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 5 o'clock shadow. And as always, on a Thursday, it's the Doubleheader Dream Team Edition with Viv Govender from RAND Swiss and David Shapiro from Sassfin Securities. David, I'll start with you, if I can, with data coming out of the United States. Can you sum it up for us? I think with US weekly jobless claims, filings, and also US GDP, I think, came out today.
Can you tell us? Yeah, well, I mean, it's far better than anyone expected. The U.S. GDP in the third quarter is 4.4%. That's a huge number. I mean, considering I know it was up higher, but this has been revised even higher. I can't remember where it's come from. But I mean, it just shows you how resilient the U.S. economy is. And also jobless numbers, you know, the number of claims now are steadying. So there's no major layoffs or anything like that.
And against that, you're getting some fairly decent numbers coming out of, you know, out of corporates, J&J today, yesterday, sorry. So, I mean, overall, to sum it up, the U.S. economy is in good shape. And I mean, if you compare this and why I'm bringing this up and I want to hear Niv's response or reaction to it or even yours, Lindsay, you know, I listened to the full Trump speech yesterday at Davos. And, you know, I was, I don't know what, stupefied because he just laid into everybody.
But why I bring this up? Because the one thing he did attack was both the UK and certainly had a full go at Europe and, you know, even Switzerland. And fundamentally just making some quotes about, you know, the electricity usage and how this has gone down. significantly, you know, over the last few decades, just pointing out how backward Europe and the UK have gone, you know, whereas the US is just roaring ahead. And, I mean, these are his friends, You know, he's having a full go at his mates.
So I just thought about it. I said, you know, maybe he's got a point. I was sitting there and said, yeah, well, maybe he has got a point. Maybe they have been a bit stodgy and need to do things. And this just kind of, these numbers reinforce, you know, just how powerful the US is economically. So it's very hard to back against them, you know, while they continue to run like this for whatever reason. And I don't think Trump has had anything to do with it, although he claims that he did.
Yes, it's always I did this and I did that. We know that. Yes, yes. Viv, you mentioned Mark Carney just before we came on air, the PM of Canada, former governor of the Bank of England. Of course, a very intelligent man, a very considered man and a brutal man when it came to his speech. So start with his speech, if you would, and then we can get your opinions and mine, of course, even mine, David said. even my opinions on Trump. I know where it's going. I know where it's going.
There's so much to talk about. But Viv, Mark Carney, first of all, please. Okay, so the Carney speech, basically he called it the rupture. He basically pointed out the fact that, you know, we've always talked about the world order being a rules-based world order, but in reality, it was never a rule-based world order. When people, we liked the bad things, we ignored them. And people we didn't like were hurt, we ignored that. And like, he just went through the whole thing.
and saying that that and basically now we can't ignore things because you know effectively we are the guys being hurt uh and that was like the the speech he gave out and the thing to consider here is monk khani you know he is considered he's the most establishment person you can imagine you know like the head of two central banks globally the pm of of of a g20 country this is like of canada you know what i mean this is like if you're looking at the most mainstream
steady person in the world you can find is probably going to be Mark Carney. And for him to make a speech like that is what makes war, you know, impressive or more, you know, impactful. But speaking of what David said just now, I mean, the thing with the U.S. is irrespective of what Trump does, you know, there's many billionaires in the U.S. right now that have said very bad things about Trump. And he can't really do much about it because the U.S. system allows you to do that.
You basically have seen in places like, you know, China. Even in places like some other parts of the world, where if you offend the guy in charge, you are in trouble. The US system can overcome a very bad leader or a very erratic leader because of its innate strengths.
And the thing to be mentioned is that the jobs numbers, you can't look at the unemployment numbers coming up, the new jobs numbers coming out, without taking into account that what Trump is doing with immigration is basically resetting that number. So if you look at, for instance, how many jobs created in the US, it's significantly less than it was during the Biden years. It doesn't make a difference.
