Latest / Strictly Business Podcast / The 5 o' Clock Shadow with David Shapiro and Viv Govender

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

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You're listening to Strictly Business Podcast with Lindsay Williams.
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JSC has closed its doors for another day, so it's time for the five o'clock 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 Sasfin
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Securities in that same city.
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Gentlemen, I don't know where to start.
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Actually, I do.
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Viv and Vidya's results.
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The market was looking forward to it and the market wasn't disappointed.
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Well, slightly disappointed.
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The share price is down a little bit today, about 2%.
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But the thing is that, I mean, we talked about a $5.5 trillion company here.
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You need spectacular results, which they did kind of give just to maintain the
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valuation.
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And I think that is what we are seeing right now.
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One, 2% down at the moment is not a really big movement.
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The market overall isn't really going up a lot.
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And so I do think that it kind of just says the market is kind of accepting what
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it is Not too massively,
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you know, excited by it, even though the results were very good.
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They beat on expectations and what official expectations were.
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But like I said, this is a very valuable company and you need to have incredible
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results to get the value.
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What did they say about the future?
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That's the main thing.
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And we saw they earned $1.87 and the forecast was $1.77, I think, earnings per
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share.
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But what about the future?
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Was he still as ebullient as he has been in previous results statements?
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Yeah, look, I mean, there were some concerns about some of the future stuff.
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The market did think that was one of the softer points of the outlook here.
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The fact of the matter is that, you know, the share buyback, you know,
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you're not doing that if you just basically are assuming you have a lot of
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stuff to do with that money.
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$80 billion, you know, compared to, of course, $5.5 trillion, it's small.
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But, you know, in terms of like, you know, the overall, you know, marketplace here,
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that's still a pretty big buyback.
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He's doing a lot of deals out there.
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He is obviously seeing, I think, issues with regards to the future of the company
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because you're not going to be
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basically putting out a lot of deals to other companies.
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You're not going to be basically giving or buying back shares if you think that
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there's a huge amount of upside there.
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That being said, this company is still doing 70 plus percent in gross margins.
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It's still doing massive growth year on year from an incredibly high base in terms
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of revenue.
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I think that this is a very, very...
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Well-functioning company doing very well at the moment.
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The fact of the matter is that I mean, we looked at some of the stuff around, for
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instance, China and so on.
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And it seems that the Chinese not only not catching up to the Jetson,
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they're actually falling further behind in terms of the ability to introduce chips.
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In fact, considering some of the constraints they have, some people even
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say that this year's chips are maybe worse in some ways in China than last year's
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chips,
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which is kind of something you never ever see in the computer sector.
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So it shows that he has a great deal of protection from at least from the Chinese
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competition.
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We are starting to see some issues coming through going forward with the things
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like, for instance, Google's TP, which BlackRock has invested in, $5 billion.
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But, you know, it's not peanuts, but it's still no tiny compared to what these
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companies normally do.
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So there is competition entering here.
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When you're making, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars and you have a 70 plus
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percent gross margin,
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you are going to attract competition by no means.
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But the fact of the matter is the results so far have been very good.
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David, on Monday when we spoke, you said that you had spoken to your team and you
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said if you think it necessary
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because of what's going on with bond yields rising and the
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continuing problems in the Middle East and the oil being at elevated levels and not
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wanting to go down as we've seen
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today, every time it goes down, it wants to go back up again.
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Did you see NVIDIA's results and say, actually, that's enough now?
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Or are you even more enthused about it?
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To be honest, look, they were brilliant.
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And I think what...
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what I really like, I know they call him Professor Wang Wong. I can never
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understand whether it's Wang or Wong,
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but I'll call him Professor Jensen.
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But he always tries to give an outlook,
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almost educating or being didactic, lecturing to people about what lies ahead.
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But whether you like him or not, I mean, the numbers are just astronomical.
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He sees AI infrastructure as being $4 trillion.
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by 2030.
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You know, it's around about a trillion at the moment.
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So he sees this increasing dramatically.
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And also kind of urging the hyperscalers, you know,
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to keep investing in compute.
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In other words, they've got to keep their activities and their operations going and
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ticking over and increasing.
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And when you relate this to...
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pure numbers.
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It's massive, massive numbers.
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So
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I don't even think we can digest quarterly sales of over $80
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billion and second quarter, $90 billion.
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of sales.
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I mean, it's enormous.
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My view, and I think this is what Viv has said, is, you know,
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it's very hard for the company to grow from this level at the same kind of pace
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or for the
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market to respond in the same kind of way.
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So I'm not a seller.
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I would never go short of the company now.
