exactly what he said on Truth Social, and I'll read it to you now.
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He said, a rigged election took place last night in the great Commonwealth of
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Virginia.
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All day long, Republicans were winning.
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The spirit was unbelievable until the very end when, of course, there was a
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massive...
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Mail-in ballot drop.
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Where have I heard that before?
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And the Democrats eked out another crooked victory.
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What he's doing there, gentlemen, is setting the scene for the November
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elections.
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And it's very, very scary.
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That's why I'm scared.
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I don't have grandchildren yet, but my children I'm scared for.
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I'm scared for myself, for goodness sake.
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Something's going to go on here.
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He'll be in his third term, I would imagine.
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That's what he's going for.
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David, carry on with that.
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Sorry.
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Yeah, no, I'm saying these are the reactions of a man who is cornered.
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who just doesn't know what to do.
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You know, he's run out of that kind of charm.
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When I say charm, people were, okay, he's funny, you know, he's clever,
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he's doing things that no other president would do.
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But all of a sudden he said, okay, you know.
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It's not funny.
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This is enough already.
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This is not funny anymore.
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And I don't think he's funny anymore.
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The kind of remarks that he makes, his actions, his body language, somewhere
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along the line,
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you want him to grow up and to become presidential.
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And.
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he's just going worse.
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That's why I say I'm really worried about what comes next.
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And America is losing it.
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It's losing.
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It's got, you know, it's French people are just beginning to despise them.
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You know, he's got no one that he can turn to.
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The whole world is against him.
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His whole country is against him.
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And if you think I'm exaggerating, I don't think so.
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I think this is genuinely the case.
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It genuinely is.
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And Viv, I was speaking to a friend of mine a couple of nights ago.
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I haven't spoken to her for years.
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She's 62 years old, incredibly successful in the interior design business in New
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York.
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She's lived for 30 years in the same flat in Midtown in Manhattan.
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David, you'll know the Midtown area.
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It's not exactly poor.
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She's incredibly successful, Viv.
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And.
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I said to her, well, what are you going to do with the rest of your life?
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She said, well, I'm going to retire quite soon.
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I said, oh, really?
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Were you going to stay in Manhattan or go to Texas, you know, your home stage?
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She said, no, I couldn't breathe the same air as Trump anymore or the same air as
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I can't breathe the same air as Texans as well that vote for this man.
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She's moving to southwest London.
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She's got a house in Putney, southwest London.
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And she's going to move there in the next year.
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And I said, but won't you miss it?
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You're a quintessential American success story.
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She said, no, I don't like America anymore.
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It is not the country that I grew up in.
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And Viv, what would you say about that?
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I mean, David will back me up on this because he's got stories of the same kind.
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Viv, America is a laughingstock now.
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I want to get back to the Virginia situation, just to highlight a point here,
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right?
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What happened in Virginia is roughly 51% of people voted to make sure the other 49%
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of people were disenfranchised effectively.
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So Virginia is split pretty evenly, as most U.S.
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states are.
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It's slightly one way, it's slightly the other way.
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But it's not 11 to 1, or 10 to 1, rather, for Democrats over Republicans.
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You know what I mean?
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Now, what's happened is because of the polarized nature of this current election,
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or the current situation, that the
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The Democrats won an election which allows them to basically kind of change how you
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count votes in different
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districts.
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So the Republicans are all in one district, so they can't actually affect
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it.
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And Democrats have a huge majority in all the other districts.
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So it becomes like when they go to Congress, they're going to get a massive
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discrepancy.
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What's going to happen here is that you're going to have similar back and forth
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events happening across the whole of the U.S.
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And what this does is it fundamentally weakens the way the U.S.
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political system works.
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Which is, I mean, it's boring to start to talk about it, but this is important.
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The way the political system of the U.S.
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works is that, you know, you have a pretty even match between the Republicans and
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Democrats.
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I mean, you may say, OK, look at the last few elections.
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You're winning by one or two percent.
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You're not winning by 50 percent.
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You know what I mean?
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But the way they are restricting these places is if you win by one or two
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percent, you're getting 50 percent or in this case,
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90 percent more representation in the electorate or in the politics.
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It's good.
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make a much less stable political system in the US.
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And the kind of thing that your friend talked about, about the hatred towards the
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other,
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is going to make the US a less stable country going forward, which is a terrible
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thing to happen.
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And like I said, it's this kind of situation we have right now.
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It's making the world a less safe place, as you mentioned.
