You're listening to Strictly Business Podcast with Lindsay Williams. The JSC is closed, it's still for another day, so it's time for the 5 o'clock shadow, and as always on a Thursday, it's the Doubleheader Dream Team edition of Viv Govender from Rands Swiss in Johannesburg and David Shapiro, sometimes from Johannesburg, but recently in the Boston, New York area, depending on his schedule. And actually, David, because we haven't spoken to you for quite a while.
How are you seeing things and how are clients seeing things? As we speak now, we're in our third day of decent rallies. What's going on? I think there's a lot that you can read into the rallies. I wouldn't get too carried away and, you know, running and by, but I think that what it does show is that Trump is backtracking. You know, he's got himself into a very difficult position. almost like in quicksand, and he's trying to get himself out. He knows the consequences of what he's done.
And those were reckless policies. I don't think there was much thought around them, and he's come under enormous criticism from not only within his party, but certainly from Wall Streeters and investments and companies. And I think the latest were the tests, sorry, the...
Costco's, Walmart, Home Depot, Targets, companies like that who went to him and said, well, if you continue this way with your tariffs, especially in China, we will have nothing on our shelves, meaning we can't get those goods in America. I'm putting it into my own goods. And Lindsay, in the same way as I walk around the stores here and I look where everything is made, especially in the clothing industry. in the grocery industries and huge amounts of goods.
I'm talking more manufactured goods, not necessarily foods, but a lot of the manufactured goods come in from outside. So I think just to give Viv a chance and other people, you know, you to respond, I think it's dawning on him that he's destroying wealth, he's actually undermining those things that make America great. that really do make America great, not in his view, but, you know, especially the IT businesses. That was where American exceptionalism was, and he's undermining those businesses.
So I think he's beginning to backtrack. In fact, David, there was an interview on CNN in the last 24 hours with a mega-donor, the chap that's the top man at Citadel. He gives them massive amounts of money, not in the Trump quality amounts, but He said to the interviewer, he said, look, America's not just the greatest economy in the world. It's not just the greatest democracy in the world. It's not all of these things. America is a brand and Donald Trump with his policies is eroding that brand.
And he's done damage that we will have to be have to be fixing for quite a while. He's still a Trump supporter and he will still give him money. But he said what he's doing is very. Very disturbing. Viv, would you go along with that? Yeah, not just that. I mean, also, remember, Trump is not a unicorn or something. He's like any other U.S. president.
And every U.S. president finds around about the 100-day mark, which we are approaching, that the policies that they want to do take a backseat to the reactions to what actually is happening in the world at the moment, if you know what I mean. So every president has about 100 days to get stuff done.
And after that 100 days, he's more going to be dealing with reacting to you know crises and you know dealing with stuff in the world as opposed to like you know bringing new momentum into the thing so i think that's also something to be worried about to to to understand as well he's he's not going to have this momentum going forward indefinitely number one number two i don't know if you saw that musk is also leaving doge in the next month or so yes uh and
i think that is also like showing the indication that some of the steam that we have is running out and i think the immigration stuff to a certain extent is also going to be bogged down in in legal wrangling for the foreseeable future. He's gotten the job half done by basically stopping people from entering. I think that's obviously done. There's no more huge people entering, but getting the people that are in out of the country. will be difficult.
And the tariff stuff, quite frankly, as David mentioned, you know, the kickback has been quite strong. And the thing is, also, the tariff thing has always been with Trump, a case where he's threatened a lot, but delivered very little. Remember Mexico, remember Canada, you know, even now with China, it's a lot of threats and very little actual development on that front, quite frankly. And so I don't think we're going to be seeing the same kind of momentum going, you know, forward.
