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

• 0:00
  You're listening to Strictly Business Podcast with Lindsay Williams.
• 0:05
  The JSC has closed its doors for another day, so it's time for the 5 o'clock
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  shadow.
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  And as always, on a Thursday, it's the Doubleheader Dream Team Edition with Viv
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  Govender from RAND Swiss and David Shapiro from Sassfin
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  Securities. David, I'll start with you, if I can, with data coming out of the United
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  States.
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  Can you sum it up for us?
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  I think with US weekly jobless claims, filings, and also US GDP, I think, came
• 0:27
  out today.
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  Can you tell us?
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  Yeah, well, I mean, it's far better than anyone expected.
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  The U.S.
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  GDP in the third quarter is 4.4%. That's a huge number.
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  I mean, considering I know it was up higher, but this has been revised even
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  higher.
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  I can't remember where it's come from.
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  But I mean, it just shows you how resilient the U.S.
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  economy is.
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  And also jobless numbers, you know, the number of claims now are steadying.
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  So there's no major layoffs or anything like that.
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  And against that, you're getting some fairly decent numbers coming out of, you
• 1:06
  know,
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  out of corporates, J&J today, yesterday, sorry.
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  So, I mean, overall, to sum it up, the U.S.
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  economy is in good shape.
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  And I mean, if you compare this and why I'm bringing this up and I want to hear
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  Niv's response or reaction to it or even yours, Lindsay, you know, I listened to
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  the full
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  Trump speech yesterday at Davos.
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  And, you know, I was, I don't know what,
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  stupefied because he just laid into everybody.
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  But why I bring this up?
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  Because the one thing he did attack was both the UK and certainly had a full go at
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  Europe and, you know, even Switzerland.
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  And fundamentally just making some quotes about, you know, the electricity usage and
• 1:59
  how this has gone down.
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  significantly, you know, over the last few decades, just pointing out how backward
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  Europe and the UK have gone, you know, whereas the US is just roaring ahead.
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  And, I mean, these are his friends, You know, he's having a full go at his mates.
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  So I just thought about it.
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  I said, you know, maybe he's got a point.
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  I was sitting there and said, yeah, well, maybe he has got a point.
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  Maybe they have been a bit stodgy and need to do things.
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  And this just kind of, these numbers reinforce, you know,
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  just how powerful the US is economically.
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  So it's very hard to back against them, you know,
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  while they continue to run like this for whatever reason.
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  And I don't think Trump has had anything to do with it, although he claims that he
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  did.
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  Yes, it's always I did this and I did that.
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  We know that.
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  Yes, yes.
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  Viv, you mentioned Mark Carney just before we came on air, the PM of Canada, former
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  governor of the Bank of England.
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  Of course, a very intelligent man, a very considered man and a brutal man when it
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  came to his speech.
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  So start with his speech, if you would, and then we can get your opinions and
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  mine, of course, even mine, David said.
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  even my opinions on Trump.
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  I know where it's going.
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  I know where it's going.
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  There's so much to talk about.
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  But Viv, Mark Carney, first of all, please.
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  Okay, so the Carney speech, basically he called it the rupture.
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  He basically pointed out the fact that, you know, we've always talked about the
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  world order being a rules-based world order, but in reality,
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  it was never a rule-based world order.
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  When people, we liked the bad things, we ignored them.
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  And people we didn't like were hurt, we ignored that.
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  And like, he just went through the whole thing.
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  and saying that that and basically now we can't ignore things because you know
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  effectively we are the guys being hurt uh and
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  that was like the the speech he gave out and the thing to consider here is monk
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  khani you know he is considered he's the
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  most establishment person you can imagine you know like the head of two central
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  banks globally the
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  pm of of of a g20 country this is like of canada you know what i mean this is like
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  if you're looking at the most mainstream
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  steady person in the world you can find is probably going to be Mark Carney.
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  And for him to make a speech like that is what makes war, you know, impressive or
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  more, you know, impactful.
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  But speaking of what David said just now, I mean, the thing with the U.S.
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  is irrespective of what Trump does, you know, there's many billionaires in the
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  U.S.