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But it's not just a Trump thing.
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It's the impact of what Trump is doing right now and the effect it's having.
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The longer term effects are going to be quite damaging to the overall stability of
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the US because, you know,
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the Republicans basically are obviously on one side with Trump, the Democrats like
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hate Trump and on the other side,
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and they are doing things that, you know, any logical person that's patriotic to the
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US would say this is a bad thing to do.
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If you're a patriotic Virginian, you wouldn't say it's a great thing that we
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effectively disenfranchised 49% of the electorate.
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You know what I mean?
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But because you say we are bringing, we're kind of forcing Yeah.
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To see me as a people.
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We are doing this to get against Trump.
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And they have effectively disenfranchised 49% of the electorate, which is a bad
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thing, objectively.
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David, would you agree?
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Well, it was a move to counteract what they were going to do in Texas.
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This is what the Republicans wanted to do in Texas.
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So, you know, he sparked this off.
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But this is gerrymandering.
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It's common.
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This has happened.
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I mean, if you know history in South Africa, the same thing happened here with
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the Nationalist Party.
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I mean, you know.
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You know?
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shoving everybody into one big area in Johannesburg, giving them one vote, and
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then the counter-district,
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all the small districts got many, many seats in parliament.
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But it's nothing new in politics.
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But what you say is correct.
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I mean, there's nothing in the middle.
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There's no one in the middle to be fair.
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You know, that's the problem.
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When I say the Supreme Court, where's the balancing factor?
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And that's why we had a constitution.
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That's why they have the constitution, was to ensure that things like this don't
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happen.
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But somehow they never enforced.
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But what you're saying is, I think,
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is so true.
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And I say it in a different way.
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I always loved America.
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I always envied growing up as a 10-year-old or 11-year-old, you know.
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I'm looking at Norman Rockwell paintings.
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This is something foreign to you, Viv.
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And even to, it used to be on the cover of the Life magazine, you know, the magazine
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of life.
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Norman Rockwell was a very well-known artist in the 50s and that he painted
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American life, you know,
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and you'd have a family sitting around the table cutting the turkey on
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Thanksgiving or a little boy eyeing a pie that was left on the ledge to...
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you know, to air or whatever you do with pies, you know, to cool down.
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And those are the kind of scenes that he used to paint, this perfect American life,
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probably post-World War II.
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And, you know, baseball and those kind of things, playing baseball in the streets
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and so on.
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And it's so far away from that at the moment.
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It's just, it's nowhere close to.
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the perfect American life that everybody...
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If it weren't for your family, David, would you be visiting America?
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I don't think so.
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I don't, you know, I go there mainly to see family.
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I enjoy New York and that, but I must admit that, you know,
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the kind of things that we're talking about now really concern me.
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And you've seen changes now even in New York.
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where you have the young mayor there who's now starting to impose taxes on the rich
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city.
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And you know what I say about New York?
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It was built by rich people.
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That's what makes New York.
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And once you start to undermine that, you're undermining the strength and the
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draw of the city.
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It runs on wealth.
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You know, mega museums that need the funding to keep them going.
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You need Broadway, those kind of things.
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And the buildings, you know, those are the things that attract everybody to this
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vibrant city.
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You want to undermine that, boy,
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you're starting to chip at the foundations of the city and of the culture.
17:55
Viv, the Brent crude oil price is $102.76 per barrel, which is up 0.8%
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on the day and probably up around about 10% since we spoke last Thursday, Viv.
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Now, 3.1%...
18:10
is the South African inflation rate, 3.3%
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CPI inflation rate, the annual inflation rate in the United Kingdom.
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Is this the calm before the storm, Viv, these sort of three numbers?
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Are we going to see four, five and six in the future?
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The IMF says 6%.
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What do you think?
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Most certainly.
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And it's going to get, I think, it's going to be long the last thing Trump says.
18:35
Trump says basically, you know, once it's over, it's going to all fall down quickly,
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blah, His own energy secretary came out and said,
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no, it's going to last until next year.
18:44
We aren't going to see that the prices return to normal until next year.
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We've already seen, for instance, let's just say it ends tomorrow.
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You think India, you think China, you think all the countries in the world are
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going to just go back to buying the normal amount of oil that they were buying in the
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past?
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No.
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They're going to be scrambling to just basically replenish the reserves that
19:05
they've used up and maybe build up more reserves.
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After this has happened, it must be terrifying to be a leader of some of these
19:09
countries.
