You're listening to Strictly Business Podcast with Lindsay Williams. BJC has closed its doors for another day, so it's time for the five o'clock shadow. And as always, on a Thursday, I've got the doubleheader Dream Team edition with Viv Govender from Ransuisse and David Shapiro from Assassin Securities, both in Johannesburg. Gentlemen, I know where David stands when it comes to Donald Trump. I know very much where I stand. Viv is slightly more restrained and studious about these things.
But I want to know from both of you your impression of what has gone on over the last few days in the Middle East, notably Saudi Arabia trip, then Qatar, and at this moment, the United Arab Emirates. And Viv, I'll start with you on this one, because as I say, you're slightly more sober in your attitude towards Mr. Trump. Do you think, goodness me, he's done so well? Look at the diplomatic and business breakthroughs he's made. Or do you think, I don't know?
everything's for him and everything has a price. I would say this is the best week he's had in this term by far. If you look at the wins he's had this week, right, so the trade deal with the UK was last week. This is China this week, right? You've seen him basically get that ceasefire done between India and Pakistan, which basically, you know, it pretty much was him pressuring the Indians to basically have a ceasefire. Then there is that executive order around drug prices.
which I think even the Democrats now are coming out and not saying they are just supporting. Actually, Ro Khanna from California is saying he's going to basically put a law forward that's going to basically make what the executive order that Trump put in as law. And he's a Democrat from California. So this week has been very, very good for Trump politically. But as always with Trump, he always has to go and spoil it with stupid things like a free plane and all the other stuff. And look, I mean.
even the stuff with South Africans, I mean, that's obviously a big deal. I mean, I don't know if you've reached you guys. I saw them disembarking. Yeah, they looked a bit lost, I must say. But we'll come to that in a moment. But anyway, that was very strange. But even with that, I mean, that has no material effect. But I think with him, it is kind of like, it shows the right support to his base, you know, and you know what that base wants to see, you know what I mean?
Brown people out, white people in, that kind of thing.
but it it distracts from you know the craziness that's happening with things like the plane but like i said a very good week when politically uh internationally basically he's got the uh like the the procedure of the india pakistan thing uh domestically he's done the the executive order on drug prices and by the way it's gonna do almost nothing to us drug prices because it's basically they get the majority of money from the us all it's gonna do is it's gonna make
europe and everyone else in the world pay more because these guys are not gonna drop their trousers in the us to match what they pay elsewhere. They are going to say, we're going to raise our prices everywhere to match what we pay in the US. Because that's where the money comes from. Okay. Like I said, the hundreds of billions of deals he's doing for Boeing, and like I said to you guys before, whoever is the lobbyist for Boeing at the moment is the best guy for money lobbyist in the world.
Doesn't matter how much they're getting paid, these guys are making unbelievable returns on their investment. Yes, okay. We've got the number, and the numbers keep on changing. He said, they say 210 aeroplanes.
with options on others or is it 150 with options on 60 more etc but nothing yet it's a number and with with trump he's very very loose with with his numbers he didn't know how many billions it was that it was being earned he got all confused with it but anyway he doesn't deal in billions anymore he deals in trillions he's always throwing that around but anyway let's say that he's got a good week and you haven't mentioned syria yet but quickly on that one because
that came from nowhere Look, I mean, The Syria thing, look, I mean, in that part of the world, you're not going to find anyone to pay hands, okay? The best you can hope for is somebody to keep the peace. And if you carry on basically pushing, you know, like this unrest in Syria, you're going to find, you're not going to get something better than this guy.
Even though he's an ISIS, former ISIS member, former, you know, 10 million dollar thing, you've got to... puts a strongman in place and i mean you can even argue please people like qaddafi people like saddam as bad as they were came after was worse you know what i mean um so the question now is do you want to keep uh you know get some kind of government in syria going if you want then you have to have this kind of deal being made unfortunately uh this guy's not a good guy uh but what's
your options what's the options there's no other options besides this kind of guy Yeah, I mean, he's better than Assad. And maybe he has over the last 10 years since he had that bounty on his head. Maybe he has moderated his views towards the West. I don't know. But we'll come to Syria in a moment because the reason it's Syria and not Yemen is because Yemen doesn't have anything and Syria does. And Saudi Arabia and America want the rights to explore in Syria. Simple as that.