I mean, obviously, he's probably going to do other stuff as well.
but the same kind of economic momentum going forward you know indefinitely into the future okay david uh i'll come back to you because i know you are you're not just a person who reads the wall street journal or the new york times you also you you you you go around annoying people you ask people what what you know you go around doing field work and the man and the woman on the street and in our pre-chat you said you'd had some very interesting conversations Maybe you could
share those conversations with us. You know, one of the big attacks is against the Ivy League universities. Yeah. He's using the ploy of attacking anti-Semitism. But I think that's not the main cause. In fact, to be honest, the Jewish community are quite upset about that because he's using it as an excuse. He's using it against... the independence of those large organizations, whether it's Harvard, whether it's Columbia, whatever it is.
Yes, I must admit that people are not happy with the way, with the protests and how those unfolded. But on the other hand, I think they still value the independence. Now, where I'm coming from is I was up in Boston. Boston is a university city. You know, wherever you go through there. And it's very closely aligned to biotech, to the sciences. And the source of the information that they get or the, you know, the labs all come from the universities.
You know, the medical research comes from Harvard, comes from, there's also research from MIT. You know, all the universities there. I'm not just singling out Harvard. But many of the professors there are PhDs, you know, highly skilled. And they now, with the withdrawal of funding, they're the ones that are suffering and being laid off and are losing jobs because of the funding that's not available.
So it's not against the sciences, I mean against the arts, the liberal arts protesters and those divisions and that. It's really where it's being felt is in the labs, you know, at those universities and in the higher research, which is very important because it's from that. basic research that the Eli Lilly's get their information or the Pfizer's or the Merck's and all these other pharmaceutical businesses. I'm the wrong person to talk about that, you know, because I don't know much about it.
But this is the feedback that suddenly people are being forced to now sell their houses. And I'm not exaggerating, you know, sell their houses, look for a smaller place and very, very concerned about where this goes. So I think that applies certainly to the North East. of America and probably to California as well. So, and this is another area that is annoying. The protests here are enormous. You know, there's protests all the time against Trump, you know, against what he's doing.
As you said, Musk is gone. You know, you don't see him anymore. I think he's gone back to Tesla and that. And I think even within the Republican Party, they've turned against him. So I don't think you'll be seeing him and his kids. and he's kept around much in the Oval Office anymore. You'd have to have a very wide-angle lens to see him and his kids, as they think he's got 14 at the last count. But anyway, sorry, David. Yes, you mentioned about this as well.
Okay, this is something that you must understand. Like what David has said is correct in a certain way, but also the letter was a mistake. They say the letter they sent to Harvard was sent by mistake. Okay? So this wasn't a real letter. So the Harvard's response was to a letter that the administration sent to them that was not actually vetted, quite frankly.
And that is why the response was so strong, because, I mean, they had been pushing people like Columbia and so on a little bit, a little bit. But this was like an outrageous kind of set of demands that they put forward. And the reason that Harvard had to react like this was because the demands were so crazy that they couldn't have said yes to them. OK, and that is why they had that response. But the reason that that demands a shortage... insane was because they did not mean to send the letter.
That's them. You know, this is the administration. They bumble. You've seen the thing with Peter Heskett, the defense secretary. I mean, it's insane. Anyway, keep going. Sorry. But here's the thing. This is not the first time. Do you know what happened at the FBI? Okay, this is hilarious. The FBI, they wanted to kick the old FBI guy in, right? Of course, they got the new guy, Cash Battalion. But the interim guy that they put in was done by accident. They put the wrong name in.
And then they didn't want to remove that name and admit they made a mistake. But it turned out they put this guy in place who was quite anti-Trump. And therefore, in the run up to the whole replacement with Kash Patel, they had this really anti-Trump guy in charge of the FBI for like a while, but they didn't want you to be in charge.
So the thing is that, what I'm saying is that, you know, the thing with Trump is that the chaos is so great that you're never going to understand what the actual underlying ideas are. The funniest thing is that you know the guy that does the tariffs? What do you mean? positive There's a guy called Peter Navarro. You know this story. Peter Navarro wrote a book. In this book, he's this out there economist. He claimed that there was an economist that basically supported him called Ron Varo.
But Ron Varo turns out not to be a real person.