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But we've got to look for what's going to catch up, you know, where perhaps other
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opportunities are.
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So I'm not even downgrading, or if I am, it's at a very small level.
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But I think they're coming from the spend.
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They're going to be a lot of other issues in that.
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And I still think, Lindsay, I still think that it's in the power and energy side
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that we're going to get
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massive opportunities coming very closely related to this.
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And if you look at the market, I've been watching those shares.
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for some time now on that.
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But if you start to look, you know, you've got, those are related to, you know,
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Arista, Corning, Vertiv,
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Honeywell, Vistra, Vertiv and Vistra, all of those starting to move, you know,
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having been under a bit of pressure as well.
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And then you've got other companies now like Arm, you know, which has said that
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it's going to be supplying AI chips now,
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you know, up 155% a year to date.
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So I think, you know, they're going to be Other areas that we can start looking at.
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Which we've talked about a lot.
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The word I've always used is auxiliary companies, and we've spoken about it.
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And I said last time the three of us spoke, this is your job now to find those.
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But don't sell it.
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Yeah, exactly.
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No, don't sell it.
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Of course not, until otherwise advised.
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The other one that's really, David, before I go to Viv on SpaceX,
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the other one that's really irritated me in some ways is Intel.
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When Trump invested in it, it was $20 a share.
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And I was talking to somebody yesterday and he said, guess what it is now?
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And I said, well, I saw it a couple of days ago.
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It was $65, $70 or something.
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He said, no, it's $117, $118 per share.
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What is that, David?
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210% because it's got manufacturing capacity.
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You need someone to make the, you know, to make the semiconductors and they've gone.
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from being what would you call a designer of those to just a
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fabricator like TSM.
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It's been a phenomenal story.
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I think Cisco as well has transformed.
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That's only up 52%.
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I apologize.
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Remind me to talk about Walmart after we finish these conversations with SpaceX and
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and everything.
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Okay, we'll do that.
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Let's get on to SpaceX before we get on to groceries.
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Okay, I'm looking at a headline on cnbc.com.
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It says SpaceX is heavily reliant on Starlink for growth and profit as it
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marches towards its NASDAQ listing,
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which it announced to the adoring public today.
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Now, I got a message from Starlink the other day, and it said,
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you can sign up in Europe for 10 euros per month.
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that's in perpetuity.
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And if you want to have Starlink when you travel to Afghanistan or Australia or
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America, you can have it for like $30, sorry,
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30 euros per month for the rest of your life.
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And I thought, this is fantastic.
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So Starlink is one thing, SpaceX is another, but the numbers are quite
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interesting because I think their revenue,
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SpaceX revenue was only 19 billion.
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the last time that they printed some numbers, and they lost $5 billion.
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Obviously, there's a lot of capex spend, but I'm probably talking nonsense because
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Viv is going to tell us whether the
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$1.2 trillion potential IPO of SpaceX is justified.
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Viv.
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So how much did SpaceX cost in your stats in terms of its yearly revenue?
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What do you say SpaceX's yearly revenue was?
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$18 billion.
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18.
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What did you say, 13 or 18?
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Lindsay?
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Yes, I said...
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How much did you say SpaceX's revenue was?
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19.
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19, okay.
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I just want to make sure.
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I think you're not counting the latest deal they've done with Anthropic.
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Anthropic's going to pay them $1.2 billion a month.
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That's roughly $15 billion right there.
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Got to pay them rent.
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Yeah.
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So the thing is that the deal that SpaceX is doing, I mean, look, David is right.
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What you've got to understand is you've just got to work the simple arithmetic
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out, right?
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So if you're looking at Jensen Wang and, you know, Micron, and you're looking at
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Samsung, SK Hynix,
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and you're looking at AMD and all these guys, TSMC, et cetera, making all these
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chips, guess what?
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These chips are like cars.
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They need petrol to run.
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They need energy to run.
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There isn't enough energy around.
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And so if you're talking about $4 trillion of AI infrastructure by 2030, like you
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said,
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that's a lot of energy.
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I mean, these data centers are...
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are taking as much power as a small city.
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These are the $10 billion data centers.
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You take about 400 of them to get $4 trillion.
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You know what I mean?
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That's 400 little small cities that you're creating in the U.S.
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over the next four years.
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How do you power these things?
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And the thing is that if you just do the calculation down the line, and I know this
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sounds like science fiction,
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but the only place you can get the energy in the world right now is either China,
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which I don't think is going to happen, or in space,
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because you just can't build these things in the developed world at the moment.