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  right now that have said very bad things about Trump.
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  And he can't really do much about it because the U.S.
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  system allows you to do that.
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  You basically have seen in places like, you know, China.
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  Even in places like some other parts of the world, where if you offend the guy in
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  charge, you are in trouble.
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  The US system can overcome a very bad leader or a very erratic leader because of
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  its innate strengths.
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  And the thing to be mentioned is that the jobs numbers,
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  you can't look at the unemployment numbers coming up, the new jobs numbers coming
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  out,
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  without taking into account that what Trump is doing with immigration is
• 5:00
  basically resetting that number.
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  So if you look at, for instance, how many jobs created in the US, it's significantly
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  less than it was during the Biden years.
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  It doesn't make a difference.
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  The number that the initial jobless claims is more important because that is going to
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  tell you just how many people are claiming for unemployment.
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  The new jobs being created, that's a kind of almost a false number just because
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  immigration, both legal and illegal in the U.S.,
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  has come down so dramatically.
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  And so I do think that we look at the jobs numbers in the U.S., it's a bit deceptive.
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  But as for the growth rate, we have been saying AI, the kind of spending we're
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  doing right now, has to translate into GDP growth at some point in time.
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  And maybe we are starting to see the start of that.
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  And if that is the case, then this would just be, you know, a normal kind of number
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  going forward, might even be a low number going forward.
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  Because by all estimates, if AI is really taking off, we should be expecting, you
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  know, I mean,
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  that lady from our capital talked about 30%, three zero percent GDP growth rates,
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  which, you know,
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  theoretically is not out of the realm of possibility.
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  If we do have that AI take off, like something might be occurring.
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  Just before I go to you, David, I want to stay with Viv, because I want to ask you,
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  Viv,
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  can you have an economy that grows at 4, 5, 6, 10 percent?
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  I mean, Trump was talking even higher numbers.
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  He got a little bit carried away with himself.
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  What a surprise.
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  But can you have a growth rate like that and subdued employment numbers because of
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  AI?
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  Can that happen, Viv?
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  It's almost certainly going to happen because the way AI grows the economy is by
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  replacing people.
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  That's by definition how it's going to do it.
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  You don't go out and basically make trillions of dollars of new value without
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  just that extent replacing people.
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  Now, some people are going to make a lot more money because they're going to be a
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  lot more useful.
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  But, I mean, we are talking about the kind of disruptions.
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  I mean, people talk about the Industrial Revolution.
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  They talk about other revolutions in the world, like technological revolutions.
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  But I think the Industrial Revolution is probably the key one.
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  There was a reason that the Luddites were doing things,
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  that the sabotage guys were throwing their shoes at looms and so on.
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  It's because the disruption.
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  The people's lives is going to be dramatic and a lot of people are going to be
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  unemployed, even as the economy grows like, you know,
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  10 plus percent a year.
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  And the thing that you've got to understand is that, you know, there's a
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  reason that we had all these like major, you know,
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  revolutions and all these kind of crazy things happening around the time of the
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  Industrial Revolution throughout all of Europe and even globally.
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  It was because of the fact that, you know, even though much more wealth has been
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  created, it was not being created in the normal way.
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  And that disruption is going to be or was gigantic.
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  All that we can see right now, this disruption is going to be larger.
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  And the one thing I would point out is this.
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  Even if the U.S.
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  manages to get perfectly right and basically reaches the world very well,
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  etc., they're going to do that in the U.S.
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  We in South Africa are not going to touch that money.
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  People in Lagos or people in Delhi or people in other parts of the world are not
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  going to see any of that money.
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  But we will see all of the disruption.
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  And that's the thing to be concerned about.
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  Yes, it is concerning.
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  David, Donald Trump's speeches, the second speech today was quite extraordinary.
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  I mean, this board of peace business.
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  I'd love to get your view on that.
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  But I sort of made the analogy, it's like the rubber knickers, you're driving along
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  the motorway,
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  and suddenly the traffic slows down.
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  You don't know why it slows down.
