You're listening to Strictly Business Podcast with Lindsay Williams. The JSC is closed at stores for another day, so it's time for the 5 o'clock shadow. And as always on a Thursday, I speak to David Shapiro from Sasson Securities, accompanied by Viv Govender from RAND Swiss. And I'm going to start with you, David, because we're quite good at bashing South Africa, justifiably so, it must be said.
But we have to now have a look at a couple of positive things, and that is it's linked to inflation, which is under control. It's also linked to a working paper from the South African Reserve Bank, which is proposing a 3% target for inflation. And also the South African 10-year bond rate going below 10% for the first time for three years. Also at the same time, and this could be all linked to the RAND strength and everything, is the soaring PGM stocks.
It's the second time they've done it in about a month. And that, of course, is so good.
for the fiscus oh and how you know it's absolute surprise to me because um i watch the market every day and i and i like to look at what's gone up what's going you know what's going down and you start to build a pattern in your mind and i think what alerted me to the market you mentioned the one yesterday was the uh fall of the 10-year bond below uh 10 since i think it was the last day as you said three years ago in 2022 at the time of COVID. So that was the one.
The other, I looked at 91 share price. Yes. And it was up nearly 8%. Yeah, what was that? And I said, why? Yeah, exactly. You know, in other words, why would a company whose earnings, you know, earnings growth, which is what it was an earnings contraction, because when I see brackets in the numbers, I start to get a little worried, you know, things are going backwards.
And yet, there was nothing really that... that Hendrik said, you know, you can make a story about him going into the Middle East or something like that. But there was nothing spectacular there. Nothing against Hendrik. Really, I mean that sincerely. It's just conditions in the market. And the market goes up 8%. So it gives you an idea there's massive money around. Some of it might just be hedging type money.
Or alternatively, there are local institutions who feel, you know, that... that shares are cheap and they've got to go in. So there's something there that's driving the market up. We've got another update, as you mentioned, by there's quite a big, the platinum price was almost up 4% today. Suddenly, Valtera, which is the old Amplit, which was down yesterday and starting to lose momentum, suddenly shoots up 8% or 9%. So, yeah.
And one of the reasons is not just the platinum price, but also BlackRock has taken an extra state up to six and a third percent now. So, yes, something's brewing there. And it has been for a while. It's ever since all the platinum mines cut costs. Viv, it's not your area, but you're a keen watcher of everything. So would you be cautiously optimistic? GDP's rubbish, PMI's horrible, business confidence is down in the dumps. So we've got to celebrate something.
All South Africans have got to celebrate something. and inflation and the Reserve Bank are two things to celebrate, I think. And that bond and RAND market, very, very good indeed at the moment. You know, look, I mean, the Reserve Bank is, you know, easily one of the best performing parts of government. What they've done with regards to inflation controls, as well as Iran. I mean, people complain in South Africa about, you know, the Iran weakening and so on.
But, I mean, compared to our peers, Brazil, Turkey, you know, and in fact, like Turkey is wealthier than us. Brazil is like larger than us. And those places have not had anywhere near the stability that the South African Reserve Bank has managed to give to the country. Not just this last governor, all our governors have been, with slight exceptions for short periods of time, have been exceptional, you know, to call us, you know, managers of the currency.
But regarding the platinum price, the thing is up almost 20% in the last month. Apparently there's demand from China that's like, you know, pushing things up a bit. They say even jewelry demand is also on the rise in China, which might be interesting because, I mean, platinum has generally been recently an industrial story with regards to vehicles and so on.
But maybe there comes a point where the difference in price between platinum and gold becomes more due to the, how can I say, to the jewelry demand, the supplementary demand here, the substitution demand rather.
where if you know if you go to the shop and buy yourself a platinum jewel put a piece of jewelry and selling gold is so much more expensive then obviously the more to pay for platinum goes up as well because you know it's it's a linked demand around jewelry uh which is going to be interesting i think price factor for the uh the uh white metal Yeah, there's definitely something going on here. And if it runs, it runs its thing.
And before you go on, David, you saw Wayne McCurry, who recently retired. You saw him on Friday for a catch-up, and he's been very, very bullish or was very bullish in his portfolios for platinum stocks. And of course, as soon as he retires, the thing takes off. But anyway, I'm sure his successor has maintained that position and is starting to do well. But you were going to say something, David.
