You're listening to Strictly Business Podcast with Lindsay Williams. The JSC has closed its doors for another day, so it's time for the five o'clock shadow. And as always on a Thursday, I have the doubleheader dream team edition with Viv Govender from Rands Swiss and David Shapiro from Sasson Securities, both in Johannesburg. Now, Viv, we were chatting just before David joined us about the extraordinary, what is it now, three days, four days? I don't know.
It seems like three years, four years, about the executive orders. that Mr Trump with his giant felt-tip pen signs into law. I mean, it's extraordinary. I mean, apart from the ridiculous 1,500 criminals being pardoned, there's all sorts of things regarding DEI and all sorts of other things. But you've looked deeper into it, not just the headline grabbers, Viv. Most certainly. Look, I think the biggest thing he's done beyond the 1,500 people here and there doesn't really make a difference.
the US probably that's more than that, you know, guilty could go out in any single week in the US. But the change he did to Lyndon B. Johnson's, you know, anti discrimination executive order, the US government basically can't discriminate in terms of employment. But the way the phrase it was, you know, you kind of a disparate impact kind of thing. So it was Lyndon B. Johnson and Nixon thereafter, where they basically came out of the thing of disparate impact.
So you've seen cases in the last couple years, for instance, I teachers have sued and won because certain groups of teachers underscored lesson tests and therefore were not hired or something because of that uh well firemen uh it was who also imagined you know sue and win because you know certain tests uh had different impacts in different communities uh not only has he removed it he's removed and replaced it with something new that is
basically going to be pretty much the reverse of what the last thing was and that's going to affect you know like i said if you look at the amount of people whose incomes depend somewhere another depend on the us government from the state to local level and, you know, to the national level, it approaches half of the US population in terms of workforce. And so there's something that's going to affect all of those people in some way or another. Yes, it's certainly been sweeping changes.
He'd obviously been planning it and he'd got those lovely folders and, as I said, got his felt-tip pens ready to do. I don't think he was planning it. I don't think he would have known this stuff. I think Trump is going out.
and looking at 60 year old uh you know uh legislative orders from uh lindley b johnson no uh i in fact i i see a guy literally this is a little clip of vivek ramos farming is no longer part of doge literally in a podcast talking to somebody and coming up with this idea literally you wrote it down but you actually had the idea in a book and you wrote it down you can just see doing it writing it down and that is the kind of
planning that's coming to here because Trump is not looking at old orders and thinking, he's thinking change the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. That's what he's thinking. He's not thinking, how can I fundamentally change how the US government works and know which laws to change? That's not Trump. No, well, we know what Trump is. And David Shapiro is a man after my own heart when it comes to this sort of thing.
David, your impression of the first very few days and hours of Trump's latest administration? What's shaken me is that no one's protested.
Exactly. No, you know, I haven't seen, I read The Atlantic, I've been reading as much as I can, I enjoy The Atlantic, having a go at him, but I haven't seen people storming in the streets and protesting against his change of genders, you know, no more will gender appear on your passport, it's going to be sex, either male or female, simple as that, you know, and any government stories. No such thing as DEI in any federal government committee.
He's put everybody associated with those committees or those areas of the federal government on leave, on paid leave. He's going to review the whole thing. But I thought, where's the outcry? And all they're doing is fawning over him. If you saw the gallery behind him at... at the inauguration from Zuckerberg to you name it. Which I did, yes. To Bezos and Bezos'new puffed-out wife. You know, all those kind of people. No one cares.
And, you know, as you say, as Viv said, these laws have been entrenched since Lyndon Johnson. A lot of changes have tried to be introduced, you know, to create equality. I mean, it's been an ongoing issue. And in one fell swoop, boop, gone. And no one cares. I'm talking about the gallery. I don't know whether you, you know, I'm just looking, I'm saying, why is no one protesting? Why aren't there placards? Why isn't Washington, isn't there an outcry?
