You're listening to Strictly Business Podcast with Lindsay Williams. The JFC has closed its doors for another day, so it's time for the 5 o'clock shadow. And as always on a Thursday, I speak to Viv Govender from Ranswiss and David Shapiro from Sassfin. Now, Viv, I've got to start with you because I was looking through LinkedIn around about two hours ago, and there was a post from a chap called Stuart Theobald.
And Stuart Theobald works for a company beginning with a K. I think it begins with a K, but I can't pronounce it. I never remember it. And it was to do with an award ceremony that they were associated with. And you won the South Africa's Best Boutique Wealth Manager. So many congratulations. Rans Swiss, that is. That is. And it's the first time we've actually entered the competition. So it's doubly positive for us that we've won the prize.
And we're focusing more towards wealth management than trading, which was the previous awards we were winning. So, yeah, it's quite good for the company, I think. First time out to be awarded so well. But, Lindsay, they always win awards and deservedly so. They're a very good team and you can hear it when Viv talks. His wisdom comes through. And I think it's remarkable that, you know, for those people who listen to the show, genuinely, I think you learn an enormous amount.
I'm not quite sure about from you and me, but certainly from Viv. Well, anyway, many congratulations, Viv. I mean it in the greatest sincerity. Well done. Fantastic. No, it's an honour, and I hope that you get even more business out of it. I think on that note, David, we should start with you. And you haven't won any awards, and I can't remember you winning any awards. But then again, I don't really follow the awards circuit, David. But you're always on the podium with me. So well done.
Okay, we've got so much to talk about. Okay, let's start with... banks. We've had the Fed unchanged. We've had the Bank of Japan unchanged. We've had the South African Reserve Bank cutting by a quarter of a percent. Then we got the August the 1st tariff deadline looming. When is that? I think it's tomorrow, isn't it? Yeah, we've got a tariff deadline tomorrow, August the 1st. We've got Trump's economy soars. That was the headline on Fox News.
Trump's economy soars because the US GDP this week came out at 3%, but not quite so because it was an import story. And if you look below, it's around about 1.2%, actually, the real gain. But that's out the way. But we got the big one, David. And that was the mega numbers from Meta and Microsoft. David, you start with one of those, if you would. You know what? If you look at both of them, the one number that just stands out. Look, we can talk about the revenue numbers.
You know, you can talk about the earnings numbers.
But the number that you look at that is just... astronomical is the amount they're spending on capex and uh i think we're going into i think microsoft i picked up that they will spend uh this year in their financial year whatever it is something like 80 billion dollars you know and meta in the region of what i think 65 to 70 odd i can't remember the exact numbers i mean these are enormous amounts of money that they're spending developing their business, you know, investing in CapEx.
And you must remember the multiple.
buyer effect of something like that through an economy i mean just you can convert it to pounds you can just convert it into rand which is quite astonishing and where they've got the confidence to do so and i think uh continue to what what what also you pick up is that it's starting to give results in other words uh you know people are using the cloud they're using the cloud services a a lot more and they're also seeing the benefits of ai you know ai is pushing this along.
So we've been talking about it, but it's actually working. So these are astonishing results and astonishing numbers. And they're the only companies that can afford to spend that kind of money, you know, without having to go to a bank and take on risk. So a remarkable story. Do you own either of those stocks or both, David, for your clients? Sorry, I missed out Meta, that's all. And it was a personal dislike of Zuckerberg that... that kept me on the side. High equity, yeah. You know what I mean?
It wasn't that I didn't like what he was doing. And, you know, Facebook has made a big comeback. It's no longer a family photo album. You know, old ladies looking at their grandchildren. It's really becoming a tool now. You know, Instagram and so on. But I've certainly held Microsoft for a long time.
But, yeah, I can kick myself for... you know not not going into meta when it just became apparent that he was going to do well viv over to you now if you don't mind me asking you don't have to answer but do your clients own one or both of those stocks They were founding stocks in my AI portfolio. So we bought Meta earlier than that because when Meta went down significantly a couple of years ago, it was entirely self-inflicted.