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  But you know, you sit there for 20 minutes, and then you find out why it
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  slowed down.
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  It's because on the side of the road, there's been an accident.
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  There's a couple of police cars.
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  There's an ambulance.
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  There's a fire engine.
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  It's been put over to the side of the road.
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  There's still three lanes going.
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  It's in the lay-by.
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  But you slow down so that you can have a look at it because you can't help
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  yourself.
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  You're a rubbernecker.
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  And that's what Trump's speech like was to me this morning.
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  I watched this thing and I said to myself, why are you doing this?
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  You've seen it all before.
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  You've heard it all before.
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  You've heard about the border.
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  You've heard about...
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  The growth, and you've heard about eight wars being solved and you didn't get the
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  Nobel Peace Prize.
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  And you've heard about windmills costing $1,000 every time they rotate.
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  It's just unbelievable.
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  And the whole concept of the Board of Peace, I became so angry.
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  For the first time, I literally and metaphorically walked out of a Trump
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  speech, David.
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  He's out of control now, surely.
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  Totally.
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  I think that despite the fact that he's out of control, I don't think anybody
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  cares.
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  You know, he makes a noise, but you know that it's more than a noise than anything.
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  When I listened to his talk and I started off, I got very worried.
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  I said, oh, the market's going to be slaughtered.
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  And I still have an issue, and I'll bring it up now, that concerns me.
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  But I thought, oh, the markets are going to, you know, and so on.
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  And then at the end of the speech, he said, well, there's no trade.
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  He didn't mention trade.
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  There's no more tariffs.
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  And, you know, despite the noise, you know, I call him Roy of the Rovers.
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  I mean, Man United could buy him because he would just win the league for them.
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  You know, he's just so super talented in everything that he does.
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  And everybody else is so utterly stupid.
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  You know, he's just a superhero.
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  And I listened to this as well.
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  And yet the market just like kind of brushed it aside.
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  But Lindsay, where it's, this is, you know, this is the interesting thing is
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  that when Jensen Wang went to.
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  Davos and started talking, he had an impact on semiconductors.
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  And I still think the underlying business is very, very strong.
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  I listened to Mark Benioff as well, you know, on Salesforce. Well, he wasn't
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  talking about Salesforce.
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  He was talking about, you know, software as an enterprise or software as a service.
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  You know, he was talking about how they're gearing themselves up.
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  And you're getting a feel for where American business is beginning to focus
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  itself and help.
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  powerful it is what worries me and this is where i'm coming to go look at the dollar
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  you know the
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  dollar remains under a lot of pressure okay and the bonds despite yeah and the
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  bonds despite
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  the fact that and
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  gold price is going up gold price is going up platinum price is up silver hasn't come
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  down so
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  on so i mean if you look at all of those
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  they're not responding to the equity business.
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  It's a totally different thing.
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  You know what I mean?
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  In those markets, there still are a lot of concerns.
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  Whether it's tied to Japan, I'm not quite sure.
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  But I would have thought with the market now recovering everything, you know,
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  we're back on a ride.
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  Semiconductor companies, well, IT companies are moving.
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  The bond market hasn't moved, you know, or hardly.
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  The dollar...
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  I mean, the RAND's now 1620.
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  Yeah.
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  You know, these are big moves.
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  And I thought the RAND would be 17, 17, not at all.
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  Gold's still strong.
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  People are still going in there.
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  There still is this underlying fear there.
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  So even though, you know what I'm saying, even though the equity market is strong
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  and we're celebrating that,
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  there's another market that's saying, hold on, you know, be careful.
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  And I can't reconcile the two, you know, the moods of the two.
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  No.
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  There is something going on in the background.
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  The gold price yesterday got close to 4,900,
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  came below 4,800 when Trump said at the end of his speech that he wasn't going to
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  invade Greenland
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  militarily.
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  And then the market goes shooting up again and gold comes down when he said that
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  tariffs, all that sort of thing.
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  It's just so weird what's been happening.
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  But Viv, next week, the Fed has got a big problem, Viv, because how does it analyse
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  a good GDP number,
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  bad jobs numbers?