And everybody gets on and says, oh, you know what? The S&P's up. We're going to grow. We're going to create job. America first. We'll see. Okay. You know what I'm saying? Okay. Well, talking about the gallery, and obviously the number one in the gallery is Elon Musk. Did you see the close-ups of him? I mean, I'm not saying that he was on ketamine. I'm not saying he was on ketamine because who do we know? I mean, who are we to say that he was drugged up? But he has a history of drug use.
but he was waving his head all over the place and his eyes are up in the sky that that is a conversation that apparently like a week before he announced he had gone for a neck surgery so there was a so he had surgery on his neck like a week or so before uh and that is why that is why that happened but he wasn't on ketamine i mean i i did talk to you guys about in the past that i think he was but in this case it would probably have to do with the fact that he announced like a
week or two earlier that he had to get the next surgery done uh you know um but the speaking of elon musk uh apparently um remember i told you guys that he's not going to be caring about um the government spending and whatnot and it's going to be changing regulations that's the bigger thing for him apparently that's why vivek ramaswamy was kicked out because ramaswamy was going in there trying to do what they were talking about doing apparently around you know cutting
spending and doing all this stuff and musk was much more you know focused on communications and doing things to help his company Speaking of which, did you guys see the announcement about the 500? Yes, this was my main thrust with you, Aviv, because you've got Oracle, SoftBank and Chat. Yeah. Yeah. And Trump suddenly stands up there at the lectern as he does and says, we're going to be investing 500 billion, in other words, half a trillion US dollars in this thing.
And Musk, who he and Altman hate each other. And they're standing there and then and then Musk says, which was, of course, the beginning of the end of their relationship. He says, no, this is a load of rubbish. They haven't got the money. He says that SoftBank has only got $10 billion secured. So where does the $500 billion come from? But Viv, you know more about this than I do. So please carry on. So, OK, and there's a little bit after that. Certainly, there was enough electricity.
I don't know about the $500 billion. I know that I was doing $80 billion per year.
okay and the time of the police not one soft for the entire opinions could be over multiple years so uh 80 billion per year adds up to like a lot of projects very soon and he says i'm good for the 80 billion you know that's a flex you know what i mean to say i'm good for my 80 billion i i i'm able to split that kind of money and even musk is admitted that such has the money for this afterwards there's a thing about him saying he has such a lot of money
so this is even though he wasn't on the lectern uh it does appear that a large chunk of that bankroll comes from um Microsoft. And the second part to it is Softbank, I don't know if you've ever seen one of his pitch books. It looks like, not to be weird about it, it looks like a teenage kid's wish board. He raised a hundred billion dollars from the Saudis. He's made some really good bets, including things like ARM, which has really done well for him. He's made some huge investments.
and done really, really well. And so even though it's weird and he does all these things, the big swings he does sometimes do work out. And he could probably get some kind of money, if not more, from the Saudis. I mean, they're not going to spend a trillion dollars on a buy, basically. It's all there already. I don't think there's anything new. I don't know why. Maybe that Oracle's coming in. But Oracle, in their results, they've made it quite clear. Maybe the JV.
but in terms of the absolute numbers i don't think there's anything new in in in those numbers and i think this one's been writing in this kind of expansion into data centers whoever was going to do it yeah but i think what what scares me is that trump thinks he's doing a deal he's acting like a business yeah we'll take a bit of this you know with the tick tock yeah we want to have a share of tick tock as well for government i said what kind of matter I don't always get TikTok.
Musk. Yes. I think the Chinese government is vetting Musk to take over TikTok. And TikTok, as you know, basically, even though it's not technically Chinese government, it is the Chinese government, and they have to give the approval for this. And so they look at Musk, and if Musk gets TikTok and Twitter... The interesting thing that Trump said, he said, I don't know why people are so worried about the Chinese government monitoring some US teenagers'stupid videos. That's Donald Trump.
What was he with the Mustang? Musk is not going to get a bad deal on TikTok because they have no choice. The Chinese government says yes. Trump says yes. He's going to get TikTok at a steal. And TikTok is worth, you know, a fortune. I think it's like $200-300 billion in total. But even if it's just a piece of the American part, it's got to be worth, you know, $10, $15, maybe $100 billion. And he's going to get that at a discount.