It was one of the most... I mean, you talk about Tesla being affected negatively by Musk. That Meta fall was entirely Zuckerberg being crazed by the Metaverse. You remember that? Yes, I do. And so the share price come down dramatically. I think it's up over six times since then. But Microsoft we bought and Meta we bought when the AI... portfolio was created. There were a couple of stocks that were fundamental to it. And we kept most of them.
The only one I think we've really got rid of, you know, that's all the fundamental stocks, is looking to get rid of Apple, unfortunately, because, you know, see what you want about founder culture. Tim Cook does not seem to have the foresight or the, you know, the ability to go and spend this kind of money. Apple has the money as well. But you need to either have somebody like, you know, Mark Zuckerberg in charge, or somebody that's really recreated the business like Sachin Nadella.
in order to basically make this kind of bet. And unfortunately, Tim Cook can't. But speaking of these numbers here, to put into perspective, and this was amazing, what Microsoft is spending in a given calendar year is more than any country in history has ever spent on a single infrastructure project. I don't mean like building one bridge.
I mean like building like the National Highway Network or building the National Electricity Grid for China or for the US, or basically more than the US has ever spent in a single year.
to go to space even counting the the massive amounts they were spending to go to the moon back in the 1960s that's one company's spend and the crazy thing about this is that you know mark zuckerberg is spending this money not just on uh infrastructure but also on people he's offering packages up to a billion dollars for multi uh uh you know a deal so imagine making a billion dollars as a salary over multiple years you know obviously it's paid off from what you're making Maybe 100 million a year,
whatever it may be. And the crazier part is this. People are saying no. How are people saying no to becoming a billionaire on a salary? We think about it. We're talking about the kind of money that Michael Jordan has earned of a career. LeBron James has earned of a career. And there are basically people working at places like OpenAI, at Anthropic, at I think Ilias' new company, Ilias at Sky, or Miros company as well, that are literally saying no to.
hundreds of millions of dollars, you know, in terms of salary. And the only thing I can imagine here is that these people are either totally brainwashed by their leaders, or they are so confident that their company is about to hit AGI, that they think that even a billion dollar salary doesn't compare to the upside of being involved in the company that gets to AGI first. Gosh, quite a few stats that you packed in there and quite a few things to think about.
The infrastructure story really got me right from the beginning. Viv, I'll come back down to earth now on AI. That's one company. Yeah, we'll come to the other companies in a moment, David. I just want to go to both of you cap in hand. And I've got my tail between my legs as I say this. I've started using AI and I used it this morning in a meeting with someone.
and I I sir I used grok actually and I went into grok and asked it a question and it came up with the answer and I said to the person I was in the meeting with it a two-hour meeting longest meeting I've been in for about seven years and I said to her but in Germany this is how they do it why can't you do it yours this country is as rich as Germany if not richer now and I think you should allocate your money a little bit more expansively if you like and she said oh I didn't know that.
And I said, well, there you are. Have a think about it. But that was AI. That would never have happened before. And as I say, I take my hat off to you two. I can't believe what a useful tool it is. David, you were saying something. No, no. What I wanted to say is that Viv mentioned, you know, that Meta's paying more, sorry, spending more on infrastructure than any country. But that's one company. Now you go into Microsoft as well.
and you go into Amazon and you add up the amount of money that's going into this, how can anybody compete? You know, how can any other country compete? And when I say country, I'm talking about the private enterprises within those countries. How can South Africa ever compete with this absolute power of America and America's spend and what this means to them as leaders? You know, we talk about exceptionalism. I'm not going to use that word.
I'm just saying that these are individuals making these decisions, very, very brave decisions, and it's starting to pay dividends. So, I mean, when you look at the U.S., you know, just give me an equivalent in… in the UK or in Europe or anything like that. There's nothing that can compare. So we're going to see more. We'll see more from NVIDIA. We'll see more from the other businesses as well. So it's quite incredible.