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  And maybe bad jobs numbers when the real thing comes out, the jobless claims, quite
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  soon,
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  the first Friday of February.
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  But how does it react?
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  Does it take one?
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  Does it take the other?
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  And does it say, you know what, I just listened to Viv Govender on the podcast.
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  And yes, there has now been a new world order created, not at Davos, but in
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  markets.
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  Viv, the Fed, what would you do?
• 12:55
  Look, I mean, the Fed has to be more hawkish than it probably wants to be.
• 12:58
  Given all things fair, I mean, like, I'm not saying it's going to, let's just say
• 13:05
  the mark, the inflation rate was low enough and et cetera,
• 13:07
  which I don't think it is at the moment, but if it was low enough to basically give
• 13:11
  it like a tendency to basically try and cut rates,
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  the Fed would probably have to stay and not cut rates in that scenario, just
• 13:18
  because they're being attacked on their credibility.
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  And to preserve their credibility, they have to almost like do the opposite of
• 13:22
  what they're being commanded to do.
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  You know what I mean?
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  They've got to kind of show backbone.
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  And so I do suspect that the Fed is...
• 13:30
  actually going to be a little more hawkish than default just because of the fact that
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  that's the way they can show that
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  they're not kowtowing to Trump at the moment.
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  They're probably going to hold steady for the next meeting and maybe for the next
• 13:42
  couple of months afterwards.
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  The big question of the year is going to be around the Fed.
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  Who's going to be on that Fed at the end of the year?
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  You know what I mean?
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  He didn't.
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  He didn't lay...
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  He just kept going on at Powell.
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  In the most destructive way.
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  And calling him every kind of name.
• 14:01
  And, you know, that was supported by Besant as well.
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  I listened to Besant's speech as well.
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  And he was saying, oh, you know,
• 14:08
  he put a lot of blame on Powell saying he should have had an investigation into Lisa
• 14:14
  Cook.
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  He should have had an investigation in his own department about the overrun.
• 14:18
  You know, and the fact that he's done that, you know, why do we have to do it?
• 14:21
  So on.
• 14:22
  So he was he's Trump's man.
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  You know what I mean?
• 14:25
  He's.
• 14:26
  He's formulated his attack as well.
• 14:29
  He didn't hold back.
• 14:30
  He had a full go at Gavin Newsom, who's from California.
• 14:36
  Governor of California, yes.
• 14:37
  He had a full go at him, saying he's hobnobbing with his sugar daddy.
• 14:43
  Do you know Gavin Newsom?
• 14:46
  I think he's the former husband or boyfriend of Trump's son's ex-wife.
• 14:51
  Yeah, there's a link there somewhere.
• 14:53
  But Newsom brings it upon himself.
• 14:56
  He does say some good things, and he does say what everybody else wants to say, but
• 15:01
  he shouldn't say it as governor of California,
• 15:03
  which is one of the top economies in the world outside of countries.
• 15:06
  I think it's the 14th biggest economy in the world or something like that.
• 15:10
  But anyway, talking about Viv, as you were, Mark Carney being, you know,
• 15:14
  the most conservative and the most reasonable and the most this and that,
• 15:19
  having a CV.
• 15:21
  that is the envy of most.
• 15:22
  Another person, and I think David, you would agree with me,
• 15:25
  that projects stability and reasonableness, if that's a word,
• 15:30
  is Christine Lagarde, I would say.
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  I'd say she's, I don't know if she's particularly good as the head of the ECB,
• 15:38
  but she certainly comes across as being very, very organised.
• 15:42
  And what happened last night was very interesting.
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  European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde abruptly walked out.
• 15:48
  of a high-profile private dinner at the World Economic Forum in Davos after US
• 15:54
  Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick
• 15:56
  harshly criticised Europe's economic underperformance, according to media
• 15:59
  reports.
• 15:59
  Now, David, you're going on about this, and you're starting to believe it as well,
• 16:02
  that we in Europe here are having siestas in the afternoon and four-day weeks and
• 16:09
  things like that,
• 16:11
  which is true to a certain extent.