You know, all I want to say, one of the countermeasures against your argument about the platinum PGMs, and I'm not separating them into rhodiums and that because I haven't got those prices. But if you look for the last three years, they've been very range bound in RAND terms. Yes. At the top end now, you know, they hover in terms of an ounce. I'm talking RAND per ounce or something because that's all I can convert it to. It goes between 17,000 and 19,000, looking like a hospital chart.
And it's at the top end now, admittedly, but it hasn't broken through into any high levels. It was higher at one point than this in 2024 and certainly a lot higher than that in 2023 and so on. You can go all the way back to 2021. So that's the point. They sell it and receive rands, and if the rand does strengthen, it does take a little bit of the shine or burnish off the kind of movements we're seeing in the price at the moment. But still, the share prices are going.
I wish they would just do a little bit more to make a clean break of it, but they're also in this kind of trend. But at least they're pointing on the upside. They're more on the upside then. So on the downside, we're ready to break through. Okay. Lindsay, no doubt, what's happening? I'll come to the commodity prices later on. Viv, let's look at what's happening overseas. We've got the new German chancellor probably at this very moment meeting with
Trump. Trump's bill is getting some stick from an ex-South African. And I find that whole thing extraordinary. Things have gone quiet on the U.S. markets, let's face it, gratifyingly so, I think. But it never goes quiet when Trump's up.
to mischief and elon musk as well the things musk has said now that he's got his key to the white house in that ceremony it's quite amazing viv i'll start with you on this one before david weighs in look i mean the thing about trump about musk is that he actually does seem to believe some of these things you know what i mean so the the things he's saying around the deficit uh does seem to be something like based on true belief as opposed to just like trying to
make some kind political point, I would think. And it might actually be a factor going into the midterms because he's somebody that can go out and push through things like, for instance, the more deficit hawkish people like Messi and so on. That being said, look, I mean, the thing that no one wants to talk about is the fact that the U.S. deficit is due to very, very popular programs. It's because, you know, retirement programs, welfare programs, medical programs.
These are things that are driving the U.S. deficit. It's not so much, you know, discretionary spending without the possible exception of the military. And nobody wants to cut the military when China is rising. So the idea that you go in and you cut, you know, enough from the U.S., you know, budget to waste and fraud is not quite there. Surprisingly, the U.S., you know, despite all the impressions out there, seems to have a reasonably well-functioning, non-corrupt government.
And so if you want to really do something with the deficit, which probably needs to be done, I mean, he's correct in saying that you get about like 27 percent. of your budget going towards paying for interest payments is not exactly a recipe for future stability. But I mean, how are you in a democracy going to cut all rich pensions or, you know, child health care or, you know, those kind of things? That's just not possible at the moment.
You know who made the same point as you did, is your own pal. In a private interview, well, one of those economic clubs said they had those interviews at the time of Doge at the time that Elon Musk was at his time, he said exactly the same. He says, if you want to cut the deficit, it's the social programs that make up all the amounts. And Lindsay, if you think about it, the only way to cut it is to outgrow it.
You've got to grow the revenue stream rather than trying to cut the cost, stopping people using the photostat machine or taking two foods of sugar instead of one, it's not going to do anything. So I think many of the programs where they cut people is not going to show any meaningful cut in the deficit. That's where it lies. You've got to grow your way out of this. Talking about growing your way out of it, the ECB did something very interesting today. And the markets reacted strangely.
Well, the currencies reacted strangely too, I think. I mean, cutting rates to 2%. It's almost saying we believe that Trump's policies are going to affect Europe and cause turmoil. So we're going to have to have some kind of economic buffer against that. And I've got the euro now up another quarter of a percent, the dollar under pressure once more, 1.1450, we'll call it, that exchange rate. And things going well. Both of you, actually, I mean, the European markets, are they on your radar as well?
Because I know a lot of people have been looking at European banks in the last six months or so. The European equities in general, have they... Have they sort of caught your eye as people are saying, well, maybe America needs to be trimmed a bit and we should be looking at Europe, particularly European banks, which I know have been the focus of a lot of interest recently? Yeah, look, I mean, one thing I did see with Europe, I don't know if you guys saw this.
Do you see the Irish GDP number coming out? No. Hit the roof. Hit the roof. Wow. They did more in the last quarter than the Eurozone has grown in the last decade. I'm not joking. In the last few months. I look at it, it's amazing. Through the roof. Unfortunately, the Eurozone as a whole, I'm pretty pessimistic about. I do think that, especially with the tech focus that I do tend to have, they've just kind of regulated themselves out of the market.