And I think looking at what Trump, sorry, what Powell did yesterday, I don't want to bring it in in the big discussion yet, but I mean, this area of the market still remains.
the major driver of uh you know of gains on the market or of interest on the market you know it's still way ahead of anything else that we're seeing do you think that uh and viv i'll throw this one at you do you think that the the sort of stocks that that you two have been banging on about so correctly for so long do you think they're recession proof do you think they are in a complete bubble they've almost got like the trump's golden dome protecting them from
anything that the economy can throw at them, apart from a little blip on a chart, Viv? Look, I mean, if it is smaller, you would say, yes, it's possible for the policy to protect it. The amounts of money that Microsoft, Apple, Microsoft, Meta and so on are spending here are so ginormous that, I mean, these companies on their own are basically risking more than was at risk in like, you know, in like major crises in the past, if you know what I mean.
You know, hundreds of billions of dollars at risk.
you know by individual companies that rivals like the the great depression the great recession sorry the great financial crisis uh for some countries uh so i'm saying to you that what this play is the risk here is that this doesn't work if ai in say two or three years time turns out to be a damn squib uh and doesn't really start boosting global gdp significantly and the calculation you must keep in mind is this roughly a company like microsoft can get maybe five percent of the total GDP benefit.
It divides the world. So if Microsoft is spending, say, $100 billion, let us say as a guesstimate, it needs to basically cause $2 trillion worth of GDP growth in the world for Microsoft to get back the return to justify $100 billion spent. Okay? $2 trillion is like 2% of global GDP. So Microsoft's $100 billion spend needs to translate into a 2% jump up in global GDP. Add that for Meta, add that for Amazon, and so on.
And these companies basically need to result in the boosting of global GDP by maybe 5% a year. And that's the kind of impact that you have to see. If all we get from AI is as much benefit to the world as the internet, it's a total disaster. These guys are massively overspent. And Sachin Dutta and Mark Zuckerberg will go down as some of the greatest destroyers of capital in history. That's what we need to have happen, yes. It can't be like, you know, the internet.
This needs to be like electricity, but electricity not in like multiple decades, in a few years for it to basically work out. Gosh, and David Shapiro will be telling us stories that don't involve sad stories about football. There'll be sad stories about Tommy Elk. Sorry, David. The point is that, you know, Viv's right. We don't really know what the outcome is, but at least they're going out. And it's like the railways.
Can you imagine those chaps who took the risk by kind of putting these steel boulders or, you know, building railways across the American prairies and so on? They never knew what it was going to do. But the impact was absolutely remarkable. And, you know, I haven't thought about it yet. But, I mean, the fact that they were able to get people there, what the railways did to the U.S. economy was quite remarkable. This, in a way, is... the same kind of thing. They're laying out the infrastructure.
It's up to you, Mr. Williams, to use it and to understand how it's going to help your business. For the meantime, it's starting to give returns. It's starting to look very interesting. But I think it's beyond us using it. It's up to the medical profession, the legal profession, the engineering, everything like that to actually make use of it. I know Viv scared the hell out of us last week or something.
All the people are going to, how many people are going to be unemployed, you know, and will have to be helped. Yeah, look, at this stage, I can't think that way. You know, I'm not going to do the numbers. But what I am going to say, listen, this is, for the meantime, it's showing results. And they are seeing some incredible returns on whatever investment they have made up to now. So what we're witnessing here, gentlemen, is history. You spoke about the railways, David.
If you look at the way that Rockefeller bet the farm on refineries and bought out everybody and went heavily into debt, and that did so well, and look what petroleum did to the world. But, yeah, it is a historic, historic time. And the thing is it's happening so fast. When will we know if and when it's been a success or not? You talk about the contribution to GDP. At what point do you say to yourself, wait a second, I don't like these numbers?
Well, just to mention David's thing, the railways worked out eventually, but a lot of the companies that basically got into the railways, like a quarter of them went bankrupt, you know, or less well consolidated and such at like significant like discounts, like the value, you know, in the 19th century in the US. So it is a historical fact that if it's compared to the railways, it's going to be a disaster for some of these It's just been working out.