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The U.S., I mean, they've tried to build data centers around the world, and even if
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they build it in the middle of nowhere,
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they're still getting huge pushback by some small town that says, no, you're
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going to take our water, you're going to take our energy or whatever it may be,
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and they're being shut down.
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And something like 40% of these data center plans are being shut down.
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In that environment, we're going to be spending $4 trillion on infrastructure by
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2030, and who knows what by 2040.
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The only one place you can do it, if you're in the U.S., is to get the energy
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and to get the...
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the space to do the data centers is in space.
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And that's where Elon Musk is like positioning now SpaceX towards.
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And look, it's obviously, you know, I guess it's a bit of science fiction here.
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You're talking about building data centers in space.
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It does sound crazy, but I mean, this is a man that is, you know, renewable rockets.
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And I think last month or this month, he actually crossed over.
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SpaceX has put as much stuff into space in terms of kgs as the rest of the world
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combined,
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since we started putting stuff into space.
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It's got 11,000 satellites servicing its 10 million Starlink users,
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Viv, and obviously more going up all the time.
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And we don't see these launches,
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but these things are being pinged up into the atmosphere every couple of days,
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I would imagine.
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And it's an extraordinary service that they've got, and that will fund it.
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But the big question is, when you look at the numbers when they do come out, but
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before they come out, Viv...
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Do you think you would invest in SpaceX for a long-term play?
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Look, if you do believe in the future of AI being as powerful as it looks to be
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right now, and I mean, here are baseball analogies.
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They're asking, are we in the fourth inning or whatever it may be.
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I'm thinking we're in the second or third inning at the moment in terms of AI.
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If that is the case, we are going to be seeing this exponential ramp up for
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another decade or two.
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I think it makes sense.
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Even at a $2 trillion valuation, when you have a company...
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that's basically putting the majority of stuff into space, and in like multiple
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times just the world combined.
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Yes, we have Blue Origin coming about with Jeff Bezos.
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We do have the Chinese trying to do what they're doing.
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But for whatever reason, Elon Musk's genius, the people he's hired, whatever it
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may be that's making it go, SpaceX is an extraordinary company.
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And if you're looking at the entire universe, except for the little blue dots
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that we're living in, right now 90% of that belongs to SpaceX in terms of
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basically the ability to get there.
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So, yeah, I would have to have an allocation to SpaceX.
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Understanding, of course, that the valuation is extremely high.
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Understanding, of course, that we're looking at a lot of speculation going
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forward.
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But, I mean, if you do believe that space might be a thing in the future,
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unfortunately, at the moment, there is only one play that really makes sense, and
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that's SpaceX.
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David, are you a SpaceX allocator?
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Yeah, of course.
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It's just you're investing in the future.
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You don't have to put everything that you own into it.
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put an allocation in, I certainly would do it.
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I agree with Viv.
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I just think that this is we can't ignore what's happening.
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We can't ignore technological development.
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No.
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And I just want to be part of it.
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Okay, I might lose for a bit.
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You know what I mean?
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I might lose for a month or two or a few.
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But eventually this will give rewards.
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I'm going to tell you something you might enjoy.
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My son actually went to the Arsenal match versus Bernie.
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He flew from Australia.
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you know, in and out to watch it.
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But while he was traveling with Emirates from Australia, you know,
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they hook into Starlink and he was able to stream games, you know, stream live TV and
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everything,
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watch football up in the air, you know, while it was happening.
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So, I mean, you know, it's an incredible, I think,
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offering to the world and particularly for those who can't get it, you know, where
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you don't have to lay down the lines.
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or optic cables or whatever it is.
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They stick something on the roof.
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I mean, I'm moving now and I've got this delivery coming with something that gets
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stuck on the roof and it's €10 a month.
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Actually, I missed that deal, but it's probably about €20 to €25 a month.
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And when you look at the ageing European companies that offer the same internet and
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TV
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service, they're like €75, €80.
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It's an incredible service, and it will only grow.
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And 10 million, I think, will be 100 million within five years, subscribers,
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that is.
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And that's good money.
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That funds his silly excursions to Mars and that sort of thing, which, of course,
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is a complete waste of time.
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And if I was a SpaceX investor, I would be at the meeting and say, excuse me, Mr.
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Musk, please just concentrate on Starlink and stop going to Mars.
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But that's just me.
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But, David, you're an investor in that one.
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While we're on the subject of the future, what about the past?
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What about going down the grocery line and buying some tins of food and some fresh
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produce,
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David?
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Walmart.
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Walmart.
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You know what?
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I haven't gone through it in great detail, but there's something that struck me.
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First of all, the shares are down and they've lost about 7%, 8%, I think, in the
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last two days.
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Yeah.