And then he's going to have TikTok along with, you know, Twitter X. That is a combination that's very powerful. But I saw a very interesting interview with a chap on CNN in the early hours, and he's somebody who's put 20 billion on the table and says, I'll buy the American division of TikTok so the Chinese government can carry on. And he said that there's five billion lines of algorithmic formula, and you're not allowed to use one line of those five billion. You're not allowed.
And that is what TikTok is all about, those algorithmic formula. And so they've got to write it all again themselves. It's not quite as simple as somebody going in and buying it and replicating the current model, Viv. No, no. But the thing is that the model itself, the Chinese government wants the model to be in place. But the model is extremely addictive. TikTok basically has the highest level of addiction, I think, of any of these social media things.
But I don't think Musk is out there just for the addictiveness. He's out there for the influence peddling. You know what I mean?
it's going to be a youtube uh you know competitor it's going to be a facebook tick tock plus twitter together is is comparable to like you know facebook it's comparable to you know youtube it's it's it's going to make him automatically a big player in the in the uh in that space and even though he may have overpaid he's not gonna be for tick tock and the thing is that it doesn't matter who wants to buy this thing even if you put
like 20 billion or 50 billion whatever it is the chinese government has to say yes and the chinese government says yes to musk because he has dealings in china already they know they have him by the proverbial, you know, whatever, because of his operations in China. Because he has the factories in China. He has the operations in China already. So they know he can't be too against China because of the operations that he has in China.
So that's why I think, and also Trump, if Musk wants it, he's not going to say no to Musk. It's an easy thing for him to say yes, because not only is he going to keep his friend Elon Musk happy, still he needs the money for it to make sure that the Congress and Senate do it once. So TikTok is going to be very friendly to Trump. You know, Viv, I was listening to a chap who impressed me immensely.
He was a young fellow by the name of, he's a representative from Massachusetts, fellow by the name of Jake, I think, Oshensloss. I can't pronounce his name. Harvard man. And very articulate, exceptionally well-versed in these issues.
And the way that he put it across, because I think he's been on the kind of committees that um you know the congress committees and that that look at these things and the way he spoke this is not a gimme you know you can't get this through congress there's so many other elements to this and uh you know he was he was making the comment he says you know tick tock in china is completely different from tick tock in america and tick tock in china is educational and tick tock in in uh you know is is
prying into your personal affairs or your personal life in America. But he also, you know, he was highly critical to first, obviously he's a Democrat in that, but, you know, suggesting that this is not going to go through. You know, you're not going to be able just to push these things through. Trump has been speaking about, oh, well, we'll take 40%. You're going to get, you know, it's got to go through a process. You can't decide, okay, I'm going to give it to my mates.
Trump won't be able to do it himself, but Elon Musk and his guys will have the ability to make sure that this is structured in such a way that there's a law in place at the moment and it has to be sold. And he'll be able to, that's the thing, this current Trump administration is not the same as the last one because now he has people in there that are much more competent. See what you want about Musk, see what you want about the kind of people he has in place right now.
They are not amateurs, they know what they're doing. If Musk wants to get TikTok, he will make sure he gets it by sheer ownership or whatever it needs to be done to make sure that he controls it. And the thing is that, again, like you say, what's good or what's bad for the country? What's good or what's bad for the politician matters more, I think. And Republicans are going to love the fact that suddenly TikTok is controlled by a Republican. You know what I mean?
And that, I think, is why it goes through, not because they are looking at, oh, it's bad for people or it's not going to give them the right thing. One more thing before we stop on Trump. You've got to mention this, that meme coin. Did you see that thing? No. I've got a lovely story for you. Go, go, go. Trump launched a meme coin, okay? Oh, yes. And also Melania's got one as well. Right. I think that was an overstep. It actually caused the Trump coin to fall, okay?
But Trump launched the meme coin, and it becomes because he holds 80% of the thing, and it just rockets up after, like, you know, no time. I think it was at one point in time, what 80% of his total net worth. So all the other stuff he had was worth basically nothing. This was what 80% of his total net worth.