• 16:13
  But Lutnick had a full go at Europe, and she just walked out of this dinner.
• 16:16
  Which is unheard of.
• 16:16
  I wish it had been seen.
• 16:18
  I wish it had been seen and not a closed doors dinner.
• 16:21
  But a big rift has emerged between two economic superpowers, don't you think?
• 16:27
  You know what I can understand.
• 16:29
  I mean, it's she's not directly responsible for that.
• 16:33
  She's trying to change things.
• 16:36
  I mean, the post-war period in Europe was, you know,
• 16:40
  leaned and still does lean towards socialism for whatever reason.
• 16:45
  You're not going to change it.
• 16:48
  Yes, they could have been a little more aggressive.
• 16:51
  You know, policies haven't really favoured, I mean, they haven't tried hard
• 16:56
  enough and they've had,
• 16:58
  it's been more a political issue than an economic issue.
• 17:00
  You know, it'll take time, you know, but the way they go at them in a personal way,
• 17:06
  I can understand Christine Lagarde.
• 17:08
  You know, he's gone, and these are the allies.
• 17:08
  I mean, this is the West.
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  Rather help them, you know, instead of accusing them.
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  of, you know, just leaning on the US and crooking them or whatever they have
• 17:21
  described them.
• 17:23
  Yes, we know that Europe has lagged.
• 17:23
  And we know, you know, Mertz from Germany is trying to change it.
• 17:28
  He's trying to turn things around.
• 17:29
  I'm very impressed with the Finnish prime minister as well, who's also a very
• 17:34
  articulate man.
• 17:36
  But the way they go about it is so insulting.
• 17:38
  You know, if I was Christine Lagarde, I'd also say, go away, you know.
• 17:44
  I know they can't continue without, you know, they can't make it without America.
• 17:50
  They need America.
• 17:52
  The West needs America.
• 17:54
  But the way he went at Biden, he called him the most stupid man or, you know,
• 17:57
  the most awful man that he ever knew.
• 17:59
  You know, those kind of things.
• 18:01
  To criticize a former president like that, no.
• 18:05
  You know, and people have got every right to walk out.
• 18:08
  He just hasn't got manners.
• 18:10
  So good for her.
• 18:13
  Yes.
• 18:14
  He's got to be taught a lesson.
• 18:15
  You know, you can't just say those things.
• 18:18
  And this was an interesting.
• 18:19
  And his bankruptcies, you know, if you go at all the businesses that he's ruined.
• 18:24
  Okay.
• 18:26
  But anyway, you should never start on Trump.
• 18:31
  This was an important Davos, I think, because it's a Davos like no other,
• 18:36
  where it has become exactly what Mark Carney described the world.
• 18:43
  It's not rules based anymore.
• 18:44
  It's just a free for all.
• 18:45
  Larry Fink of BlackRock hosted a dinner for 100 global leaders.
• 18:49
  And it was just it was just I don't know what it was.
• 18:52
  It was like a town hall event, you know.
• 18:54
  where everyone stands up and says what they like and shouts at each other.
• 18:57
  Very sad indeed.
• 18:58
  David, I have to stay with you very briefly because this is the five o'clock
• 19:02
  shadow.
• 19:02
  So we've got to look at a couple of sets of results.
• 19:04
  And we look at Sassl, the share price up 14% today.
• 19:07
  And also Clix came out with a trading update.
• 19:10
  I think it was down 6%.
• 19:11
  And Viv, I'll come to you on the couple of opinions that I've had about South Africa
• 19:16
  for 2026.
• 19:18
  But David, first of all, those two sets of results.
• 19:19
  Did you have a chance to look at them?
• 19:20
  Not in deep.
• 19:22
  I've still got my family here from them.
• 19:23
  Australia.
• 19:24
  I just took them back to the airport and that.
• 19:26
  But Cecil was a Cecil had come under pressure because it had been downgraded to
• 19:32
  a cell.
• 19:32
  I think it was either JP Morgan or one of the big houses.
• 19:35
  And I think the trading statement, I haven't genuinely not looked at it in
• 19:42
  great detail,
• 19:44
  but probably better than everybody expected and it bounced slightly.