By 2030, the way these guys are ramping up right now, by 2030, which is the next five years, it's going to be impossible to increase scale at the way they increased it over the last five years, just because of the laws of physics. We just don't have the energy. We don't have the infrastructure to keep on increasing computing power energy by 2030. Now, by 2030, they will have spent so many hundreds of billions of dollars that you need to start seeing. U.S. GDP growing at 5%, 6%, 7%.
You need to start seeing global GDP. You need to see 2% or 3% added onto global GDP within five years' time. At the same time, you would need to start seeing job losses, unfortunately. That has to occur because that's what is happening here. We already are seeing, you know, at places like Microsoft and so on, they did a report recently where they highlighted the 40 jobs that are most vulnerable. Unfortunately, David and I are among them, financial advisors.
uh you know analysts among the most uh vulnerable to this yeah and and i think they had a job the least vulnerable were things like bombers and massage therapists and so on so at least be a dvd to go to start retraining and nail nail bars as well we get a robot to do that I tell you what, nail bars are the only shops that are opening in the UK high street. So maybe you could do some, I don't know, get a nail course or something, David.
I think nail technicians can be replaced as well, because I've seen machines that can print now nails. So you'd be amazed. But yeah, I think this is a case of the next five years either have to be the most unusual five years in all our lives, you know, including David's. Uh, or... We are looking at easily the greatest destruction of capital in history. The numbers here, we talk about the railroads, electricity, like this is comparable. This is only comparable as like an analogy.
The amounts being spent here are vastly higher than were spent on electricity or the railroads in the past. There's nothing in the past that comes close to this. This is literally, there's never been anything like this in history, quite frankly, in terms of capital expenditure. Okay, moving on, gentlemen. David, it seems to be pick on David Day. So I'm going to pick on you for an analysis of what the Fed did last night.
And they left interest rates unchanged, but there were a couple of dissenters within the Federal Open Market Committee. The reaction of the dollar has been to soar by about one and two thirds percent against the euro. It's put the rand way above 18 against the US dollar, of course. It's not so bad, again, on a trade weighted index basis. But that would have really pissed off Donald Trump, David. Yeah, I haven't heard him yet. I don't know. For some reason, he hasn't appeared on TV today.
So I don't know where he's hiding, whether he's playing golf. But I thought he would come out with boxing gloves. In fact, I don't even think he'd want boxing gloves. He'd want to hit Powell with his bare fist. I think that's how furious he is. Because Powell actually didn't even mention September. He gave no indication of reducing rates. Look, that's back. by some of the data, by the GDP data which you mentioned, which you know and correctly said it was distorted.
It wasn't correct because it included or there weren't imports as well. And if you know how GDP is calculated, you don't include anything that is not manufactured in yourself. So it's a distorted number. On the other hand, I just looked at the PMI now, even though it's below 50, Chicago PMI, it's well above where everybody thought. I'm sure the jobs numbers are going to be above what everybody's been expecting.
So the U.S. economy is quite robust, but there are still areas of weakness, particularly housing. And I don't think confidence is that great. for people to take on massive risk. Lindsay, where I'm going to, and I keep saying it, is that we do need something. We got a little bit of a kicker today in South Africa, but I think the US just needs some kind of help. And I think that's where Trump is getting incredibly frustrated.
And the more he gets frustrated, the more Powell digs his heels in and says, it's not going to happen. But there's a consequence. You can talk to Viv first, but there is a consequence that I'm seeing playing out here. which is quite important. No, no, carry on. If you want to roll, please tell us and we can come in afterwards. Okay, you know what's happened. Go have a look at the European market now. There's been a massive destruction and sell-off.
And that's because US rates are getting stronger. And the dollar's getting stronger. Rates are going up. And it's drawing money in. The euro has gone weaker. And if you look at the European market at the moment, What drew my attention is I saw Ferraris down 10%. Yes, I know they missed on sales. It was a very slight miss. But above that is ABM down 11%. And I didn't think their numbers were that bad. Mondi down 11%, you know, and keep going. I'm trying to remember. Hermes down over 5%.