19:11
I mean, you have places in Asia, especially, where they have gone to work
19:12
from home by law,
19:14
where they've basically implemented different policies about, you know, going
19:17
to school and that kind of stuff.
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They've been really badly hit.
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And the impact of this is going to be, even if the physical stuff is removed in
19:25
the next, say,
19:26
week or two, fingers crossed, you know, there is a deal to be done, though I think
19:29
it's unlikely.
19:31
Just the psychological impact of what's happened right now.
19:33
It's going to cause stockpiling.
19:35
It's going to cause reserve building.
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It's going to cause changes in how people are going to be basically purchasing oil,
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etc.
19:43
The market's going to take a long time to recover.
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And I have not even talked about food, which is a terrible thing.
19:49
Unfortunately, it won't affect the places in the world that we invest in.
19:51
It won't be a case where you're worrying about, for instance, you know, the Zonda
19:58
Stock Exchange or the New York Stock Exchange or, you know,
20:00
Frankfurt or Shanghai, etc.
20:02
but in many parts of the world, the impact of this...
20:02
particular thing on fertilizer and therefore on food is going to be drastic
20:09
and quite, I think, painful,
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which we have to be concerned about going forward.
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Okay.
20:12
And yes, David, the market is, let's have a look at the market now.
20:16
The S&P 500 futures, the S&P 500 futures June,
20:21
the June contract is 7,177, which is unchanged on the day, David.
20:27
And I don't want to look at it over the last week.
20:30
or month because it's up.
20:32
I can't understand it.
20:33
Please tell me why.
20:35
You know what?
20:38
The only explanation I can give is that tech is having a
20:45
massive impact on this market.
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And, you know, I talk about the two-lane highway, and that one lane,
20:53
the speedier lane, the fast lane, just keeps going.
20:57
And the more we look into it.
20:59
You know, the more attractive it is, and I'm just looking at some of the, you know,
21:04
at some of the gains that are taking place at the moment,
21:07
there's still a massive demand for quality tech shares.
21:14
You know, Alphabet's up, Apple's up, Amazon, Broadcom, all of these companies
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are up.
21:20
You know, one or two are slightly down, but overall, the focus is on tech
21:25
earnings.
21:26
And then also...
21:27
One thing, you know, we've been talking about the energy and the need for energy.
21:33
And GE, Vinnova came out yesterday with fabulous results, way up on where they
21:38
were last year,
21:40
simply on the demand for, you know, for power.
21:42
And all those companies around that are benefiting as well.
21:45
So I think that's what's holding the U.S.
21:48
up.
21:48
And, Lindsay, I'll come back to a statement which, you know,
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which I've spoken to you often and mentioned it in our talks.
21:57
America, when you go there, they don't care.
21:59
They're living their own lives.
22:01
Exactly.
22:02
The people in my building are more worried about what's showing on Broadway or which
22:09
restaurant to go through or whatever.
22:11
They're not impacted by this.
22:13
They don't even watch the news, local news, just concerns about the weather and,
22:16
as I say,
22:18
a fire in Brooklyn or whatever it is.
22:19
And that's why you're seeing this, you know, the market as strong as it is.
22:24
for most people.
22:25
In America, they're focusing on the underlying earnings.
22:29
It's the rest of the world that are suffering from the impact that Viv is
22:34
talking about.
22:36
You know, food, oil prices, energy prices, just getting to work on a daily basis.
22:40
Before we go to the markets, Viv, can you give us any updates on AI this week, on
22:45
tech this week?
22:47
Because you're the one that's probably got his finger on the pulse more than David
22:50
and I have.
22:52
Not that we haven't, of course.
22:54
Viv, anything happening this week?
22:56
I would like to give you a little run-on on stats here.
22:58
This is Anthropic, right?
22:59
This is the company that's got the best model out there despite having less money,
23:04
etc.
23:04
And it's like, they could argue why they did it.
23:07
Maybe they got more ethical, they got to attract better people, whatever.
23:09
This is a real breakdown.
23:10
In 2024, they were making a million, 100 billion dollars a year, annual recurring
23:16
revenue.
23:17
By the end of that year, it went up 10 times to 1 billion.
23:20
By the end of 2035, we went up 10 times to, what, 9 times to 9 billion.
23:26
By February, it is up to 14 billion.
23:29
By April, which we are at right now, it's at 30 billion.
23:31
They're on track to get 100 billion this year.
23:33
They have gone up 10 times every year since they started operating, basically,
23:40
in terms of annual revenue.