The number that the initial jobless claims is more important because that is going to tell you just how many people are claiming for unemployment. The new jobs being created, that's a kind of almost a false number just because immigration, both legal and illegal in the U.S., has come down so dramatically. And so I do think that we look at the jobs numbers in the U.S., it's a bit deceptive.
But as for the growth rate, we have been saying AI, the kind of spending we're doing right now, has to translate into GDP growth at some point in time. And maybe we are starting to see the start of that. And if that is the case, then this would just be, you know, a normal kind of number going forward, might even be a low number going forward.
Because by all estimates, if AI is really taking off, we should be expecting, you know, I mean, that lady from our capital talked about 30%, three zero percent GDP growth rates, which, you know, theoretically is not out of the realm of possibility. If we do have that AI take off, like something might be occurring. Just before I go to you, David, I want to stay with Viv, because I want to ask you, Viv, can you have an economy that grows at 4, 5, 6, 10 percent?
I mean, Trump was talking even higher numbers. He got a little bit carried away with himself. What a surprise. But can you have a growth rate like that and subdued employment numbers because of AI? Can that happen, Viv? It's almost certainly going to happen because the way AI grows the economy is by replacing people. That's by definition how it's going to do it. You don't go out and basically make trillions of dollars of new value without just that extent replacing people.
Now, some people are going to make a lot more money because they're going to be a lot more useful. But, I mean, we are talking about the kind of disruptions. I mean, people talk about the Industrial Revolution. They talk about other revolutions in the world, like technological revolutions. But I think the Industrial Revolution is probably the key one. There was a reason that the Luddites were doing things, that the sabotage guys were throwing their shoes at looms and so on.
It's because the disruption. The people's lives is going to be dramatic and a lot of people are going to be unemployed, even as the economy grows like, you know, 10 plus percent a year. And the thing that you've got to understand is that, you know, there's a reason that we had all these like major, you know, revolutions and all these kind of crazy things happening around the time of the Industrial Revolution throughout all of Europe and even globally.
It was because of the fact that, you know, even though much more wealth has been created, it was not being created in the normal way. And that disruption is going to be or was gigantic. All that we can see right now, this disruption is going to be larger. And the one thing I would point out is this. Even if the U.S. manages to get perfectly right and basically reaches the world very well, etc., they're going to do that in the U.S. We in South Africa are not going to touch that money.
People in Lagos or people in Delhi or people in other parts of the world are not going to see any of that money. But we will see all of the disruption. And that's the thing to be concerned about. Yes, it is concerning. David, Donald Trump's speeches, the second speech today was quite extraordinary. I mean, this board of peace business. I'd love to get your view on that.
But I sort of made the analogy, it's like the rubber knickers, you're driving along the motorway, and suddenly the traffic slows down. You don't know why it slows down. But you know, you sit there for 20 minutes, and then you find out why it slowed down. It's because on the side of the road, there's been an accident. There's a couple of police cars. There's an ambulance. There's a fire engine. It's been put over to the side of the road. There's still three lanes going. It's in the lay-by.
But you slow down so that you can have a look at it because you can't help yourself. You're a rubbernecker. And that's what Trump's speech like was to me this morning. I watched this thing and I said to myself, why are you doing this? You've seen it all before. You've heard it all before. You've heard about the border. You've heard about... The growth, and you've heard about eight wars being solved and you didn't get the Nobel Peace Prize.
And you've heard about windmills costing $1,000 every time they rotate. It's just unbelievable. And the whole concept of the Board of Peace, I became so angry. For the first time, I literally and metaphorically walked out of a Trump speech, David. He's out of control now, surely. Totally. I think that despite the fact that he's out of control, I don't think anybody cares. You know, he makes a noise, but you know that it's more than a noise than anything.
When I listened to his talk and I started off, I got very worried. I said, oh, the market's going to be slaughtered. And I still have an issue, and I'll bring it up now, that concerns me. But I thought, oh, the markets are going to, you know, and so on. And then at the end of the speech, he said, well, there's no trade. He didn't mention trade. There's no more tariffs. And, you know, despite the noise, you know, I call him Roy of the Rovers.