David, now over to you with maybe a slightly different view to what's happened this week with Donald J. Trump. I think the biggest winners this week have been Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Yes. And I think by a long shot, you know, if you go back a decade or so ago, I mean, these were nations that were marginalized, you know, because of their political beliefs. Qatar, I think, until about last year.
harbored the leaders from Hamas and other places, and they were funders of a lot of anti-West activists. So they've got credibility out of all of this. Certainly Saudi Arabia has grown a lot, and I think they might be credited in where they're going and what they're doing. But remember, this is still a nation where it's a kingdom. It's not a democracy.
and not that I object to it, I don't know enough about those politics, but with Trump there's always some gain for him, as you mentioned, Lindsay. I don't think he goes in there without any gain, and coming behind him, of course, are the family, you know, and a lot of deals will be done with Qatar, with Saudi Arabia, with the Trump organization and its various branches, whether it's... golf tournaments, whether it's new hotels, I don't know, casinos, whatever it is, but that you can expect.
And I think that's a side of him. It's deals, deals, deals. A lot of these are, you know, a lot of this is talk. They still have to be translated into real money. And we've seen this in so many times in the past where delegations, especially in South Africa, we always have delegations here.
that are coming to make investments and so on and we always highlight this and nothing ever happens so i think there is a lot of bluster around this i'm not going to take away from where uh they govern you know where it is kingdom type deals which is the boeing deal that um you know that we've spoke about i think those things would be real and the military side of us as well but anyway listen i'm i i must say that whatever the reason i'm i'm a lot
happier than i was two weeks ago you know with the markers back where they were on on february the first i'll say i can take that for the meantime but lindsay just just you've got to understand and i think this is a man who's completely trashed the constitution everything he does is for himself and i don't think there's any checks in order uh stopping him doing these kind of business deals and doing what he's doing in every respect without using congress i don't know
I haven't seen Congress sitting. I don't know, you know, I don't even know if they're gathering at the moment because everything's just bumbled through and no one dares to object to him. So I'm still very cautious. I'm happy with the market. I'm saying, please, Margaret, don't go down. Just be unhappy, but don't go down, you know. And I think we saw Walmart's numbers coming out today as well, and I think that's starting to give a reflection.
of the fears that are building, you know, because remember, you're still paying tariffs. You're still paying 30% tariffs in China. There's still going to be a lot of tariffs. And it's still only a 90-day period as well, David. I mean, this is 90 days. Why does he always say 90 days? Why can't we go a little bit further? Why can't we expand to six months or something? Or just have no time limit at all, just be happy with 30%, which is still huge, in my opinion.
It's still a massive, massive amount. I mean, instead of paying 101 for something, you're paying 130 or whatever the conversion rate is and putting it in dollars. But no, it's still very, very high. But OK, so David's slightly cautious. Viv, great week for Trump, the best he's ever had. But on paper, can it be followed through? Never going to admit it. No, of course you're not. Nor will I. No. Objectively, it's the best week he's had since he's basically eaten a second time.
the second time you're quite right on paper okay um why why why he doesn't want to get a long-term deal long-term deal makes him irrelevant yeah that's true makes him always the the person that you have to talk to the gatekeeper he spoke to the qatar military or the american military based in qatar which is their biggest base i think in the in well certainly in the region and he said I've won three elections. He said he won three elections and they want me to have a fourth.
And the best selling cap at the moment is Trump 2028. And I really believe that this is going to happen. And it was a very strange speech. Kept on going on about his son, Barron, saying he must interview this person. David, you were watching this. Viv doesn't watch TV. David, you were probably watching this. It was babblingly incoherent, as usual, but still quite entertaining. That's the point I'm making. Yeah, it's a man. where the Constitution, where the law has said he lost the election.
He will not accept it. He will not. And every interview that he has, if a person asks it, from whatever news... you know, from whatever media, he will deny and continues to say he won the 2020 election. And, of course, his attitude on 6th of January and that, that will also be dismissed. That was one of his first actions. The man who treasures, who has no respect for, you know, for the Constitution or for law and, you know, the laws of the country. And that, to me, is a deep worry.
And at the moment, these successes just. There's just so much happening that no one can actually, I don't think the law courts can actually get on top of everything that they bring against him. But anyway, so yeah, he won the election. I mean, yeah, it is strange, isn't it? He just doesn't accept it. It is.