23:41
Okay, so extrapolate that.
23:43
Extrapolate that, if you would.
23:46
Extrapolate that by next year, they're making 1% of global GDP.
23:48
And the year after that, they're making 10% of global GDP a year.
23:51
It is an impossible stat.
23:53
But you know, I spoke to, just on that.
23:57
I spoke to an analyst and a young chap there at one of the very large wealth
24:02
companies.
24:02
I'm talking globally.
24:04
And he's such an entertaining and knowledgeable person.
24:07
And he gave it, you know, he said exactly what you're saying.
24:11
He said, but the one thing that he said that it's engineers that are using it.
24:16
They are the ones who are, he called it tokens.
24:18
And the way he explained it to me, you know, to us, he said, look, it's like
24:22
electricity.
24:24
You know, Anthropic provides electricity.
24:26
chat GPT provide electricity you know you plug your your kettle in or something like
24:33
that that's what they're giving you that energy
24:35
you know and and trying to exploit it in very basic terms but um he he what
24:40
he said is that's
24:42
that's the thing it's not the casual users it's not me or river or lindsey you know
24:48
kind of
24:48
designing or doing something with it it's engineers you know who are designing who
24:54
are using it to to write code
24:56
And that's what encouraged him.
24:58
You know, that's why he was so excited about what you're saying.
25:00
Look at it this way, right?
25:02
The $20 a month, you know, package, which is what most people get.
25:05
I mean, I have the $20 a month package.
25:06
I might be looking at the $200 a month package now because it's more useful.
25:11
But the $20 a month package, right?
25:13
If you had a billion people, right, a billion people affording $20 a month,
25:20
which probably has many people in the world that can afford to spend $20 a month
25:22
on AI,
25:24
that roughly translates to about $240 billion, you know, dollars.
25:25
a year.
25:27
That's if like this is as many people that spend the money spend it on Anthropic,
25:31
that's all they get.
25:33
Apparently, OpenAI has also got about 30 billion dollars in edge quotes ARR at the
25:36
moment.
25:37
And the Chinese models, apparently the six most used models in the world are Chinese.
25:42
So it's in these two companies.
25:44
So the demand for this these tokens are going up and the reason is because of the
25:48
agents.
25:48
The agents with that continuous referring back to you know that loops that they're
25:52
using.
25:53
are really driving up demand for this, as well as, of course, the thinking models,
25:58
which basically, again,
26:00
have the loop in them that basically make them use much more data than the output,
26:03
or much more tokens than the output.
26:05
So, yeah, it does appear that, you know, as David said, you know,
26:10
there's a famous world you ran a quote, I think it is, people focus on the stream
26:15
when all the stuff is really happening on the banks,
26:17
we mean you focus on the war and the death and whatnot, and all the really important
26:22
stuff is happening with technology and, you know, culture.
26:24
And this is the case here.
26:26
We are focusing on Iran and all the crazy stuff is happening with the culture, with
26:28
the technology.
26:29
And I honestly believe in like, say, 100 years from now, if you look back at this
26:35
time, let's just say we're also alive in the future, who might be because of AI.
26:37
We will think back as to this is the start of AI.
26:39
This is not the start of, you know, the Iran war, whatever happens.
26:43
Like we think back to the early 2000s.
26:44
Yes, there was 9-11.
26:46
But, you know, we probably in the future are going to remember it more for the
26:51
start when the Internet companies like, you know, Google and…
26:53
Facebooks and so on started in the early 2000s, as opposed to, yes, we had this
26:56
major terrorist attack in the US.
26:58
Gentlemen.
26:59
Get it.
27:02
Yeah, a silence there, a stunned silence.
27:04
But I'm going to break that silence by saying the names of three companies,
27:11
David, Valterra, Cecil,
27:13
they came up with updates and they're both down today.
27:14
That's because of international markets a little bit as well.
27:17
But the updates weren't particularly good.
27:19
Share price is down.
27:21
Clicks.
27:21
Clicks, clicks, David.
27:23
Clicks down 8.25%.
27:25
Did you read the update from clicks?
27:29
I'm sorry to say I haven't.
27:32
Stun silence again.
27:35
You know what I did read?
27:36
That's why.
27:37
What I was focusing on was another beauty company called L'Oreal, which is the
27:44
opposite of clicks, the international,
27:46
which is up about 8%.
27:48
But while you are on it.
27:50
8.8, which is unusual.
27:53
It came up with a trading update, so obviously it came up with something.