I mean, Man United could buy him because he would just win the league for them. You know, he's just so super talented in everything that he does. And everybody else is so utterly stupid. You know, he's just a superhero. And I listened to this as well. And yet the market just like kind of brushed it aside. But Lindsay, where it's, this is, you know, this is the interesting thing is that when Jensen Wang went to. Davos and started talking, he had an impact on semiconductors.
And I still think the underlying business is very, very strong. I listened to Mark Benioff as well, you know, on Salesforce. Well, he wasn't talking about Salesforce. He was talking about, you know, software as an enterprise or software as a service. You know, he was talking about how they're gearing themselves up. And you're getting a feel for where American business is beginning to focus itself and help.
powerful it is what worries me and this is where i'm coming to go look at the dollar you know the dollar remains under a lot of pressure okay and the bonds despite yeah and the bonds despite the fact that and gold price is going up gold price is going up platinum price is up silver hasn't come down so on so i mean if you look at all of those they're not responding to the equity business. It's a totally different thing. You know what I mean? In those markets, there still are a lot of concerns.
Whether it's tied to Japan, I'm not quite sure. But I would have thought with the market now recovering everything, you know, we're back on a ride. Semiconductor companies, well, IT companies are moving. The bond market hasn't moved, you know, or hardly. The dollar... I mean, the RAND's now 1620. Yeah. You know, these are big moves. And I thought the RAND would be 17, 17, not at all. Gold's still strong. People are still going in there. There still is this underlying fear there.
So even though, you know what I'm saying, even though the equity market is strong and we're celebrating that, there's another market that's saying, hold on, you know, be careful. And I can't reconcile the two, you know, the moods of the two. No. There is something going on in the background. The gold price yesterday got close to 4,900, came below 4,800 when Trump said at the end of his speech that he wasn't going to invade Greenland militarily.
And then the market goes shooting up again and gold comes down when he said that tariffs, all that sort of thing. It's just so weird what's been happening. But Viv, next week, the Fed has got a big problem, Viv, because how does it analyse a good GDP number, bad jobs numbers? And maybe bad jobs numbers when the real thing comes out, the jobless claims, quite soon, the first Friday of February. But how does it react? Does it take one? Does it take the other?
And does it say, you know what, I just listened to Viv Govender on the podcast. And yes, there has now been a new world order created, not at Davos, but in markets. Viv, the Fed, what would you do? Look, I mean, the Fed has to be more hawkish than it probably wants to be.
Given all things fair, I mean, like, I'm not saying it's going to, let's just say the mark, the inflation rate was low enough and et cetera, which I don't think it is at the moment, but if it was low enough to basically give it like a tendency to basically try and cut rates, the Fed would probably have to stay and not cut rates in that scenario, just because they're being attacked on their credibility.
And to preserve their credibility, they have to almost like do the opposite of what they're being commanded to do. You know what I mean? They've got to kind of show backbone. And so I do suspect that the Fed is... actually going to be a little more hawkish than default just because of the fact that that's the way they can show that they're not kowtowing to Trump at the moment. They're probably going to hold steady for the next meeting and maybe for the next couple of months afterwards.
The big question of the year is going to be around the Fed. Who's going to be on that Fed at the end of the year? You know what I mean? He didn't. He didn't lay... He just kept going on at Powell. In the most destructive way. And calling him every kind of name. And, you know, that was supported by Besant as well. I listened to Besant's speech as well. And he was saying, oh, you know, he put a lot of blame on Powell saying he should have had an investigation into Lisa Cook.
He should have had an investigation in his own department about the overrun. You know, and the fact that he's done that, you know, why do we have to do it? So on. So he was he's Trump's man. You know what I mean? He's. He's formulated his attack as well. He didn't hold back. He had a full go at Gavin Newsom, who's from California. Governor of California, yes. He had a full go at him, saying he's hobnobbing with his sugar daddy. Do you know Gavin Newsom?