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The numbers themselves were fine.
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You know, in line, they're still doing okay.
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But.
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They're concerned and they brought up something,
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which is what I think what we've been saying about South Africa and what we're
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going to say about, you know, Main Street, the US,
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that he said, you know, the high income people are still spending.
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But at the bottom end of the people, they've seen, you know, they sell petrol,
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they sell gas,
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Walmart, and they've seen people coming here and filling up with less than 10
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gallons.
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Meaning, you know, they're holding back on spending.
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They just put a few gallons in, come back next week, put another few gallons in and
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so on.
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And he says this is the first time it's happened since 2022.
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And it just shows you the kind of pressure that people are.
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In other words, they can't afford to fill a full tank.
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So they're starting to hold back.
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And of course, it's their outlook.
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that has taken the shares down, not what they're making at the moment.
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We've seen good numbers coming out of Home Depot, relatively speaking, under the
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circumstances,
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out of Home Depot, Lowe's.
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Target was down a bit, but I think there are a lot of structural issues there.
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But generally, the US consumer so far has held up.
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But I've been waiting for Walmart because they always give you a look into what's
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down the line.
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And I think this comment Kind of says it, says a lot.
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Yes, richer people can go and just fill up.
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But if you haven't got the money in with petrol at these levels, they are seeing a
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slowdown.
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And that's taken Walmart down over the last two days.
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And of course, that doesn't matter to Trump because he said so many times he
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really doesn't care anymore.
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He just wants to enrich himself and his family and all the companies associated
18:04
with that family.
18:06
This is just a giant...
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I mean, his presidency is just using the US and its former allies and new allies as
18:12
an ATM.
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Viv, I normally bring up
18:16
Donald Trump and I normally read something when the three of us are talking together,
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but I'm not going to do so.
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But you obviously, when you're not reading about AI and looking at your portfolio and
18:27
restructuring and reallocating that sort of thing, you must see the things that he
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has said in the last.
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a few days and the ridiculous pictures he's put on his truth social account.
18:42
You must have seen him walking along at an airport with an alien shackled next to
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him, that sort of thing.
18:51
Viv, even you must be concerned about this.
18:53
Look, I am slightly concerned about it, but there's a couple of things to note.
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Firstly, David says the rich are OK.
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I don't know if that's true because the estimates we have said, like last year,
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people were saying.
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30% of white-collar jobs by 2030 or something are going to be gone.
19:08
Just the last couple of days, I think Facebook fired 10% of its workforce.
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This is an immensely profitable company.
19:15
Amazon did the same thing a little while earlier.
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We started seeing Accenture, a lot of these places where you would have thought
19:24
these were maybe not the world's black guys flying on the private jet,
19:26
but these are the guys that could afford business class.
19:28
These were the guys making a couple hundred thousand, maybe more per year in
19:30
salaries.
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These were the upper-middle class, what you would want your children to enjoy.
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up with, you know, in terms of like just a safe, stable career.
19:37
And these are the guys that are losing jobs at the moment.
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We're seeing the happening globally.
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But, you know, people like, you know, junior lawyers, junior analysts, et
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cetera, not being hired.
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If you're going to go through a state where we have an AI like really take off
19:52
and we have that $4 trillion.
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take off.
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The pain that's going to be felt by consumers is going to be huge.
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And I don't know if the rich are going to escape that or what we call the rich.
20:00
If you're Elon Musk, you will definitely escape it.
20:03
Jeff Bezos will escape it.
20:05
But the guy that's making $300,000, $400,000 a year, I think he's much more
20:12
vulnerable to this kind of thing than you would imagine.
20:14
$300,000, $400,000 a year, that's somebody making $5 million plus a year.
20:16
You know what I mean?
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And I think that's the kind of guy that might just be vulnerable.
20:19
In terms of Trump, I mean, After He claimed to be Jesus.
20:24
I walked up back and said he was a doctor.
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After he did that whole two kings thing with King Charles, I mean, even his own
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people now,
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I think the alien stuff is basically just distraction.
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And that just means that he's basically been somebody that's effectively, how can
20:42
I say, you know,
20:44
the whole taco thing because of what's happening in Iran at the moment.
20:45
The Iranians are holding strong, you know, as we expected them to because they have
20:50
nothing to lose.
20:51
I mean, what would mean victory for the U.S.
20:53
would effectively mean death for these guys because they've not treated the
20:57
people properly.
20:57
They've not been nice to the people.
20:58
They're not going to basically have a situation in which, you know, oh, it
21:04
becomes a new country democratically ruled.
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And these guys that have been in charge and done what they've done over the last
21:10
several years are going to be sitting in villas somewhere and just, you know,
21:12
chilling.