• 19:46
  It's still under pressure.
• 19:47
  It's still not going anywhere.
• 19:49
  I'm not mad about Cecil.
• 19:51
  What I do just to you To digress slightly on that, I like where BHP is going, where
• 19:57
  Anglo is going,
• 19:59
  and where even Glencore is going.
• 20:00
  If you feel compelled to go into that area and to find a miner,
• 20:05
  rather go for the diversifiers who are starting to look better.
• 20:09
  I think clicks are something we've been worrying about for some time now,
• 20:15
  especially on that side.
• 20:16
  We've been talking about it for the other economy is not really.
• 20:21
  The retail side is not really kind of matching up to the expectations that
• 20:28
  everybody
• 20:28
  has had about the economy.
• 20:31
  I don't know why specifically Clix has been under pressure.
• 20:34
  I don't know whether Viv's had a look at it.
• 20:38
  Maybe it was just a little bit overrated.
• 20:41
  You know what, it's a good business, but it was a trading update for the period,
• 20:50
  for 20-odd weeks.
• 20:51
  I don't know what it is.
• 20:52
  You know, when you look at it, sales were slightly down or the comparatives were
• 20:56
  down,
• 20:57
  but why they knocked it by that amount, I don't know.
• 21:00
  Okay.
• 21:01
  Next week, we'll be talking about a series of interviews that I've conducted with
• 21:07
  people from one particular firm.
• 21:09
  I can't talk about the people involved or the content yet because they haven't
• 21:13
  published it themselves on their own
• 21:15
  intranet or whatever it is.
• 21:17
  So I have to wait till next week.
• 21:19
  But Viv, one of the things that has popped up is.
• 21:21
  the view on South Africa for this year, whether it be market-wise or
• 21:26
  macroeconomic-wise.
• 21:28
  And one person said, it's all very well being bullish about South Africa and
• 21:32
  getting off the grey list, etc.
• 21:34
  But bear in mind on the same day that South Africa was taken off the grey list,
• 21:38
  so was Burkina Faso.
• 21:40
  And that was the way this person said, you know, don't get too excited about it.
• 21:43
  And if the rand is where it is, it's because the dollar's weak and commodities
• 21:49
  and commodities on are very cyclical.
• 21:51
  So no, not particularly interested in South African stocks.
• 21:54
  Viv, what would you say about that?
• 21:57
  I know it's not your excitement area at the moment, but still an important part of
• 22:02
  your business.
• 22:03
  Look, I mean, South Africa was, I think, the third or fourth best performing stock
• 22:08
  market in 2025 in the world.
• 22:10
  It was really, really good performance, driven by, of course, commodities,
• 22:15
  especially gold, platinum, et cetera, recovering quite nicely.
• 22:17
  That being said, I think the IMF's most recent estimate for growth in South Africa
• 22:22
  this year is like 1.4%,
• 22:24
  which is, if you think about it, I mean, the US is doing 4 plus percent and we're
• 22:27
  doing 1.4%.
• 22:29
  That differential is insane, considering how poor we are compared to how rich they
• 22:31
  are.
• 22:32
  There obviously has to be some kind of follow through on the vibe shift that
• 22:39
  happened after the election that we saw a couple of years ago.
• 22:41
  Yes, we have seen load shedding and yes, we have seen.
• 22:42
  the wrong gets stronger, et cetera.
• 22:43
  But we haven't seen growth tick off.
• 22:44
  We haven't seen unemployment fall.
• 22:46
  And until we see those things happening, I mean, we're going to be very nervous about
• 22:53
  South Africa and about what's been, you know, especially things like the retail
• 22:55
  sector, et cetera,
• 22:57
  things that are dependent on the South African economy.
• 22:59
  The things that are not dependent on the economy, things like the gold price, the
• 23:02
  platinum price, and the gold and platinum stocks that are there for, I think those
• 23:04
  things are, you know,
• 23:06
  more reasonable investments at the moment.