I think he's the former husband or boyfriend of Trump's son's ex-wife. Yeah, there's a link there somewhere. But Newsom brings it upon himself. He does say some good things, and he does say what everybody else wants to say, but he shouldn't say it as governor of California, which is one of the top economies in the world outside of countries. I think it's the 14th biggest economy in the world or something like that.
But anyway, talking about Viv, as you were, Mark Carney being, you know, the most conservative and the most reasonable and the most this and that, having a CV. that is the envy of most. Another person, and I think David, you would agree with me, that projects stability and reasonableness, if that's a word, is Christine Lagarde, I would say. I'd say she's, I don't know if she's particularly good as the head of the ECB, but she certainly comes across as being very, very organised.
And what happened last night was very interesting. European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde abruptly walked out. of a high-profile private dinner at the World Economic Forum in Davos after US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick harshly criticised Europe's economic underperformance, according to media reports.
Now, David, you're going on about this, and you're starting to believe it as well, that we in Europe here are having siestas in the afternoon and four-day weeks and things like that, which is true to a certain extent. But Lutnick had a full go at Europe, and she just walked out of this dinner. Which is unheard of. I wish it had been seen. I wish it had been seen and not a closed doors dinner. But a big rift has emerged between two economic superpowers, don't you think?
You know what I can understand. I mean, it's she's not directly responsible for that. She's trying to change things. I mean, the post-war period in Europe was, you know, leaned and still does lean towards socialism for whatever reason. You're not going to change it. Yes, they could have been a little more aggressive. You know, policies haven't really favoured, I mean, they haven't tried hard enough and they've had, it's been more a political issue than an economic issue.
You know, it'll take time, you know, but the way they go at them in a personal way, I can understand Christine Lagarde. You know, he's gone, and these are the allies. I mean, this is the West. Rather help them, you know, instead of accusing them. of, you know, just leaning on the US and crooking them or whatever they have described them. Yes, we know that Europe has lagged. And we know, you know, Mertz from Germany is trying to change it. He's trying to turn things around.
I'm very impressed with the Finnish prime minister as well, who's also a very articulate man. But the way they go about it is so insulting. You know, if I was Christine Lagarde, I'd also say, go away, you know. I know they can't continue without, you know, they can't make it without America. They need America. The West needs America. But the way he went at Biden, he called him the most stupid man or, you know, the most awful man that he ever knew. You know, those kind of things.
To criticize a former president like that, no. You know, and people have got every right to walk out. He just hasn't got manners. So good for her. Yes. He's got to be taught a lesson. You know, you can't just say those things. And this was an interesting. And his bankruptcies, you know, if you go at all the businesses that he's ruined. Okay. But anyway, you should never start on Trump.
This was an important Davos, I think, because it's a Davos like no other, where it has become exactly what Mark Carney described the world. It's not rules based anymore. It's just a free for all. Larry Fink of BlackRock hosted a dinner for 100 global leaders. And it was just it was just I don't know what it was. It was like a town hall event, you know. where everyone stands up and says what they like and shouts at each other. Very sad indeed.
David, I have to stay with you very briefly because this is the five o'clock shadow. So we've got to look at a couple of sets of results. And we look at Sassl, the share price up 14% today. And also Clix came out with a trading update. I think it was down 6%. And Viv, I'll come to you on the couple of opinions that I've had about South Africa for 2026. But David, first of all, those two sets of results. Did you have a chance to look at them? Not in deep. I've still got my family here from them.
Australia. I just took them back to the airport and that. But Cecil was a Cecil had come under pressure because it had been downgraded to a cell. I think it was either JP Morgan or one of the big houses. And I think the trading statement, I haven't genuinely not looked at it in great detail, but probably better than everybody expected and it bounced slightly. It's still under pressure. It's still not going anywhere. I'm not mad about Cecil.
What I do just to you To digress slightly on that, I like where BHP is going, where Anglo is going, and where even Glencore is going. If you feel compelled to go into that area and to find a miner, rather go for the diversifiers who are starting to look better. I think clicks are something we've been worrying about for some time now, especially on that side. We've been talking about it for the other economy is not really.