21:14
They're going to be held in front of tribunals and stuff like that.
21:16
So they can't give up.
21:18
They can't lose because losing means death effectively.
21:20
You know what I mean?
21:22
And right now, the only other option for the U.S.
21:24
is to basically either keep bombing, which won't work properly, or have boots on the
21:27
ground,
21:27
which I think is going to cause a disaster for the U.S.
21:30
They couldn't defeat Afghanistan.
21:32
You know, they're not going to defeat Iran in any reasonable period of time.
21:35
That's going to be a new disaster for the U.S.
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And so I think he's trying to basically distract the world at the moment.
21:39
So he's not as crazy as I think people think he is.
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He's just, when he does something this crazy, he's literally trying to distract
21:47
them from the stupid things he's done.
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You know what I mean?
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I don't think he really thinks there's aliens out there and that are whatever,
21:54
but I think he thinks I can throw some aliens,
21:56
I can throw some stuff about King Charles and King Trump or whatever out there.
21:59
I can pretend that I didn't understand that was Jesus.
22:03
And that's just going to create some such noise in the marketplace out there that
22:10
they aren't going to focus on the fact that I've started a war that's going to
22:12
probably cause a
22:14
recession in my country.
22:16
Even Viv is giving him some sort of leeway, David.
22:18
I don't understand it.
22:20
But anyway, Viv, well done.
22:22
And thank you for...
22:24
distracting me from reading a couple of things I've got in front of me now about
22:26
John.
22:28
David, what about companies on the JSC and a company that you followed throughout
22:28
your career, Investec?
22:30
They came out with their results today.
22:32
The share price was up last time I looked about four and a half percent.
22:33
Is there still a place in the world for companies like Investec, banks like
22:38
Investec?
22:40
I don't know.
22:41
You know what I mean?
22:43
For me, it's going down the ladder.
22:45
It's going down the line.
22:47
It's much more about fintech.
22:49
I think the old-fashioned banks that we know, I think, are battling.
22:53
And it's an area of the market that still attracts attention simply because it's
23:00
safe.
23:01
And that's the best thing that I can say about it.
23:04
But these are not dynamic businesses or the dynamic businesses that they used to
23:09
be.
23:09
You know, when you compare, there was quite a good story in Financial Mail about
23:16
um Capitech,
23:18
you know, how they've grown and where they're going.
23:19
And, you know, within that article, you know,
23:23
you see how they're developing and how they've focused on where the people are
23:30
here,
23:30
providing them the kind of services that, number one, emerging populations need.
23:36
And also for populations, you know, I would say more or less in the middle
23:42
class,
23:42
not the extremely rich or...
23:46
in a corporate.
23:47
And it's a much more exciting area than where the older banks are.
23:53
And I put Investec in the same category as Standard Bank and First Rand and Ned Bank
23:59
and Ipsa.
24:01
And they're fine.
24:02
They're getting money.
24:03
They've got a very strong deposit base that's been with them for years.
24:07
An older base where retired people are, keep their money.
24:12
But they're not lending money.
24:14
They're not, you don't.
24:15
read anything exciting.
24:17
You know, there's nothing happening that gets you excited about these banks.
24:21
So, yeah, up one day, down the next day, but
24:27
I don't see anything exciting about banking with Investec or even Discovery or
24:34
any of those banks anymore.
24:36
But that's my take.
24:37
You know what I mean?
24:38
I'm looking for something okay.
24:41
What's exciting about this?
24:42
Yeah, the innovation isn't there is what you're saying here.
24:44
I think they're trundling along servicing people that are really suffering from
24:51
inertia, I would say.
24:53
Anyway, let's not get into that because I've had my own experience with the bank
24:57
over the last two months because of something called FICA.
24:59
I want to tell you something, though, Lindsay, and I say this to people who are
25:03
listening.
25:03
I say it to Viv.
25:05
I'm petrified of those banks, our bigger banks here, because…
25:11
They leak information like anything.
25:14
I promise you there are people out there and I got a call this week.
25:19
In fact, I had something that fell due and I made a deposit into an account and I
25:25
feared
25:26
because why did I fear is that I know that there are eyes watching all the time.
25:32
And sure enough, within the week, I got the call, you know,
25:37
and it was supposedly from Standard Bank's fraud center.
25:40
But I...
25:41
I picked up from the minute I phoned.
25:42
I was a bit, I was suspicious from the start.
25:45
But I said, okay, it looks like their fraud number.
25:49
I phoned and the chap, he didn't ask for a reference number or anything.