It's insane that all the brains that create all this tech in the UK, US, sorry, are European. They are from England, they are from, you know, France. But they are not creating the value in the Eurozone, they're creating it in the US. And quite frankly, looking at the Eurozone going forward, I mean, what is the sectors going to grow? Are they going to be making handbags for the Chinese forever? Because their car sector is falling apart, quite frankly.
Because I mean, they're not going to be able to compete. I mean, Tesla was enough of a challenge, but BYD, when that comes to the full into the world market, unless they have like, you know, tariff restrictions. The value proposition for a BYD vehicle versus a Mercedes-Benz or a BMW is just ridiculous. Are they going to be relying on banking? What is the European advantage going forward?
And the idea that they can repurpose their car sector for defense, I mean, that is I just don't see that going forward. So I'm really concerned about Europe in the long term because I don't see what exactly Europe is doing out there. They're not manufacturing except for basically, like I said, luxury goods. And, you know, everything else about the economy doesn't seem to be in great condition. Talking about BYD, by the way, BYD is launching three new models in South Africa.
It launched them in April and it's expanding its dealership network to 30 to 35 by next year. I mean, that's quite big. I mean, there'll be no BMWs. It will be BYDs from now on, David. Yeah. If you go look at the distributorships, I know Mercedes is cutting back. on the space that it takes, which was all along. You know, the top end of the market is absolutely being ravaged by these new Chinese models, and there's so many. I don't know.
You know, I just see names of motorcars now that I've never seen before. Where does this come from? I can't even pronounce it. But, I mean, you know, I can't remember them. But, listen, these are not bad, hey. In South Africa, you just want to get from A to B. That's it. And on our roads, it's better that you have a car that falls apart if it hits a pothole than a Mercedes, which you'll never afford to get repaired. So don't underestimate what the and look at We Buy Cars. That's all they want.
They want the Chinese models. They don't want Mercedes or BMWs. I think you went through the Japanese or the Korean thing. Yes, they used to be garbage. I've looked at a new vehicle recently for my wife. These companies are offering you a 10-year, million-kilometer guarantee on your drive train.
is this the chinese market the chinese the chinese companies in africa they're offering vehicles that have like unbelievable features for like under 600 500 000 rounds quite frankly like i think that you stuff you wouldn't see on like a million round honda you're getting for the 500 000 round uh you know vehicle and like i said the guarantees that they're putting i spoke to a mechanic recently and he was saying that he does not see any of these vehicles coming to his workshop because they are
under such massive warranties they don't take them to like mechanics for repairs It's just like like i mean a million kilometer 10th uh year warranty on your drivetrain that is pretty pretty strong you know what i mean yeah i remember like the japanese they started off they were yeah whatever until the until toyota became like the definition of quality and the kias and the hyundas used to be the cheap cars until if you look at now the kids are quite expensive i think the chinese
i mean they make the iphone they make a lot of the high-tech stuff in the world there's no reason and these guys are not able to make cars really cheaply i mean i was amazed at the quality of your getting just just just to bring you up to date yes uh you know just as we got on air the news came out that mr g and mr trump had spoken and i was looking at the market yeah because when i looked at the market initially you know it was hovering in no man's land but i now see that u.s markets have gone
into quite strong positive territory you know particularly from where they were so uh the nasdaq which was down zero. Flats is now up a half a percent. And the S&P is also up a quarter percent. But I think that's on the news. And European markets have also picked up all in the green, you know, on the backdrop of this talk. What came out of the talk, I haven't seen. You know, there's been no news. And it was reported on the Chinese side, not on the American side.
And it was also reported yesterday that Trump and Putin had talked for 75 minutes. And Putin said to Trump, well, I'm going to... I'm going to retaliate for what they did to us. And Trump says, OK, fair enough. And there's still no word of sanctions, extra sanctions against them. It's just absurd. But anyway, he's talking. At least he's talking to them. At least he's being proactive. David, you had other points to make. You said you had a few points to make. What have you got? Yeah, that's one.
The other thing, Viv will love this, because in the top 10 stocks, in the top 10 US stocks today, in a broad comp, which is another chip maker, is now in number seven position above Tesla. If you include TSM, because it is quoted in America, that actually comes in at number 10, kind of pushing Walmart out. So in the top 10 capitalized companies, highest value companies, and I'm including Taiwan, there are three chip companies now.
NVIDIA, which is number one, Broadcom in number seven, and TSM in number 10. So just interesting how, and I mean, they weren't there. What? Last year, they weren't even there. Or two years ago, certainly, NVIDIA wasn't there. So it's quite incredible to see how these companies have grown in value, pushing out JP Morgan, Walmart, Eli Lilly, all of those companies. And will it continue? Will the domination continue, Viv, on this one? It's just a phase. Do you know who Mary Mika is?