So it's a big, big sell-off right across the board. Yeah, I've got the DAX down.
I mean, these are... big numbers that you're talking about individual stocks the overall indices yeah they're down 0.7 percent for the dax and 0.7 percent for the cat current and the ftse actually barely changed if my numbers are are correct but um they're about 15 minutes late but i see what you mean david it's uh it it's been all over the place the far east was down this morning the us futures were up because of meta and microsoft and here we are with europe down now so
there's definitely some sort of geographical divergence isn't there today which is very interesting this is euro you know that's what i'm saying this is selling out of europe now remember when the dollar weakened everybody said you know let's buy europe this is the opposite taking place and i think some of the knocks that we're seeing are not really justified by by the earnings and i don't deserve this so um this is this is a shift you know this is like
I would say like a structural shift out of Europe into the US. I've got the resources index of the JSC down 4.1% at the moment. That's a huge move. Viv, just very quickly on the South African Reserve Bank. Is Lesetra Kanyargo too conservative, do you think? Look, I have to say that, you know, there's some Zimbabwean governors that have done exceptionally. Jerome Powell, if you had to look at his situation a few years ago and say this is the result of it.
Most economists have said this is an incredible result. Liseko Kaniako has been an incredible steward of Iran, and that's his main job. And yes, he may have been conservative, but understand that this is not the same kind of playing field as the Europeans or the Americans are playing with. Look at the example of Turkey. He gets this wrong, and Iran is at 30 and 40 very, very quickly. And this is a very dangerous thing.
The cliff is... very steep once somebody loses confidence in an emerging market currency. Look at the Ghanaian CEDI. Look at the Turkish lira. Look at what happened in Brazil. Look at globally. There's many, many places where this has happened. And so, yes, he's been conservative. But like I said, the risk-reward payoff is not symmetrical here. You must be more conservative in his job.
And he's done an excellent job, quite frankly, in controlling inflation and basically ensuring that the second one has a stable... while many of its peers has not. The reason South Africa is in the doldrums is nothing to do with the Reserve Bank. It's to do with our policies, our infrastructure, governance, a number of other things. In other words, the government rather than the Reserve Bank. The government is to blame. It's not that. Yeah. He's been good. Okay, good. Well done.
Yes, he has been a pillar. It's been one pillar of stability ever since I've been covering South Africa, I must say. Okay, let's have a look at the markets now, the all-important markets. I've got the dollar round at 18.13. That's a 2.4% rise for the US dollar against the local currency. British pound against the rand, 23.98. Euro rand, 20.74. Euro dollar, 1.1435, which is a 1.6% fall for the euro. The British pound against the US dollar, 1.3227, and that's a 1.3% fall for the pound.
Let's have a look at commodities now, because this is interesting. The gold price is just about... Clinging on to $3,300. It was just below it, actually, by a couple of dollars, $32.98. The platinum price has fallen by $75 an ounce to $12.98, I think that says. Yeah, $12.98.
and the palladium price is 12.10 which is down 54 or four and a third percent now this is where it gets interesting on the commodities side the oil price yesterday was way above 72 it's now just clinging on to 71 down two percent on the day nearly for brent crude 7104 and west texas 68.63 also down nearly two percent that's very interesting it's a dollar story of course And the one that I used the frame pissed off earlier on,
and I'm going to use it again now because I am so with Donald Trump for playing fast and loose with the copper price. The copper price a couple of weeks ago went up 20% because of a 50% increase in tariffs on copper. That was reversed yesterday. Yes, they reiterated 50% increase in copper tariffs, but not on certain products. And the futures market fell 20% last night. I think that's really unfair to be so cavalier with a commodity, which is terribly, terribly important.
South African 10-year bond, this is a good news story. 9.63%, that's a near 2% fall in the yield. And that's with everybody knowing that 25 basis points was going to come off the repo rate. I think this is because of the target of 3%, which has been put out by the governor. So very good news there. People coming for South African bonds. US 10-year bonds, 4.34%. S&P 500, 6408, the September futures, up slightly, up 0.2%. And Bitcoin is, what is it, just clinging on to 118,000.