Okay. And you know, the thing that's interesting here is that if you look at what people are saying about it, and David has mentioned the fact that, you know, we are seeing, you know, people coming around and talking about, you know, Congress, whatever, this is well as the pardoning, even JD Vance. We'll pardon people, but we won't pardon people that commit violence. Even the people in Congress, we won't pardon people. He pardoned everybody. It was like a blanket pardon, okay?
The Republicans will bend to his will on this thing. We've already seen that happen with people like Pete Hedges and so on going through, black people go through. We've already seen that happen with the stuff that's already gone through the executive orders. The kind of stuff happening around TikTok, I would not be surprised if Musk or some, like Larry Ellison or one of his new friends that were behind him in that stage.
get a hold of TikTok at a discount and not because it's just about you know protecting American interests is because TikTok is now going to be like Twitter is a far more right-leaning thing because Trump's in power and it has to be like that to make him happy okay everybody it's just yeah it's scary the whole thing is scary in my opinion I mean I'm not I'm not analyzing it as Viv has and you have David but I watch it religiously and I I just read the room, I read
Trump. It is extremely disturbing and it's certainly distressing what has happened and it's only day three for goodness sake. It's only three days, four days. He's talking a little later. Oh, devil's sake. I just, and my son, you know, who's a journalist in Australia, he's with the Sydney, sorry, not with Sydney, with the Financial Review, the Australian Financial Review.
review the AFR, they wrote a story about a meme coin, or a meme whatever you call it, and he launched one called Johnny Coin, him, you know, with the newspaper. Within a few minutes it had run up to $6 million. $6 million, and came back to a value now of around about $100,000. As a joke, this was an article that he says was launched in so many different places. countries and so many different languages. You know, it's insane. Sorry. The guy that runs Ethereum is called Vitalik, right?
And he basically is considered to be like the genius in the commerce of crypto. And he complains about the fact that every time somebody launches one of these meme currencies, what they do is they give him a whole chunk of it, trying to associate themselves with him. So like every so often he gets like a message saying, somebody's effectively giving you like a couple of tens of billions of dollars.
Because just the association with him means that the meme coin has some credibility and therefore is worth billions of dollars. And he complains about the fact that people are scabbing people by giving him billions of dollars. Anyway, that's the world. I still don't know what it is. And you can say as much as you like, Viv, about it being 80% of Donald Trump's wealth, but he can't redeem it. And next week it'll be 20% of his wealth because it's collapsed.
There's no way you can go out there and say... This term they use is called rug pulling, right? So what they do is that you release it into the public, you hold your assets behind, and what happens is then you start selling at some crisp-fab time. And I think he started selling. If you look back at that thing, okay, the share price basically halved in like a couple of seconds a few days ago. That was probably him selling a whole bunch of it into the market.
He's gotten out probably... millions, maybe even hundreds of millions of dollars, all of this thing already. And you think, okay, it can't be true, but there's people who put real money into it at like, you know, 70, and now it's about 40. Okay. And the kind of movements you see, these big drops of like, you know, 70 to like 40 in like a couple of minutes here, that is basically some big success into it. And that's probably him. It's a scam in other words, it's a Ponzi scheme.
It's a scam, it's a scam. This is a total scam. He's done this, and like I said, it cost him zero to create it.
Literally, you can create it like David's son created it for nothing, and he made probably, like I said, if not tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe even a billion plus dollars of this thing possible, but at least... tens of billions tens of millions of dollars on the thing it's sickening i'm sorry i'm sorry i have no idea what either of you are talking about i just for me it's just going to be david i have no idea what it
is and melania's got a meme is the memory you know the whole thing is so concerned you know so concerning i think more concerning than the people sitting in the white house you know and and and their antics and what they're up to where this is leading it's quite scary so i just watched the market lindsay yes we're talking about that today she's down yeah talking about that let me go through it because you've got to talk about your business day
article because these are things i understand i understand that one us dollar buys you 18.56 south african rooms okay that is easy for me to understand the round against the round is 2286 and the euro round is 1930 the euro dollar is 103.95 british pound against the us dollar 123.20 Gold price 27.43, which is up a bit. Platinum is up 13 to 960. Palladium has gone into four figures again, 1,014, which is up $13.50.