It's basically his last name spelled differently navarre it's an anagram of his last name so the guy that trump has as a as the guy that's advising him on tariffs literally wrote a book where one of his sources was made up oh dear so he's having he i mean you think after four years after the first term he would have learned a few things but in fact he hasn't learned very much he surrounds himself with chaos and yes men and the yes men and women unfortunately don't seem to have
anything better to do than to be sycophants, bootlickers. And they don't really focus on the German meat. Pete Hexeth, I find him a very, he's almost musk-like in his childish behavior. Some of his speeches that he gives, he's very, very strange. Why is the market up today, David? Well, I think it's just a reaction to the withdrawal of tariffs against China. You know, I think it's just a continuation of this, the realization, number one, also, that he's withdrawn his criticism against Powell.
I actually listened to that full interview, which was in Chicago. You remember the chap from India who was the, at one stage, I think, Bank of, not Bank of, was he Bank of England or was he the Chancellor? Rag, I can't remember his full name. But he was the interviewer. And I listened to the interview. And Powell was very balanced. He was very measured.
And he said, look, we haven't seen these kind of tariffs since the 1930s, that act that was implemented in the 30s in order to buy and save the American economy. So he says we've got and I'm putting these into my own words we've got no playbook. We don't know. We've got no experience. And so therefore, we can't... do anything until we see the outcome of what this all is.
And what he did say in gaining questions, you know, yes, that if there's uncertainty, what happens during periods of uncertainty is businesses and consumers do not spend, which makes America, and I'm quoting, you know, a less attractive place to be. You know, so yes, this is all very negative. And that's why he adopted the stand that he did. You know, we're going to wait. We can't do anything because of this.
If you picked up the tone he was very critical you know in a in a passive type of way of what was happening of course that angered trump because why you know trump calls him too late that's his new nickname for uh pal too late you know and major loser is another one that he favors the major yeah so um what happens is that all he's doing is he's highlighting listen trump you don't know what to him. And Trump knows it as well, and that's why he lashes out.
Whenever he's put in a corner, what he does, like a bully or like a cornered lion, you know, he lashes out. So I think this is what people are picking up. And then he retracts. I'm not going to fire Trump. I mean Powell. So I think this is why the market's beginning to discount that. We're at, you know, things are going to get better or improve or more sensible from where we are at this stage.
I think that the man and the woman in the street who voted for Trump for various reasons and a good percentage of them voted because of the cost of living. And they felt that Trump is their knight in shining armor. He's going to he's going to be the king of the groceries and bring prices down. Again, that during that same interview that was a piece that was published with the Citadel fellow. They came up with three basic lies that Trump had made in the last 24 hours.
The first lie was gasoline prices, petrol prices at the pump in America. He said the prices have tumbled, says Trump. You're paying $1.29 for a gallon and never been this low, he says. You know, he says, we've never been seen before. It's another one of his great phrases. They went around every state. The lowest they could find was at a petrol station in a little town in Texas. going for $2.19. That was the lowest they could find. The average was around $2.50, line number one.
Line number two was, what was it, eggs. He said, egg prices have fallen 94% since I came into power. They've fallen, but by 50% to 55%. That's a big, big difference. That's line number two. Line number three, what was it? I can't remember what line number three was. Oh, yes, groceries in general. He said, they're coming down your basket. It's coming down, there's no inflation. Last month, the grocery basket within the CPI was up 2.4% on the month. So, I don't know, how could you lie to people?
Why do you lie to people? What's the point? You know, that's him. He's whatever you want to call him, a sociopath, a psychopath, whatever it is. He just talks. You know, there's no sense. He just carries on and he gets away with it. And that's why when you read any headlines about meetings that he's having, you saw the latest with the Chinese. Chinese know nothing about this. And he talks. He says we're talking to them every day. The Chinese are saying hello. What are you talking about?