Thank you, Michael. Now, I don't know who wants to take this, but suddenly we've got a few things coming out of the JSC process and NASPES, both on the back foot, having been on the front foot yesterday. It was something to do with an acquisition by process, I think.
uh we've also got had news out from bala world sanlam afrimat and a company called karu with five o's in the name does anyone want to pick up on any of those results are they of any consequence to either of you in your portfolios or did they interest you in any way and you can say no david you know if you i when when i look at ppc for example i know that there's new management there and a lot of the gains that they're
making are from efficiencies um I think the same thing applies to a large extent with AfriMath. These businesses are battling in an economy that's not going anywhere and not helping them at all. How can you have a cement business where nobody wants cement, where the government is not doing anything that creates demand for cement? I think it's something I've been quoting quite a lot over the last couple of days. When you look at the unemployment numbers, it's come down to very easy figures.
For every three people who are, what's the word, work-worthy, are employable, is the word I want to use. Two are employed, one is not employed. Officially, of course. That takes up 24 million people in the country of a country that has got 60-odd million. So it means that those employed have to not only keep those who are unemployed, plus their extended families going. what it means is that there's not enough money to grow this economy. You know, everything goes on.
Yeah. So, you know, I'm saying… It's good to be government workers. It's good to be government workers. We have the biggest government sector in the world per capita, given the size of our GDP. So of the people that are employed, the biggest chunk or single chunk of that is basically government workers, who are the most overpaid government workers in the world in terms of the GDP.
And, you know, obviously our net draws on the fiscus as opposed to basically, you know, contributing to tax revenue and that kind of stuff. It's bloated and politically it doesn't force its hand, if you like. Am I saying this correctly? Because any other country would say, look what you've done. And there would be a doge type effect and someone would come in and slash and people would accept it. And they said, yes, but of course you can't accept it. when it's a family member that is being cut.
So it's a very strange situation. And the government of national unity dynamic over the next year, especially with the budget coming out. When's the budget? Oh, no, that's not until, that's ages away, yeah. To prove version number three of the cabinet. Yeah, that's it. So that's got to be whatever. But, Lindsay, the other point is there are 3.8 million unemployed young people. You know, that they will never get jobs.
That means that you're going to have to keep them from the age of 20 right through to 60, 70, 80. And why I bring this up is that, you know, we're going there with an aggressive nature or aggressive approach to America. I'm saying if I was a Ramaphosa, I would go and say, please help us. Please help us grow this economy. that just help us, instead of trying to act as though we've got everything under control here, which we haven't, and criticize some of their responses.
I don't care about those 49 farmers who have gone across there. It's symbolic. It means nothing in my life. It's the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. But nevertheless, it is in a way symbolic. But what I'm saying, when you go to America or to the West, I would rather say, listen, help us. We need help. We're in a dire situation. We can't go on like this.
without fixed investments, without fixing up our economy, you know, without, when I say fixing the infrastructure and creating the environment which we can actually promise.
more jobs particularly to those young people but unfortunately South Africa doesn't have anything that's unique that American needs for example I mean Ukraine uh Trump has worked out that they've got stuff in the ground that will be very very scarce and at the moment is dominated by China rare Earths and all that sort of thing uh but South Africa what what have we got Viv have we got any unique selling point that Trump might say yeah let's do a deal
yes we are um we are one of the most important places in the world geographically because look at where south africa is we are basically the the dividing line between the indian and the atlantic oceans so whoever has a base let's just say the chinese somehow get a base in south africa uh naval bases in africa they control effectively moving between uh europe and asia quite frankly think about it from that point of view but remember all
the oil tankers still go around They then shift through his canal.
they've got to take you know they might not stop in cape town as they used to do they might not refuel but they still go around it yeah it's a it's a key geographic thing i'm amazed that i mean geographically we are very very important uh but also i mean if you look at uh the chinese here and and and what they're doing with regards to not just i just saw this thing with regards to battery power and how they have basically managed to get actually prices down unbelievably like you Like, you know,
they're like 80 plus percent down the last 10 years. in terms of kilowatt hours and stuff for these batteries that Chinese are making. The Chinese are really advancing quite fast. And even looking at what happened in India and Pakistan, right? The Pakistanis shot down a bunch of Indian planes, which was a surprise. And that kind of gives, like, you know, credence to the fact that the Chinese military equipment is a lot better than people thought it was.
Because those planes, those Indian planes that they bought from the French, of course, they're not American planes, they're RPLs, apparently. They're French planes. but the fact that the Pakistan is able to budget them down, you know, indicates that the Chinese tech is very, very good at the moment. Okay, so we've got position, position, position. All right, I don't see over the decades anyone mentioning that, but Viv, call yourself an information pioneer in that regard.