27:56
And I know that you don't invest in that.
28:00
Yeah, exactly.
28:01
Okay, so you don't know.
28:02
So let's not harp upon that.
28:03
But anyway, the point is that it was a bad day on the JSC today, and I picked out
28:10
three companies, Clix,
28:12
Volterra, and Sasol, driving it down.
28:14
Let me give you some prices now, because it's interesting.
28:20
Let me get rid of that little tab that's just jumped up on my screen, which I hate.
28:25
The dollar round is 1647.
28:28
The British pound against the round is 2225.
28:34
The euro round is
28:34
1930.
28:43
Euro dollar is 11765.
28:46
The gold price is unchanged at 4737.
28:48
The platinum price is down 2%.
28:50
2043 and yeah it's it's not a good day for commodities actually and i'm going to go
28:57
straight now to the oil price
28:59
which i i told you earlier on and i was using it as a reference to viv question.
29:04
And the question is now, where's it going?
29:07
And the question to me is now people are saying, oh, well, we're used to it now.
29:12
When Lindsay Williams says it's $103.08 per barrel, up 1.1%, a big deal,
29:18
we're used to.
29:19
But the figures will start to come through, the 3.1%, the 3.3% inflation
29:24
rates.
29:26
I don't know.
29:28
Is this something that we should be sanguine about?
29:30
It's 103.20 now, the oil price up.
29:32
up one and a quarter percent.
29:33
The West Texas is $93.77.
29:38
The copper price, which is important, $6.09 per pound, which is down half a
29:44
percent.
29:45
The South African 10-year bond yield is 8.625 percent on the close,
29:51
up seven basis points.
29:53
The U.S.
29:53
10-year, this is the one I'm interested in now 4.29%.
29:59
I think that's going to 5, 550.
30:01
by the end of the year but that's just me uh s p 500 futures we mentioned them
30:06
earlier
30:07
7178 up very very slightly on the day and bitcoin is uh
30:14
78 368 so that's what a one percent one percent fall
30:21
david the market's looking a little bit a little bit fragile looking a little bit
30:28
cracked if you like.
30:30
Yeah.
30:32
You've gone.
30:34
The inflation number that we, I'm here.
30:36
Are you there?
30:37
There you are now, yes.
30:37
Thank you.
30:39
Okay.
30:40
You know, the inflation number yesterday, which was 3%, 3.1%, doesn't reflect what
30:46
lies ahead.
30:48
And as you go on about the oil price, it's very serious for countries like South
30:52
Africa.
30:53
And I think there is a deep fear that it's going to eat into profits, eat into
30:59
margins,
31:01
and certainly hurt the...
31:03
consumer, because oil and travel is a big, travel, petrol is a big part of our
31:08
economy,
31:08
not only from private people, but from businesses as well.
31:11
And I think there is this concern about where rates are going.
31:16
And then on the other hand, you've got falling commodity prices that we saw
31:22
today, oil down.
31:24
They're not going anywhere, Lindsay.
31:27
The gold's at 4,700, having been at 5'3".
31:31
or higher than that.
31:32
And I think it's concerning people.
31:35
We're not going to repeat what we saw last year.
31:37
So our markets are fragile.
31:40
Our market is very, very fragile.
31:42
And the retailers are reflecting that.
31:46
I don't know what happened to Clix, because while you were talking, I looked
31:52
at the major issue,
31:54
and there was nothing there.
31:56
There's nothing there at all, actually.
31:58
It says here, group turnover up 7.4%, trading margin.
32:00
maintained at 9.1%.
32:02
Viv, when was the last time you went to clicks?
32:05
Viv Govender, you must have gone to clicks recently.
32:09
Yeah, I prove my local pharmacy, but I do go to clicks occasionally.
32:13
And look, I mean, it's obviously a purchase that people have to make, but a
32:18
lot of stuff is like people say,
32:20
obviously driven by the luxury demand because a lot of the money comes from
32:24
things that throw a few money and so on and toiletries.
32:26
The one thing I want to talk about is that you talked about the Federal Reserve
32:30
interest rate going to 5% this year.
32:32
Do you really believe that's going to be the case with Washington?
32:32
No, no, the US 10-year, the US 10-year.
32:36
That's what I think.
32:38
But anyway, it's the same thing.
32:40
With the Fed basically coming, you know, with the Fed chair changing,
32:44
do you think that might not be something that the markets may be overestimating?