I don't know who he's talking to. So, I mean, that's who he is. And therefore, you've got to be very careful about, you know, what he says, because there's not much truth around it. And I think people are seeing.
you know seeing him out and and beginning to understand that uh what he is and i think uh the pressure will continue to build what what from citadel's ken griffin i think that's that's right but i think he's not he's just one of many that are starting with you know to withdraw or to to openly criticize it you know i mean to openly attack him and in uh jamie diamond uh you know you name every every banker um some of them are a little nervous because of their uh associations and you
know where they where they based but i think now again you know it's it's protection i mean it's self-defense you're just trying to protect your business okay we've done we've done a lot of trump i need to have a look at the local market and we're going to start with you because this company hails from your part of the world uh kawazulu natal i looked at my screen yesterday i wasn't really paying much attention sometimes you've got to switch off for a bit so i switched off But then I
switched on. And I saw at the top of the losers board on my JSC screen, Aspen down 31%. I thought, oh, hello, it was some kind of shared deal, some financial engineering with the holdings or whatever it was. I didn't know what it was, but I knew it couldn't possibly be anything operational. But lo and behold, Viv, it was. It was a 2.77 billion mistake or something that they'd made. and I found that for... a medium to large-sized company on the JSC, that's a massive, massive move. Yes, it is.
And look, I mean, the thing is, it broke on Tuesday just after the market closed. I remember talking to some people about it here, and they were saying this is going to be a bloodbath tomorrow morning as this thing came about here. So this dispute is apparently with regards to manufacturing and technology around mRNA.
The mRNA stuff, obviously, we know about what's happened with the vaccine, but This particular technology has implications to a number of different things, like cancer research, etc., etc. It's a new way of getting drugs into the system, basically, or medication into the body. And the effect of MATI is here. I mean, obviously, it's beyond my pay grade to understand who's going to do the right and who's in the wrong.
But when you have such a massive move like this here, backed on something that you don't really understand. Quite frankly, even though the share price is up today, I'd be very nervous about that stock. Is this a claim against them? We're in a dispute. How do you justify this in the accounts? I mean, did they wrongly account for it?
Or is this a claim against them for breach of some… you know some contract i i also couldn't quite understand what it was in other words have they been wrongly accounting for something or alter in in other words have their figures been wrong or is this a claim against them i don't i i couldn't quite understand that yeah this is subject to contractual confidentiality confidentiality the oldest cities relates to you know towards an agreement around manufacturing of M&RE products.
Okay. This is... Look, I mean, understand when it comes to this bias stuff, often you find, you know, there are things that I mean, like CRISPR, the technology in which a lot of the stuff is based. There's like two people who claim that or two groups of people that claim that they're the ones that developed it. And, you know, there's obviously disputes around that. And, you know, they don't even detail exactly what the thing is. They say confidentiality.
But like I said, even if I knew what it was, I wouldn't be able to understand the technical aspects behind it, quite frankly.
and so as a as a dummy i would say okay i don't understand it's down probably not smart to touch it yeah i think that so this is where you follow the philosophy of someone like warren buffett when there was a whiff of scandal around tesco's the giant uk supermarket chain of course he just said okay we hold it let's get out i don't really care i just want out of this and if he'd have seen that and a 30 fall in the stock he'd had he'd have a look maybe phone up steven sard and then just just
clear out and and stick to the good ones. But yes, one to watch there. Let's have a look at some markets here. Oh, sorry, one more thing on South Africa. I think someone's had a look at Trump and says, well, if he can do a U-turn, I'll do a U-turn as well. VAT, up, down, down. It's just unbelievable what's going on. You look at it from afar at the moment, David. You must shake your head a little bit. Well, I don't know where it's going. You know, it's, well, what are they going to do now?
I know that. there's plenty of capacity within government to save costs you know or to reduce spending or reckless spending bad spending but i'm not sure where this leaves the anc you know and and where it leaves politics because it just seems to be an incredible mess uh i i love the way the market just says okay you know business is usually in south africa this is what happens but um i i'm I'm just worried about who, you know, where does this go to from here?