David, the ups and downs on the JSC today. Give us your highlights and lowlights, please. This is, if we look here, it's quite remarkable because if you look on the negative side, you've got ABN beef down. nearly 11%, 10.7%. And I don't think there was anything in their results that really, you know, were anything to worry about. Mondi as well, down 10.5%. Impala, down 8.7%. Now, that's unusual because, yes, the platinum price came down, but the rand weakened.
And, of course, you know, that would kind of stabilize the platinum price or the price they get. So. There is a bit of nervousness coming into market. So we see all the platinum shares down. Valterra down 7.25%. Northern down 7%. Sabania down 6%. These are big falls. Anglo Gold down 5%. So we've seen the precious metal stocks coming under a lot of pressure. On the positive side, nothing outstanding. MTN, Consult, which is PSG, Sasol, Discovery, and Mass.
You know, no massive gains there, but I mean, it's on the mining side that the damage was done. Yeah, I'll reiterate that. On the upside, MTN up 5.6%, PSG Consult 5.25%, Sassel up 2.75%, and Discovery up 2.2%. Downside, AB InBev 10.7% weaker. David, is that because people are not drinking beer, and although they're replacing... Some people are replacing it with the 0% alcohol beer. Is that anything to do with it? And people just not drinking anymore? That is a big story.
We're seeing it in the spirit side and we're certainly seeing it in the beer side. But AB InBev have managed their way well through this. They are pushing the premium beers. That's why I'm a little surprised by what we saw. I know volumes are slightly down. but nothing dramatic. But I think this is a trend, Lindsay. It's something that I would worry about in that area. ABM, BF, Heineken, we saw a similar trend.
Carlsberg, we're seeing spirits like Diageo, Pernod Ricard, all of them are reporting that on the spirit side, their volumes are going down, meaning that people are drinking a lot less. I don't know whether it's a healthy option, whether they can't afford it. There's a definite lifestyle shift. I knew I should have phoned you when I stopped drinking. I knew that would be the trigger for AB InBev and the others to fall off a cliff. It was a sign, a trigger. Okay, what else have I got?
Mondi PLC down 10.5%, Impala Platinum down 8.75%, Valterra down 7.25%. Their results, of course, were out on Monday. And Northam's down... I didn't realize I was talking to somebody yesterday about Impala and Northam's going up like 120, 130 percent. I know Valterra had gone up 50, 60 percent, but the other ones, goodness me, they've shot the lights out. David, please give us the closing indices on the JSC. So if you look at the JSC, we held ground.
I mean, only lost 0.8 of a percent down to 98, 520. We're still below that. 100,000 level, which were records level, but the damage done with the resources, the resource index down nearly 4% and precious metals index down 4.5%. The rest of the market pretty steady, you know, financials held their ground, banks up nearly 1%, the other financials also quite steady. On the industrial side, because of that ABM debt, because of the MONDI, they do have quite a strong weighting in the index.
We did see industrials a little lower, particularly on the consumer side. I think the normal process, Richemont, all of those came under pressure as well. NASPERS and, of course, the retailers. So all, yeah, kind of mixed, funny enough, in the retailers. But I still think the heavyweights took the index down. Okay. Viv, final question goes to you. We've seen great numbers from Meta and Microsoft. Will it continue with the other? with the other ones? I know NVIDIA is a bit out of sync, isn't it?
It's not part of the normal results season, but the other ones, do you expect the same? Not so many. I mean, Apple, I think, is going to be a bit of a lagger. I think Apple, you know, in terms of, you know, like I said, the AI story has kind of skipped them by. You really see it like, you know, either you go very big or you can't go home. You can't be playing with like this kind of small kind of investments that Apple has had in the past.
I think that is the... the biggest change that we see at the moment. Viv, thanks so much for your time. Viv Govender is from Ranswiss. And again, congratulations on your award. David Shapiro is from SAS and Securities. And that was the 5 o'clock shadow.
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