Yes. She's a famous analyst. I mean, she used to have an annual report on the tech sector. They used to come out every year. And I think the last one she did was like in 2019. She just released a new report. I think in this last couple of days, it was like 340 pages. And I've looked through it. It's amazing. I mean, some of the stats, they are crazy. It's by far the fastest adoption of any technology in the world.
And the one thing she mentioned was the fact that as much as the revenue growth in like, you know, for instance, the best performing one, which is open AI, has gone like parabolic.
the amount that they're spending is even higher yes and and all that all that money goes to these these chip companies yeah yeah exactly and the other interesting thing here that's what's amazing was that take a guess at how much per token costs have dropped in the last decade how much hundred thousand times not a hundred thousand percent hundred thousand times the last decade okay that's amazing and she's also mentioned the fact that i mean you're starting to see for instance uh patents uh
you know in the computer sector have more than doubled from the exotic average in the last year or so and we are also seeing instance uh effects coming through like uh in the pharmaceutical sector where uh people using new ai like techniques have dropped the testing time for you know the first stage of drug testing down by like 50 percent it's the same time that things are happening but probably because ai would like alpha fold and so So, It's a huge report,
but there's so many stats in there that are just mind-blowing. It's like open AI, basically. One thing you mentioned was this. Usually in the past, there was a saying that the future is here, but it's not evenly distributed. So there's parts of the world that are in the future and some parts of the world are in the past. With AI, because what happened was in the last couple of years, everywhere in the world has gotten broadband technology because of the last revolution, the internet revolution.
Everywhere in the world is using AI. The amount of people using AI in India is way more than the amount of people using AI in India. in the US. So, AI consumption in places like sub-Saharan Africa are way ahead of schedule for what the adoption rates were for cell phones. And in fact, 90% of the use of AI is outside the U.S. at the moment. So, it just shows that it's not going to be a case where the U.S. is going to produce it.
But it's not going to be like, oh, you're going to wait 10 years for whatever to happen elsewhere. And here's another stat that's amazing. Here's a stat on driverless ride shares in San Francisco, which is the earliest adoption city, right? when these things first came out uh way more stuff first came out uh around about a third 37 percent of uh rides you know taxi rides were by right here right down to 90 percent these are automatic the general automatic has gone from zero to 27.
yeah so they've overtaken uber i spoke to an analyst from ubs who who does the motor section He loves, first of all, I'll tell you what, he's an engineer. He knows motorcars. They strip the Chinese vehicles and were absolutely amazed at the quality because you're getting a lot of European engineering. So that was not the point I'm going. He says he visited San Francisco and went on one of these rides.
He says it was absolutely incredible, felt perfectly safe, just got in with his family, sat down and never looked back. back. This was the most incredible experience. And is it just San Francisco or is San Francisco the one that's embraced it the most enthusiastically? Is it elsewhere? Would it work in New York, for example? San Francisco is the first, but I think they've gone to five new cities now. San Francisco was the first.
And in San Francisco, in a year and a half, they're basically doing 50% effectively more than the Ubers and stuff of the place. They've taken that market share away from them.
And like I said, as David mentioned, It's much safer and if you are speaking to like women especially, they are very nervous about getting some of these vehicles because you know of the kind of like stories they hear and they're much actually more comfortable getting into a driverless vehicle than in a vehicle with some unknown man and it's and I think it's gonna it's it's a thing and I think once we have like for instance these things coming to South Africa and so on
I can easily foresee that you know we would we would see the the takeoff being quite spectacular. I'm not sure about that, but you never know. But there's a couple of things I wanted to say. The first is that there I was last night watching Germany and Portugal play out a very dreary semifinal Nations League match and Ronaldo scoring. Meanwhile, Viv is plowing into a 340-page report. And that tells you something about success and dedication. Gentlemen, this goes out to both of you.
Are companies spending too much on R&D or are they absolutely right? in predicting what is going to happen in the future, and they must spend the money now. Viv, I'll start with you on this. Okay, again, from the report, I'm not being like a clever here, but one thing that it mentioned was the fact that we are seeing, you know, spending in terms of like, you know, R&D and, you know, infrastructure build-out, being even at a higher rate than the rocket ship, every single revenue.