I'm just flummoxed by, I know our market is mainly offshore because of the large businesses, but looking at the future of South Africa, who's running the place and how they're going to run it? I don't know. It just seems to me a total mess. Viv, you're the man on the ground for us. What's your impression? Honestly, I don't believe there's 75 billion runs.
i don't believe there's 75 billion rounds probably 75 billion dollars of wasted spending and stuff in the government i don't believe it's 75 billion dollars that can actively be removed if you know what i mean because even though they exist i don't think the government has the capacity or the ability i mean in some cases the willingness to remove that kind of extra spending so they're gonna have to find this fuller's hole from somewhere else and i was just thinking about it
today in the office i mean it can't really be corporate because those guys are too variable in terms of income what are they going to do are they going to go after you know things like capital gains are they going to go off to income they're really basically did the sneak income increase uh income tax increase but not adjusting the uh the brackets you know uh and so 75 billion even with that sticky increase so are they going to go to the uh you know the uh income earners i
don't exactly see where they're going to do it the idea of of reducing spending uh i i don't think that they have the capacity to do that even though like we both agree there is probably multiples that of wasteful spending in the government. Okay, gentlemen, so we've got some prices now. Dollar Rand is 18.79, which is a 0.6% gain for the US dollar against the South African currency. British pound against the Rand is 25 on the nail. Euro Rand is 21.35, and that's a 0.85% gain for the euro.
The pound, incidentally, has gained by 0.9% against the Rand. Euro dollar, 1.1360, euro up a quarter of a percent, British pound against the US dollar. up a quarter to $133.05. Commodities, well, since we last spoke, the gold price has been to $3,500. Didn't like it up there, so it came back down. It's currently trading at $33,000, sorry, $33.24 per ounce, which is down another 3.2% after a bad day yesterday. Platinum up 15 to $9.78.
I noticed the PGM production update from Anglo-American came out today. Not much going on there share-wise. And Palladium, up a percent or nearly $10 to $9.53. Oil price has been quite interesting. I've got an oil price interview next week, which is a rarity. Most people don't want to talk about it too much. But one of the questions I'll bring up is, where's your drill, drill, drill baby now, Mr. Trump?
Because you can't afford to, because they can't make money at West Texas screwed at $62.29, unfortunately. But anyway, it was a nice idea, as some of yours are. Brent crude oil has barely changed, by the way, in West Texas. Brent crude oil is barely changed as well at $66.08 per barrel. Natural gas prices tumbling nearly 5% down today. S&P 500 futures were sort of flat to slightly down close to the opening. And then the bulls came in. $54.77 for the futures. And that's up 1.4%.
That's a big three-day rally if it holds here, which is good, of course. and the US tenure. 4.33%, six basis points lower. The South African 10-year, also lower. PPI came out today, producer price index down to 0.5%. Hopefully, that filters through to the retail level, but you never know. And what else have we got? Bitcoin, 93,150 now, which is almost exactly unchanged. So stuff going on there. Any stocks that have caught either of your eyes on the JSC? I'll give my up.
Ups and downs in a moment. Viv, anything on the local market that you look at or you hold or you want to hold? Yeah, no, look, I mean, you did mention the fact that we see the platinum guys under a bit of pressure today. Northern, you know, it's Implat, Sabanio, all under pressure. The one thing that does interest me, however, is what's happening with gold. I don't know if you saw when we had the craziest stuff happen with Trump. Gold price went above $3,500 an ounce.
Yes. It's come down since then. You know, it's about $3,300. But I think if you look at what's happened to Bitcoin and what's happened to gold, I think gold has kind of regained its safe haven status, especially with the dollar being under pressure like it is. Bitcoin really isn't, you know, the safe haven that everybody wants it to be.
You know, and if you think of or look at what people like Michael Saylor and so on are doing in terms of buying Bitcoin, I think some of that demand may be, you know, limited. But gold does seem to be returning as the safe haven. So things get a little crazy. I can expect to buy gold because that seems to be the place that everybody's going to at the moment. Yes, and have been doing it for a long time, even before Trump. I mean, this thing has been a juggernaut on the upside.