25:52
He went straight into somebody's been fiddling around with my online, using my
25:57
account.
25:57
I knew it was false.
25:58
You know, I immediately phoned Standard Bank just to check, have there been any
26:02
entries?
26:02
No.
26:03
But how did they know?
26:04
You know, and they know my name, my ID.
26:08
They know everything about me.
26:10
And that only comes from within the bank itself.
26:13
It only leaks out from the bank itself.
26:16
You know, I've had a similar experience with Nedbank on an American Express card
26:23
where I haven't used it.
26:25
I very seldom use it because nobody wants to take it.
26:27
But each time I replace it, you wait a month or two and false entries go through
26:32
there.
26:32
Someone's testing it.
26:33
So they know that I don't use it.
26:35
You know, so they put it through with the hope they can get away with it.
26:38
And sure enough, I get a notification and I stop.
26:41
So I've now stopped getting a NetBank card because America's best,
26:46
because I have to replace it every two or three months.
26:51
And that's my big fear about kind of banking here.
26:55
I just think people within the bank, you know, just leak information, which is so
27:01
dangerous.
27:01
OK, I won't tell you my story.
27:03
I won't tell you about FICA.
27:04
I won't tell you about.
27:05
The fact that I've been in this country for nine and a half years and they
27:11
suddenly say, why have you got an account with us?
27:13
How dare you transact over there?
27:14
I said, well, it's a small amount of money.
27:16
It's nine and a half years and suddenly they close my accounts with no warning
27:22
whatsoever.
27:24
And after two and a half months, I'm still fighting with them to get my account open
27:26
again.
27:26
Viv, you were going to say something, I think.
27:28
Have you got a horrible banking story?
27:30
I think it's actually important to talk about.
27:31
I have three clients all over the age of 70.
27:35
who've had this happen to them, and for amounts ranging from about 700,000 to
27:41
800,000 up to 1.5 million rounds.
27:43
It's the same pattern.
27:45
It's older people.
27:47
It's when they have a large amount of cash in that account.
27:49
And what has happened is, okay, one guy is not 70, he's 65.
27:50
And what happens is the amounts go out in these big chunks very quickly, which have
27:57
been caught by any fraud thing,
27:59
because you're talking 100,000, 150,000 round payments, four or five in a day
28:03
happening.
28:05
you know, just one or the other.
28:06
How can a fraud system not pick that up?
28:09
They've been reversed.
28:11
One guy's been reversed entirely, and that's just because he was like a bulldog
28:16
and was kept on fighting for it.
28:18
Another guy, they offered him basically half the money back, and he's sick.
28:20
He's in hospital at the moment.
28:22
And he's basically been unable to handle the stress of what's been happening here.
28:26
So he's actually literally been in hospital for the last few months based on
28:29
this particular thing.
28:31
I wondered if...
28:33
point of the fact that it's definitely coming from inside the banks because uh we
28:38
are seeing like the one that actually got the entire money to fund it he didn't do
28:40
anything they they they basically totally he didn't give him the otp he didn't uh
28:45
like he didn't do anything
28:45
wrong they just found an older person that just took up one and a half million rounds
28:51
out of his account you know what i mean and the bank was forced to give the whole
28:53
thing back
28:55
but in other people's cases what they do do is like they would said they call you
28:59
they say there's a fraudulent thing to test that that it's real, that you are
29:01
not.
29:03
They say, okay, we're going to send you an OTP.
29:05
please give me the OTP number when you get it.
29:07
That's how they basically hack into the system.
29:09
So whenever you get a fraud call or a fraud notification, go personally to the
29:12
bank.
29:12
Go on the internet and basically find the bank's phone number and call the bank from
29:17
that phone number.
29:17
Never respond to either the phone numbers they give you or to the actual message
29:21
they give you.
29:21
That's obviously fraudulent.
29:23
If you are, basically have money taken out of your account, fight, make a big noise
29:29
about it.
29:29
especially if you've not given them an OTP.
29:31
If you give out an OTP, they will usually give you a massive discount in terms of
29:36
what you can actually get back.
29:38
But if you never give out an OTP, you never basically did anything wrong, go and
29:42
fight, they will give you your money back.
29:44
I can't tell you more details about the people that got money back because
29:48
effectively what they did was, yes, we'll give you your money back.
29:50
sign this gag order.
29:51
You know what I mean?
29:52
And so basically we're talking people in their 70s.
29:56
You know what I mean?
29:57
Who are the most susceptible?
29:58
They're the most vulnerable, of course.
29:59
They'll listen to anybody that picks up the phone.
30:03
As I said, David, I can feel an article coming on about this from you, unless it's
30:08
too controversial.