The retail side is not really kind of matching up to the expectations that everybody has had about the economy. I don't know why specifically Clix has been under pressure. I don't know whether Viv's had a look at it. Maybe it was just a little bit overrated. You know what, it's a good business, but it was a trading update for the period, for 20-odd weeks. I don't know what it is.
You know, when you look at it, sales were slightly down or the comparatives were down, but why they knocked it by that amount, I don't know. Okay. Next week, we'll be talking about a series of interviews that I've conducted with people from one particular firm. I can't talk about the people involved or the content yet because they haven't published it themselves on their own intranet or whatever it is. So I have to wait till next week. But Viv, one of the things that has popped up is.
the view on South Africa for this year, whether it be market-wise or macroeconomic-wise. And one person said, it's all very well being bullish about South Africa and getting off the grey list, etc. But bear in mind on the same day that South Africa was taken off the grey list, so was Burkina Faso. And that was the way this person said, you know, don't get too excited about it. And if the rand is where it is, it's because the dollar's weak and commodities and commodities on are very cyclical.
So no, not particularly interested in South African stocks. Viv, what would you say about that? I know it's not your excitement area at the moment, but still an important part of your business. Look, I mean, South Africa was, I think, the third or fourth best performing stock market in 2025 in the world. It was really, really good performance, driven by, of course, commodities, especially gold, platinum, et cetera, recovering quite nicely.
That being said, I think the IMF's most recent estimate for growth in South Africa this year is like 1.4%, which is, if you think about it, I mean, the US is doing 4 plus percent and we're doing 1.4%. That differential is insane, considering how poor we are compared to how rich they are. There obviously has to be some kind of follow through on the vibe shift that happened after the election that we saw a couple of years ago. Yes, we have seen load shedding and yes, we have seen.
the wrong gets stronger, et cetera. But we haven't seen growth tick off. We haven't seen unemployment fall. And until we see those things happening, I mean, we're going to be very nervous about South Africa and about what's been, you know, especially things like the retail sector, et cetera, things that are dependent on the South African economy.
The things that are not dependent on the economy, things like the gold price, the platinum price, and the gold and platinum stocks that are there for, I think those things are, you know, more reasonable investments at the moment. But if you had to give me a choice, I would basically be staying away from a lot of the South African in companies until I can see our growth rate actually start to increase. Well said. OK, let's have a look at some numbers now. Dollar round is 16.19.
The British pound against the round 21.81. The euro round 18.99 now. Look at that. It was 23 about six months ago, I think it was. Extraordinary performance from the round against the euro. Euro dollar, though, the euro is doing well by half a percent, 117.30 now. On to commodities. Gold price $4,843, up $6, getting very, very volatile at these high levels. unusual to see $100 swings in a day. The platinum price, $2,525, up another $45 an ounce.
And palladium is just below $1,900, up about $16, just under 1%. Now, all important other commodities. Where are they on my screen here? Where's the CRB index gone? Okay, let's have a look at that. Okay, now then, I've got to find the All-important oil price, which is, gentlemen, after what's been happening geopolitically and the threat in Iran, it's been behaving itself. The Brent crude oil price today is down 1.75%, $64.09 per barrel. West Texas, $59.49, down 1.9%.
Natural gas prices up 12.5%, incidentally. Copper, which is terribly important now that Anglo-American has done its thing corporate-wise into a copper company. $5.73 per pound, that's down 0.6%. It was about $6.30 per pound last week, so coming off the boil quite recently. The US 10-year bond yield, that's been the interesting one. In November, end of November, beginning of December, it was below 4%, now 4.26%. It got to 4.30% yesterday. That is a big, big move.