32:48
Because I think he's going to be a lot more dovish, because that's what Trump is
32:52
bringing in place for.
32:54
He has said, his phrase was, wash the new Fed chair.
32:58
He said he will not...
33:00
be a glove puppet.
33:01
He will not be Trump's glove puppet.
33:04
So, in other words, he's set out his stool.
33:07
He's saying that, but does he believe it?
33:09
I don't know.
33:11
Viv,
33:12
I don't think that they can cut rates much more with gas prices at 4.20 a gallon
33:18
in the United States across the many states, I think.
33:23
If you look at Trump's people he's put in this time around, they have been sock
33:27
puppets.
33:27
They've been Cash Patel, Hexit.
33:29
Even people like that Trustee Noem was replaced, he basically has been choosing
33:36
people for loyalty.
33:38
And I don't know if the Fed chair is going to be different.
33:40
And I do honestly think that if you had to basically bet on what the market thinks
33:47
the logical thing for the Fed to do for the year and what the actual outcome for
33:49
the Fed for the year is,
33:51
you wouldn't be too off base to basically assume that whatever the logical, normal,
33:54
average Fed chair would have done in the past,
33:56
this person is going to be basically one or two cuts below that.
33:57
you know in terms of outcomes uh so i i wanted to like you know basically maybe a
34:04
half percent or a quarter percent below what the
34:06
normal uh reaction is going to be uh by a fed share and i think that's something to
34:09
be concerned about another
34:11
that's weakening the long-term stability of the U.S.
34:13
And this is what I want to highlight.
34:14
It's what's happening in the U.S.
34:15
right now.
34:16
It's not just what Trump is doing now.
34:17
It's the effect on the long-term stability of the country that's going to last way
34:24
after his leaving power,
34:26
you know, hopefully in a couple of years' time.
34:28
On the JSC today, Anglo-American up 5.1%,
34:31
British-American tobacco up 2.5%, Aspen up 2.4%,
34:37
Boxer up one and a third, and MTN at 1.1% on the downside,
34:42
Clix down 8.3%.
34:46
Karoo down 5%, Northam's down nearly 5%, and Diskem, after Clix,
34:53
down 4.8%.
34:55
Anything else you're seeing, David?
34:59
I think you've covered most of them.
35:00
Just on Clix, do you know that we're back to where we were in 2020?
35:05
That's how far down this company.
35:08
I'm quite shattered by that, you know,
35:10
because this was one of these dependable businesses that you thought would just go
35:16
up and up.
35:18
And we kept saying, oh, you know, it's it's you can rely on it.
35:22
It's dependable.
35:23
And I'm actually shattered to see how far back it has come down.
35:30
It's quite a worry.
35:31
So wait a second.
35:32
Say that again.
35:33
Where are we now?
35:34
If I look at a chart.
35:35
The share price is 275.88 I've got.
35:40
So what is that?
35:40
Okay.
35:41
So if we go back, if I go back to, this is where it was in 2023.
35:48
But if you go further down the line, you know, it's kind of the same area that it
35:54
was in
35:56
2021. And it reached peaks.
35:59
round about 20, I'm just looking here, at the end of 24,
36:04
fell up again in 2025, a year ago.
36:08
So one year ago, we had this at 339,000, call it 700.
36:15
We're down to where?
36:16
28,000, 29,000 now, or below that, 28,000.
36:21
That's the kind of fall that we see.
36:23
Dramatic fall.
36:24
And I think it's It's, it's, it's.
36:27
In fact, right across the board that we're starting to see retailers falling
36:33
similarly.
36:35
So it always pays to have a look at a chart, but I'm actually quite shaken about
36:40
this one.
36:42
I don't follow companies in that,
36:43
but I'm quite surprised at the kind of fall that we have seen in a company which
36:50
was like pick and pay,
36:52
the mainstay of the retail sector.
36:54
Bang goes my crystal challenge.
36:56
Did you?
36:58
Listen, I'm with you.
36:59
I also got all the retailers.
37:01
I was full with them saying this is going to be the
37:07
year.
37:09
This is going to be the year.
37:09
Yeah.
37:10
Exactly.
37:10
Okay.
37:10
Oh, dear.
37:10
Okay, gentlemen, what a fascinating chat.
37:12
Thank you very much for your time.
37:13
Viv Govender is from Rann, Swiss, in Johannesburg.
37:16
David, also from the same city.
37:19
David Shapiro from Sasson Securities.
37:21
And that was the 5 o'clock shadow.
37:23
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