Other commodities, I don't know what drill baby drill is doing for Trump, but the oil price is still quite high, $79.54, which is up three-quarters of a percent. That's Brent crude. And West Texas crude is $75.87, which is up 0.6%. Natural gas price is up 2% to $4.04. That's quite a move. And what else have we got here? Nothing really, but S&P 500 futures, the high on the futures, all-time high, 6178. Currently 6,116. US 10-year Treasury bond yield, still up there, 4.65%.
And the South African 10-year is 9.25%. Bitcoin, been speaking about memes and coins and stuff, I just don't know. 104,000 and a small amount of change.
down very slightly and yeah that's about it david you wrote an article in business day which you posted on linkedin yeah that's what we would you were telling me on monday just sort of go through it for viv's benefit if you would what this is uh there's half truths in what i wrote i mean when i say half truths i wrote it like a novelist i mean you know the characters coming back from holiday which is true people did get hold of me complaining about
you know why or uh we haven't kept up with the uh the s&p by last year they underperformed and this happens you know and i always say every december i love it because people go to the beach and every i said every man uh you know and his dog well i used the the stanley cup you know because everybody now walks around with that stanley cup you know what those are lindsey no you know that you know Everybody goes to gym with this Stanley Cup,
which is quite an expensive quencher that keeps your water cold, you know, and that's the thing you walk around with drinking or sipping out of this. So they all come back from their holidays and discussing the market with their friends on the beach. And I always say, I don't, not one of my clients, you know, every one of my clients has got a friend that did better than him. That's it. Why? Yeah, right. So, which is true. And so the whole thing is that what it's all about is NVIDIA.
You either had NVIDIA or not NVIDIA, you know. And also the risks that I try to highlight is that last year, the S&P, which was up 23%, really driven by seven stocks or eight stocks, whatever it was, take those away, the S&P was up 12 or 13%. So I think from any kind of... risk approach, you know, if you're managing a portfolio, you would never have put all your stocks or, you know, all the money in a handful of stocks unless you're taking high risk.
Now, you can take high risk for yourself, but you can't do it if you're running a pension fund or provident fund. You have to have a certain, you know, you've got to do risk analysis and you've also got to be a lot more careful about what you do with people's money, especially savings money. So that's what I was trying to compare. And saying yes, you know, we're going into this year, it's going to be a pretty decent year, I think, as well.
But you can't carry on just waiting in tech shares, because what history has taught us is that things can go wrong and do go wrong. We've seen it throughout the history of the stock market, particularly in technology. And if you look back... And Vivian, you will remember IBM's computers which were replaced, or IBM's systems were replaced by Microsoft, you know, Windows 95 and so on, or Windows and then 95 and so on.
Intel, Cisco, all of those things change, and therefore you've got to remain very vigilant, very agile if you're going to go into the tech market. And we've got so many developments, you heard. You know, you've listened to a lot to what Viv has to say, and he highlights just how things are, you know, how different things are and how difficult things are. So that's my message. Yes, I'm a tech freak. I love tech, but you've got to remain, you've got to have your feet on the ground.
So, but the whole thing, sorry to keep going on, but, you know, with NVIDIA, what I also try to highlight, and during 22, You know, post-COVID with NVIDIA, that was a time that they had built up huge stocks because of blockchain and huge stocks because of gaming. When people were stuck at home, there was a lot of computer buying and so on, and they were stuck with a lot of excess stock. or certainly through their supply channels, no one was buying because they were stuck with stocks.
So NVIDIA, which had gone up 450% over a few years, dropped 60%. Now, it doesn't mean 450 minus 60. It's 60% of that 450, you know. So it came down crashing, and everybody, all the clients that we had put them into NVIDIA kept saying, why we got NVIDIA? Why you got NVIDIA, you know? And then a year later, when ChatGPT was launched and it became one of the hot stocks, everybody comes back to us and saying, why aren't we in video? When you lose money, David, it's your fault.
When you make money and they're at a briar on the beach, it was all to do with them. We know that. Now, here's a quote for you, Viv. I'm not worried about our relations. I spoke to him soon after he was elected, congratulated him. And we both said we are looking forward to continued dealings and engagements. And that was on the fringe of the World Economic Forum in Davos when this particular person was on the phone. Who who was from whom was that quote? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's your man.