S&P 500. 6,933, up a third of a percent today, has been above 7,000 this year. And Bitcoin, I don't like the look of Bitcoin at all. It's 88,850, was 96,000 three days ago. And yeah, it's coming towards the, it's coming towards recent lows, actually. So that's it, Viv. Any other prices that you like that have been, or don't like, that have been influenced by the AI people, the AI luminaries that have been speaking in Davos, like... Jensen Wang, for example? I was so proud last year.
I bought Micron, the stock, right? Yes. 250 plus percent. And then today I look at SanDisk and I think to myself, I picked the wrong memory company. SanDisk in the last year, right, for my Micron, did 250 plus percent, did 1,250 plus percent. So I got the memory story right. I picked the wrong memory company.
ai jealousy coming in you know what i in fact um i was looking at uh when when last year lindsay people started to say to me oh and videos too rich you know please take some out and get out of it and i said okay well you've got to remain exposed to semiconductors and there's something called the the SOX, S-O-X-X, which is an ETF with no more than 30 odd companies in it. So it's very tight.
But if you look at that, Viv, and this is where I'm so happy that we went into it because it's got all of them. It's got Micron. It's got all the companies, AMD, Broadcom, you name. It's got a mixture of all of them in good proportion. Now, what's interesting is that because of Micron's run, it now becomes the biggest holding in the SOX. And you've got almost a 10% or 7%, 8% exposure to Micron in addition to NVIDIA, in addition to everything. that but It was a great call.
I must say that, you know, having done that, I think the other one is Samsung as well, which is the other area. It's Gehainix as well. It's basically, what the thing is, is just to all the stuff that they're doing right now, video, have you seen the new video apps, by the way? They are shockingly good. Okay. I am not picking up videos immediately anymore as being AI until the circumstance is just so weird. That's okay. It must be AI.
But if you just put a video that could pass, you know, like, like master by just plain logic, I would, I would be very difficult to find out whether it's real or not. Those video kind of things, the other kind of stuff is doing right now, those things take a lot of memory. And that's what this stuff is really playing into.
And I think if you think of what people are going to be doing going forward, it is a video in terms of creating your content, etc. I mean, you've got to see the new masking apps where you basically put a filter on that look like somebody else. There's one with the cast of Stranger Things, if you watch that TV show, and it is unspotable. Unless you knew who these people were, you would think they were just normally doing what they're doing. You know what I mean? It's amazingly good.
And they're all fitting into this thing. And I don't see how this stops going forward. Right now, even we're seeing, I think maybe supply might increase in the future. This is a manufactured product. But I mean, the demand for these companies' products are going to be exponentially into the future. Viv, scaring me again, so I've got to come back down to earth. On the JSC today, Sassel up 14%, Coronation up nearly 7%, MTN up nearly 6%, Implats up 5.3%, and Truas up 5.25% on the downside.
Clicks down 6.3%, Anglo Gold Ashanti leading the gold miners down 6%, Goldfields down 4.75%, Harmony 3.4%, and DRD Gold down 3.4%. Does that mean that they're saying that the gold price has peaked? Maybe they do. Sometimes the gold price... is led by the miners. I don't know. Quick one, David, because we've got 30 seconds, please. I think it's looking stretched. You know, those miners, how far can we actually push it?
It's not showing any major weakness, but I mean, how far can you really push them? You know, I'm saying the same thing for the Rand as well. Maybe it's time we bought the U.S. Treasury, you know, 10 years and sold the South African. I think I said that to you on Monday night, but it might be a decent swing. I'm not a trader, but, you know, I'd rather be in the 425 or 426 for the 10 year rather than. The 825 for the South African. Okay, so that's the hedge fund manager in Shapiro coming out.
You heard it first here. Gentlemen, thank you very much for your time. Viv Govender is from RAND Swiss, the award-winning RAND Swiss. David Shapiro from Sessom and Securities, both in Johannesburg. And that was the 5 o'clock shadow. The views and opinions expressed in these podcasts are those of Lindsay Williams and various contributors and do not reflect the policy, position, or opinion of any other agency, organization, employer, or company associated with StrictlyBusinessPodcast.com.
Assumptions made on the analyses are not reflective of the position of 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.