• 23:08
  But if you had to give me a choice, I would basically be staying away from a lot
• 23:10
  of the South African in companies until I can see our growth rate actually start to
• 23:12
  increase.
• 23:14
  Well said.
• 23:16
  OK, let's have a look at some numbers now.
• 23:18
  Dollar round is 16.19.
• 23:20
  The British pound against the round 21.81.
• 23:22
  The euro round 18.99 now.
• 23:24
  Look at that.
• 23:26
  It was 23 about six months ago, I think it was.
• 23:28
  Extraordinary performance from the round against the euro.
• 23:30
  Euro dollar, though, the euro is doing well by half a percent, 117.30 now.
• 23:32
  On to commodities.
• 23:33
  Gold price $4,843, up $6, getting very, very volatile at these high levels.
• 23:40
  unusual to see $100 swings in a day.
• 23:42
  The platinum price, $2,525, up another $45 an ounce.
• 23:47
  And palladium is just below $1,900, up about $16, just under 1%. Now,
• 23:54
  all important other commodities.
• 23:56
  Where are they on my screen here?
• 23:58
  Where's the CRB index gone?
• 24:00
  Okay, let's have a look at that.
• 24:02
  Okay, now then, I've got to find the All-important oil price, which is,
• 24:09
  gentlemen,
• 24:11
  after what's been happening geopolitically and the threat in Iran, it's been behaving
• 24:15
  itself.
• 24:17
  The Brent crude oil price today is down 1.75%, $64.09 per barrel.
• 24:20
  West Texas, $59.49, down 1.9%.
• 24:24
  Natural gas prices up 12.5%, incidentally.
• 24:28
  Copper, which is terribly important now that Anglo-American has done its thing
• 24:33
  corporate-wise into a copper company.
• 24:35
  $5.73 per pound, that's down
• 24:38
  0.6%. It was about $6.30 per pound last week, so coming off the boil quite
• 24:45
  recently.
• 24:47
  The US 10-year bond yield, that's been the interesting one.
• 24:51
  In November, end of November, beginning of December, it was below 4%, now
• 24:56
  4.26%. It got to 4.30% yesterday.
• 24:59
  That is a big, big move.
• 25:00
  S&P 500.
• 25:02
  6,933, up a third of a percent today, has been above 7,000 this year.
• 25:09
  And Bitcoin, I don't like the look of Bitcoin at all.
• 25:13
  It's 88,850, was 96,000 three days ago.
• 25:17
  And yeah, it's coming towards the, it's coming towards recent lows, actually.
• 25:22
  So that's it, Viv.
• 25:23
  Any other prices that you like that have been, or don't like, that have been
• 25:29
  influenced by the AI people,
• 25:31
  the AI luminaries that have been speaking in Davos, like...
• 25:32
  Jensen Wang, for example?
• 25:35
  I was so proud last year.
• 25:37
  I bought Micron, the stock, right?
• 25:40
  Yes.
• 25:41
  250 plus percent.
• 25:43
  And then today I look at SanDisk and I think to myself, I picked the wrong memory
• 25:46
  company.
• 25:47
  SanDisk in the last year, right, for my Micron, did 250 plus percent, did 1,250
• 25:53
  plus percent.
• 25:56
  So I got the memory story right.
• 25:58
  I picked the wrong memory company.
• 26:01
  ai jealousy coming in you know what i in fact um i was looking at uh when
• 26:08
  when last year lindsay people started to say to me oh and videos too rich you know
• 26:15
  please take some out and
• 26:17
  get out of it and i said okay well you've got to remain exposed
• 26:20
  to semiconductors and there's something called the the SOX, S-O-X-X,
• 26:25
  which is an ETF with no more than 30 odd companies in it.
• 26:28
  So it's very tight.
• 26:30
  But if you look at that, Viv, and this is where I'm so happy that we went into it
• 26:36
  because it's got all of them.
• 26:38
  It's got Micron.
• 26:40
  It's got all the companies, AMD, Broadcom, you name.
• 26:41
  It's got a mixture of all of them in good proportion.
• 26:44
  Now, what's interesting is that because of Micron's run, it now becomes the biggest
• 26:50
  holding in the SOX.