It's sort of a remote pose. And when I can just see Trump on the phone down and saying, who's this guy? He's from one of those asshole countries. in Africa or something. I can't see Trump ever visiting Africa. I can't see Trump picking up the phone to Ramaphosa and saying, yeah, you really are very important because you've got PGMs and everything and we need them. I just don't see it happening. It's just a lot of nonsense. But anyway, maybe I'm being pessimistic.
I can't compose my idea with Trump because I think people now know what I'm talking about, which is basically flattering outrageously. And I think Ramaphosa understands that.
is the thing about you know i think biden was the first president and i don't know how many each was decades the u.s president sitting u.s president to visit africa and he did it like in his last month before he went to angola yeah yeah yeah we don't even appear on the on the radar of these guys unfortunately but yeah i i i do worry about like you said like the the um the craziness of Trump, but I do think that now people know what to do.
And unfortunately, what they know how to do is how to flatter him and give it to whatever he wants to. And that is not exactly the stress of people who are great preachers for the country or for the world. I worry more about it. As you know, in fact, there was a good article by Peter Bruce this morning just highlighting the worry is more Rubio than Trump. Rubio, who's the foreign secretary now, is an extremely aware man and very pro-Israel, whether you like it or not.
Those are his sentiments that he's expressed. And I don't think we've exactly endeared ourselves in that area, South Africa. And the other point he made up was that he raised, Peter, Peter Bruce raised that whole issue round about the ship in Simon's town.
loading and that's never been explained properly so I but but the point is that South Africa doesn't exist and Trump if he takes this attitude towards his allies can you imagine what he's going to take towards Africa you know he he's his whole point I just sorry to go on I heard him about Canada and he kept saying why do we need Canada why do we need their cars why do we need their milk is milk you mentioned milk yes And he was saying, we don't need it. All their forests.
He also said the forests. He said, we've got beautiful forests. We don't need their timber. He's a nutter. Totally. But, I mean, you've got to sit in front of him, and he's not scared to bring up these things. He's not there for the photo shoot. Okay, let's get back to reality now. This is all like Alice in Wonderland stuff. On the episode on the JSC today, British American tobacco was the one.
point six percent winner david's uh one of david's favorites richmond four percent uh sebastian stillwater managed a just over one percent gain a resilient the property company at one point one percent as well downside i don't know how many of these ex uh div what i want to highlight is a sassel down four point four and two-thirds outshines down 3.8 it's a bad bad what's the name of that trading uh trading update yeah Yeah,
I don't know how with the oil price $80 a barrel for Brent crude and the RAND still relatively weak, how SAS will continue to be. It's an 87 RAND share for God's sake. David, please give us the closing JSE indices and the value trading. We've gone into negative territory now. So the oil share index is right across the board down. and quite severe losses. The All Share Index was down 0.84% at 83944. So that makes us negative for the year.
All the major indices were down, resources down 1.09%, just spread evenly amongst all the miners. Banks as well, under a bit of pressure, down 1.6%. And the industrials also down slightly.
They were helped up by British American Tobacco, Richemont and so on, but those are not... you know those are not local stocks um lindsay just to to to give what we are seeing now certainly what we're picking up and it's evident again there's been quite big set off in retails okay you know we had quick results mr price results yet there's just this persistent um selling of of retail it's after last year we had very good gains there i think the reality is biting and
uh you know either profit taking or looking elsewhere for uh for gains. Okay, value traded, what was it did you say? First under 20 billion, I'll give you the exact numbers yeah, around about yeah, about 18, 19 billion and for the second day in the row, First Rand has been the top trader, out-surpassing NASPES. NASPES is still there but quite a bit of interest in First Rand and Capitec, another one that has been among the high traders over the last few days. Okay, very good.
Gentlemen, thank you very much for your time as always. Viv Govender is from Ransuisse and David Shapiro from Sasson Securities. That was the 5 o'clock shadow. any other entity other than the speaker or the author. And since we are critically thinking human beings, these views are always subject to change, revision, and rethinking at any time. Please do not hold us to them in perpetuity.