30:10
Don't you think you should write about it for Currency with Julieta's publication?
30:15
You know what?
30:16
You know what my response is?
30:18
Get your money offshore.
30:20
Leave it in the bank somewhere else.
30:21
I'm petrified of this.
30:23
But don't you think you should write something about this?
30:25
Because this is something, I mean, the two of you have come up with examples.
30:28
But I'll ask the bank.
30:29
There must be thousands of other people.
30:30
I'll write to the bank.
30:31
They don't respond.
30:32
They don't respond.
30:33
I'll say, what are you doing about it?
30:34
Well, then out them.
30:35
Out them.
30:36
Write about it.
30:37
No, that's why I mention the names.
30:39
I mention the names of the bank.
30:41
Say, what are you doing about it?
30:43
David, if you do an article, please tell me.
30:45
I'll give you names of people that will do it.
30:47
Lindsay, if you know somebody that's a journalist that wants to talk about it,
30:53
have them contact me and I will give them names of people they can talk to.
30:55
Okay, in that case...
30:57
Individuals who've lost money, yeah.
30:59
Okay, that's something for another time, but thank you very much.
31:01
Very, very interesting.
31:03
Okay, let's have a look at some numbers now.
31:05
The dollar rand is $16.55.
31:07
The British pound against the rand is $22.18.
31:10
The euro rand is $19.
31:12
2018, commodities now, the gold price down just under a percent, just hovering above
31:19
$4,500 per ounce.
31:21
The platinum price is down slightly.
31:21
It's $19.51 per ounce.
31:24
And palladium is $13.72, which has barely changed.
31:28
Actually, I'll call it down 0.3%.
31:31
S&P 500 futures, despite the fact that the Supreme Leader says the uranium is staying
31:37
in Iran.
31:39
So we're back on a war footing again.
31:39
The S&P not doing too much, 7,426 for the futures, that's down a third of a percent.
31:46
The South African 10-year bond yield after the jump in inflation announced yesterday
31:51
of 4%
31:53
for CPI is behaving itself.
31:56
It's going with the international bond markets where the yields are rising,
32:02
8.765% on the close.
32:04
The South African, sorry, the US 10-year treasury, yeah, this is, I have
32:09
I have one good call every few years, and this is the one in December.
32:13
Sell bonds throughout the year, and it's going to continue.
32:16
4.623% for the U.S.
32:20
10-year.
32:21
And, of course, the 30-year, something like 5.18% at the moment.
32:26
Let me look at the oil price.
32:29
Yeah, nearly 3% higher now.
32:31
Yeah, exactly 108 Brent crude as we speak, 2.83% higher.
32:37
And West Texas is $1,059, 3.4% higher, actually.
32:44
The copper price is down 0.7% at $6.25 per pound.
32:51
What else have we got?
32:52
Bitcoin, surprisingly quiet at $77,800.
32:57
So anyway, gentlemen, we're still not there.
33:03
David, you're the one that I speak to more than I do Viv.
33:07
And you have become not numbed to external influences, geopolitical, political,
33:14
whatever it is.
33:16
But again, we've seen enough this week to say we ought to be getting out of this.
33:20
Even Buffett has been talking quite vocally about what he thinks about Trump,
33:24
etc.
33:25
But here we are bowling along still.
33:29
I've got this conundrum.
33:31
I've got you've got the high interest rates now.
33:34
So you've got the 4.6 tenure.
33:36
and a 5.2, 30-year.
33:39
And then you've got this AI where they're just spending these enormous amounts.
33:45
So I think you've got to balance both of them.
33:47
You know, you can go into both of them.
33:50
But on the other hand, you've got the Walmart, you know, which are coming under
33:56
pressure and starting to say, look,
33:58
people are not spending what they used to.
33:59
So I'm still going to maintain my exposure to...
34:04
to the AI stocks.
34:05
I'm not ready to go there.
34:06
The money is there.
34:07
It will be spent.
34:09
But I think if I had to sell, where am I going to put it?
34:16
And if anything, I would be putting it probably into the long end of markets.
34:21
I think 5.2 sounds a little bit of attractive, but no one else shares my
34:27
views on that.
34:29
But Lindsay, it's testing us.
34:34
If I can say it in a nice way, because you can't take your eye off what's going to
34:40
happen and where oil prices are
34:42
and where Trump is as well.
34:44
He's making the threats.
34:46
I'm going there on Monday.
34:48
I'll be flying into.