Now then, let's have a look at some prices here because it's a relatively quiet day. In fact, very quiet indeed. Dollar Rand is 18.09, 18.07 actually. British pound against the Rand.
is 24.01 euro round is 2023 euro dollar 1195 barely changed uh commodities the gold price having another bad day uh 3210 which is down 18 dollars per ounce actually it bounced back late last night from below 3200 to above it but still 300 away from the all-time high not that long ago what else we got here uh the crude oil price Everyone's interested in that as well as natural gas as we start to prepare for winter. I haven't even got summer yet but you know what I mean with stocks and stuff.
Okay I've got a problem with my CRB index but here we go. Brent crude oil $64.10 per barrel, down 3%, big one there. And West Texas crude $61.19 which is down 3.1%. Natural gas price is down two and a half percent so the energy complex really getting whacked. Bitcoin also not having such a good day. It was close to 105,000 yesterday and the day before. Currently just over 102,000. South African 10-year bond yield is 10.72%. And the U.S. 10-year, 4.46%, was above 450 this time yesterday.
S&P 500 futures, 5908, which is unchanged from last night. was down 0.3% and is now more or less on its highs. Anyway, pretty quiet stuff. David, still happy, yeah? You know, it's rebubbling along. I think just the oil price down on the possible deal with Iran. So, you know, more oil will be pumped into the world. So I think it came down on that story. I think the other story is just briefly, there was a very tame PPI. in America, I think the lowest since in about five years.
Also, some of the economic data, retail sales, manufacturing down, and that's why you've seen that move off from 450 in the 10-year bond down to 446. I think creeping in now, our view is that the Fed will start to reduce rates September, two now, two next year, two this year, two next year. And I think that's going to be the next thing we look forward to in the markets. and the one strong we settle down with Trump.
Or maybe, Viv, the markets, these are the last of the Biden numbers and the Trump numbers will start coming soon, i.e. higher inflation, etc. Or maybe people are just not spending and that's also the demand side of the inflation equation is coming to the fore. I don't know. JSC today on the upside, Carew up three and three quarters percent. Pan-African Resources got hit yesterday, but up 2.8% today. the Impala Platinum 2.5. 4% higher. Investec PLC up 2.25%. Anglo Gold, 2.25% higher.
Gold shares have been really thumped recently. On the downside, Sassell, 4.6% weaker. Bytes down 4.6% as well. And Anglo American PLC down 3.6%. There was an article in Currency today, gentlemen, the online publication, talking about the JSE listings dearth being a cause for introspection.
and it's dead david has been going on about this for years now well yes most certainly i mean the fact the matter is in south africa we are we are we are at worst in europe frankly in europe of course we have the companies that are still like stagnant but at least they're like you know there is some growth in terms of like you know uh those markets we in south africa have been quite quite uh you know badly uh hit by the fact that uh there's just no new listings happening and the ones that
are happening are basically split-offs of companies that already exist like the boxes and and so on. Look, Lindsay, it's a massive subject. I was just asked questions yesterday on it. There's been a whole change in attitude as well. Look, the stock exchange hasn't exactly promoted share ownership. It's a public company. It's a business that's very focused on its bottom line and earnings and so on. So there hasn't been a push on their part to get new listings or to get ownership.
You know, today, share ownership is... is largely through institutions, through holding ETFs or through tracker funds and so on. And that's taken a lot away from the local economy. But at the bottom of it as well is that we've got an economy that's going nowhere, as I mentioned earlier. There's no drive in this place. There's no momentum. And I don't know what Viv does, but I can't even put together 10 shares that I would buy in South Africa.
The ones that you might go for might be some of the foreign companies. But even then, I think you can do better offshore. And the reason you have a South African portfolio is because you have forced to do it because of things like Regulation 28 or investors that want to have South African assets. But, yeah, unfortunately, the situation is quite bad at the moment. On that sad note, we'll end it.
And I will say this, that the market has come full circle since the Liberation Day and before that, a few other words, caused such a sell-off. and such panic. We've now come full circle. As I said, it's been a complete 360. And the next five to 10% are going to be very, very interesting as the sell in May go away has worked in completely the opposite direction. It's not too late to start. It's only the 15th of May. So we have another couple of weeks to do that.
But I stand by that the next five to 10% will be terribly important for the rest of the year. Gentlemen, thank you very much on this quiet day. Viv The governor is from Ransworth. David Shapiro from Sasser and Securities, both in Johannesburg. And that was the 5 o'clock shadow.
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