• 26:52
  And you've got almost a 10% or 7%, 8% exposure to Micron in addition to NVIDIA,
• 26:58
  in addition to everything.
• 26:59
  that but It was a great call.
• 27:01
  I must say that, you know, having done that, I think the other one is Samsung as
• 27:07
  well, which is the other area.
• 27:09
  It's Gehainix as well.
• 27:10
  It's basically, what the thing is, is just to all the stuff that they're doing right
• 27:17
  now, video, have you seen the new video apps, by the way?
• 27:19
  They are shockingly good.
• 27:21
  Okay.
• 27:23
  I am not picking up videos immediately anymore as being AI until the circumstance
• 27:26
  is just so weird.
• 27:28
  That's okay.
• 27:30
  It must be AI.
• 27:32
  But if you just put a video that could pass, you know, like, like master by just
• 27:32
  plain logic, I would,
• 27:34
  I would be very difficult to find out whether it's real or not.
• 27:35
  Those video kind of things, the other kind of stuff is doing right now, those things
• 27:39
  take a lot of memory.
• 27:41
  And that's what this stuff is really playing into.
• 27:41
  And I think if you think of what people are going to be doing going forward, it is
• 27:47
  a video in terms of creating your content, etc.
• 27:49
  I mean, you've got to see the new masking apps where you basically put a filter on
• 27:53
  that look like somebody else.
• 27:55
  There's one with the cast of Stranger Things, if you watch that TV show, and it
• 28:01
  is unspotable.
• 28:03
  Unless you knew who these people were, you would think they were just normally doing
• 28:05
  what they're doing.
• 28:05
  You know what I mean?
• 28:06
  It's amazingly good.
• 28:08
  And they're all fitting into this thing.
• 28:10
  And I don't see how this stops going forward.
• 28:12
  Right now, even we're seeing, I think maybe supply might increase in the future.
• 28:15
  This is a manufactured product.
• 28:17
  But I mean, the demand for these companies' products are going to be
• 28:22
  exponentially into the future.
• 28:24
  Viv, scaring me again, so I've got to come back down to earth.
• 28:24
  On the JSC today, Sassel up 14%, Coronation up nearly 7%, MTN up nearly 6%,
• 28:30
  Implats up 5.3%, and Truas up 5.25% on the downside.
• 28:34
  Clicks down 6.3%, Anglo Gold Ashanti leading the gold miners down 6%,
• 28:40
  Goldfields down 4.75%,
• 28:42
  Harmony 3.4%, and DRD Gold down 3.4%.
• 28:44
  Does that mean that they're saying that the gold price has peaked?
• 28:47
  Maybe they do.
• 28:48
  Sometimes the gold price...
• 28:49
  is led by the miners.
• 28:51
  I don't know.
• 28:52
  Quick one, David, because we've got 30 seconds, please.
• 28:55
  I think it's looking stretched.
• 28:58
  You know, those miners, how far can we actually push it?
• 29:02
  It's not showing any major weakness, but I mean, how far can you really push them?
• 29:06
  You know, I'm saying the same thing for the Rand as well.
• 29:09
  Maybe it's time we bought the U.S.
• 29:11
  Treasury, you know, 10 years and sold the South African.
• 29:15
  I think I said that to you on Monday night, but it might be a decent swing.
• 29:19
  I'm not a trader, but, you know, I'd rather be in the 425 or 426 for the 10
• 29:25
  year rather than.
• 29:27
  The 825 for the South African.
• 29:28
  Okay, so that's the hedge fund manager in Shapiro coming out.
• 29:33
  You heard it first here.
• 29:34
  Gentlemen, thank you very much for your time.
• 29:36
  Viv Govender is from RAND Swiss, the award-winning RAND Swiss.
• 29:40
  David Shapiro from Sessom and Securities, both in Johannesburg.
• 29:43
  And that was the 5 o'clock shadow.
• 29:45
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• 29:52
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• 29:54
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• 29:57
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• 30:01
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• 30:08
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• 30:10
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• 30:15
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• 30:17
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• 30:17
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