Talking about the upside, on the JSC Aspen, it's bounced back a bit. It's got back, what, about seven-fourths of 28? Yeah, about a third of what it lost yesterday. It's up seven and a third percent. No, that's wrong mathematics. You can work it out. Down 31 yesterday, up 7% today. So a quarter, sorry. Motus up 6.5%. It needs to recover 100%. Yeah, that's not going to happen. Not after what you two have said about it. Motus 6.5% up. TFG up 6.3%. We Buy Cars up 4.8%.
And TrueWurst, the retailer's doing well today. I wonder if it's that PPI data. I hope so. 3.5% and also the VAT story, of course. 3.5% to the good Ford. TrueWurst downside. Yeah, a couple of diggers at the top. Northam's as they mentioned five and a half percent down in place three percent down to gala down three percent said bani 2.4 percent and curry is 1.9 percent loser David indices closing please and value traded if you can I can see the all share index I think this is a new high At 90553.
I haven't seen it breach the 500 level. Sorry, 90,000 level. So I think we're at a new high, up 0.8%. I see the gains right across the market with most of the big gains in the consumer discretionary side of it, well, in the industrial side. That's mainly on the side that you mentioned, those companies that you mentioned in your highlights of that. But a very good day, you know, a very good day right across the board. Yeah, all share 90,553. Top 40, that's a 0.8% gain, also at 0.8% nearly.
is the top 40 to 83.257. Resources up half a percent. Horrible day yesterday, though. 71,000 and change. Industrials up 0.9%. Financials up just over 1%. Yeah, so... I'm looking at the value, yeah. There is 22 billion, which is not bad. The one, the stock that's, I think, I don't know if you spoke about it yesterday, was Capitec. Oh, yeah, very much so. Yeah, wasn't it good?
Today, just making when I say making fools, you know, out of all the other banks, they just captured where the market is and just continue to be supported by the population. It's an incredible company. I know it's expensive, but I think it's just left all the other banks floundering. As I said to the commentator yesterday, it's been expensive since 800 rand a share. Yes. And people don't care. It's a brilliant South African success story. Okay, just final word is on the Magnificent Seven.
I noticed there was an announcement from the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund. It's had its worst six months in its history, and it was all to do with high-flying until recently tech stocks. And Viv, as the tech man, they will, of course, recover, but they've taken a knock. Oh, yes, most certainly. Look, I mean, they had gone on such a huge run that by the start of this year, I mean, we had looked at over a third of the S&P 500 was these seven companies.
And that was an unusually high level of concentration, especially when you consider things like NVIDIA, et cetera. And also NVIDIA has been hit by things like, for instance, what's happened with the Trump restrictions on exports to China, which I think is also something we must talk about sometime down the line. The Chinese are really doing things on a level that people have been expecting in terms of production.
They are managing to get chips out there that are... performing at levels that people did not think they were capable of. And that's, I think, going to be a big story going forward. I believe unless we see these AI stuff take, happen really quickly, and I'm talking next two or three years, the Chinese are certainly going to take over for in AI.
Because effectively, what Trump has done is he just jumpstarted that local industry, made sure they make their own chips, make sure they have their own, you know, local models and so on. And the Chinese basically capacity to improve is incredible. And so, yeah, like I said, unless AI comes by like 2038, 2029, by 2030 and so on, it's going to be a Chinese AI ecosystem. Okay, we'll do a show on that, but you're the man driving it, so you've saddled yourself with that one.
Gentlemen, thank you so much for your time. Next week, another extraordinary week, because it's a Monday and Thursday public holiday, and everyone I speak to, I say, well, can we chat next week? They say, no, I can't, because I'm taking a week off. We just had Easter, now we've got Monday and Thursday. It's the logic. Make it Monday and Tuesday or Thursday and Friday or something. But anyway, we won't be here next Thursday because of that public holiday. David Shapiro is from Sassfin Securities.
When are you back, by the way, David? I'm actually leaving on the 5th of May, and I come back on the 7th of May. But Thursday back is 8th of May. Well, thanks for taking time out on your odyssey. Good. And Viv Govender is from RAND Swiss. And that was the 5 o'clock shadow.
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