34:50
um new york i'm leaving you know next week and i'll be talking on thursday and
34:55
just to give you an idea and talk to people and see you know what the mood is
35:01
please do is is like in new york yeah
35:03
viv um just just something to think about are there two worlds now viv is there a
35:08
walmart world where people are going down the
35:10
aisles and saying i've
35:11
had to reduce my petrol consumption i've only put in three quarters of a tank
35:16
because of
35:18
because it's $4.75 per gallon or litre, whatever it is in the United States, $4.75
35:23
a gallon.
35:25
And is there a world where people say, well, there's AI, because there's AI,
35:30
CapEx is $850 billion in 2026, and it doesn't matter what the Walmart people are
35:36
doing.
35:37
We're doing this.
35:40
Where do they collide?
35:41
Where does AI get to where it's not being funded?
35:45
by the people in the Walmart aisle?
35:48
It's a very stupid question, but I think you know where I'm going with it.
35:53
Look, I mean, we did discuss this a while back about in terms of outlook for, you
35:59
know,
35:59
how much demand is there in the world and where can you get demand?
36:01
And I would say people have not changed in history.
36:03
And in history, if you look back, when we had the Chinese emperor and the Indian
36:08
Mughal emperors and so on, you'd have a person running something like half,
36:10
like 15, 20% of the world's GDP and directing...
36:14
a fifth of that to themselves.
36:16
So we're talking about basically 4% or 5% of global GDP went towards one man's
36:23
summer palace or some guy building the Taj
36:25
Mahal or that kind of stuff.
36:25
There's no limit to what a rich person wants.
36:27
Look at Elon Musk.
36:28
He's about to be a trillionaire, and he still wants more money because he wants to
36:32
go to Mars.
36:32
Rich people find ways to spend their money.
36:34
You know what I mean?
36:35
The problem is that what's going to happen going forward is that we're entering a
36:40
period of time in which a lot of young people,
36:42
especially young people just graduating from university, are going to find
36:44
themselves out of a job.
36:46
We talked about the Facebook thing, 8,000 people.
36:47
We talked about Amazon, Accenture.
36:49
Go through all these big name companies that are not hiring or firing people at
36:53
the moment.
36:55
There is not a Walmart and a non-Walmart thing.
36:57
There's the Walmart people and the yacht people.
37:00
That's what we're turning into.
37:01
There is no middle class that goes to something a bit nicer like a Sainsbury's
37:05
or something.
37:07
You know what I mean?
37:09
There is going to be a lower class and there's going to be an upper class of
37:12
ultra wealthy people,
37:14
people that are invested in AI.
37:16
And I saw this crazy tweet recently from somebody in Silicon Valley talking about
37:20
people making $500,000 a year,
37:22
which is roughly 10 million rounds a year.
37:22
You know, just a thumbs up.
37:23
That's about 8 million rounds a year.
37:25
And how poor they feel because they haven't gotten into the IPO or into the
37:31
anthropics and, you know,
37:33
the SpaceX's early enough.
37:33
And so they still have to work for a living as opposed to their friends that
37:39
did get into that and now worth $50 to $100 million.
37:41
You know what I mean?
37:43
That's the world happening.
37:45
that there's this group of people that are involved in AI that are making...
37:47
what we can consider to be insane amounts of money.
37:49
And they are obviously looking up Elon Musk in the world and saying, oh, I'm not
37:51
Elon Musk.
37:53
But there's other people out there that can't, like you say, afford heating.
37:55
I mean, what happened in the UK with that heating bill, if you recall that, when the
37:59
business of Starmer is doing so badly,
38:01
the childcare bills, the child support bills,
38:04
what we are seeing happening globally with regards to the ability to tax enough to
38:10
basically pay for social services,
38:12
I think that's going to be a big issue into the future.
38:13
Okay.
38:14
David, talking about Walmart, we've got pick and base stores have come out since
38:21
we've been speaking of a trading statement for the 52 weeks ended the 1st of March,
38:23
2026.
38:25
That was 1705.
38:27
It always makes me slightly suspicious when they do it just after the market
38:32
closed and it goes on to say all sorts of things.
38:34
The share price was down 1% today.
38:34
Let's see what happens after that trading statement.
38:37
Gentlemen, thank you very much for your time this evening.
38:39
David Shapiro is from Sassvin Securities in Johannesburg, soon to be in the United
38:43
States.
38:45
And Viv Gunder is from Rands Swiss in Johannesburg.
38:47
And that was the five o'clock shadow.
38:49
The views and opinions expressed in these podcasts are those of Lindsay Williams and
38:56
various contributors and do not reflect the policy,
38:58
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39:00
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39:05
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39:08
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39:12
And since we are critically thinking human beings, these views are always subject to
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39:18
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39:21
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