So, for instance, opening your eye, massive, massive losses they're making at the moment. And the question that they put up there is that who do you think is going to last out? The company that has a little search bar that makes them 100 billion a quarter in revenue or a company that has to go out and raise funds every so often just to basically keep on in the AI race. So I do think that down the line, you know, it's going to be a case of the biggest pocketbook wins.
And I'm not so sure that, you know, investors out there are going to be willing to basically spend enough money. And what kind of valuation do you need to put into, you know, open AI?
to just add more to this loss making engine at the moment when you do like i said have google definitely all in on ai uh microsoft all in a meta all in on ai and these companies have you know 20 30 40 billion dollars uh you know it goes per year so i think 75 billion dollars per year for some of these cases here of spending that they want to do on ai so i mean it's it's a huge amount of money so yeah i do think that open air has to do it But I don't
know if they can basically afford to do it for much longer. Okay, David, there's the amount that's being spent, the risk of the near-term balance sheet and everything doesn't put you off, no? No, they've got to do it. If they don't do it, they fall behind, and that's the risk that you take. Any business who doesn't try to keep up with the competition will just fall behind. We've got so many examples in industry, remember, and we can quote them. In fact, I've already forgotten their names.
If you go back. to the to IBM going through the 90s right through to where we are today from the internet. All the changes that took place, there's so many companies that we spoke about every day that we can't remember their numbers. Just think of the search. Just think of, what's it, Lotus 1, 2, 3, things like that. So you've got to keep up. You cannot afford to slacken. And that applies to businesses at the low end of the market as well.
It's not only at the high end where you're developing it and selling it. It's, it's, it's, it's, uh, So it's the, what do you call it, apparel companies, whether it's a Nike, whether it's Adidas, even going down to distributors, you've got to use the efficiencies of the software that's being created for you. So for me, and as Viv mentioned correctly, so I think the next few years is going to be the development of the hardware side of it, which we're talking about.
That's why I brought up the semiconductors. And then eventually it will find other areas, you know, going down there, how to use it. I don't know the technical terms. You know, I don't know how to express these technical terms. But it will change, as we saw with the Internet. I think the one thing in our favor, we've got the Internet. Remember 20 years, we never had the Internet. So, you know, for me, I find it exciting.
But that's why I can't get, you know, I can't be bothered about British American tobacco. You can't be bothered to diversify your portfolio. No, what do you call it? Those sacks that you put in your mouth. You know, I don't know. These things are taking off and everyone's getting excited about a nicotine sack or a blow-burning vaping. I don't know. I say, really? You know, this is what you want to invest in? Before you know it, David, you'll be buying a BYD and dumping your BMW made Mini Cooper.
Yeah. Okay. Let's have a look at some markets now, gentlemen, because the round is quick. have to make. This is rather distressing. This is the other one. Brown Foreman, that is the maker of Jack Daniels, is down 16% today because people are not drinking anymore. That's the problem. So even a brand like Jack Daniels has seen a slowdown in organic growth. In other words, like for like is falling.
And if you go through the other ones, you know, other famous ones like Diageo, Pernod Ricard, all of those are down as well. There's, you know, as people start to play... Young people are not going to the pub anymore. Pubs are closing left, right and centre in the UK and people are not going out and drinking anymore. It's not cool to drink anymore. You can't believe the queue for the Nintendo, the new place... I can. I can.
I don't know what they call it because I'm not a games player, but the console, whatever it is, the new game, they're... been millions of people just lining up sitting on camp chairs you know outside the shops to get it so that's that's the mind of the youth today a little miswired if i if you know i don't know where their priorities are i know that um nintendo stock is at 32 so far this year so it's done it's done rather
rather well viv i see you as a gamer sometimes Do you ever sit down behind your original Nintendo? I used to before I had obviously the wife and the kids. You can't do that now. You need to play games like games these days. You've got to be absorbed for hours sometimes and you just can't do that with kids. But I'm just mentioning around alcohol, but also any kind of sin product, alcohol, tobacco, whatever you want to talk about, Ozempic has a huge impact on that.
There's real evidence that people that take Ozempic just have lower cravings for food, they have lower cravings for most of the sin products, including alcohol as well. So I think that is also something that people are underestimating. As it becomes a bigger and bigger part of like, you know, look at the number of overweight people in the world. And another thing to know about alcohol is this. It's one of those things. It's a power law.
But the top 10 percent of drinkers consume the majority of the alcohol. You know, every day, most alcohol in total. When I was at university in London, they used to have something called the Circle Line Pub Call. In other words, there's there's a yellow tube line called the Circle Line because it goes around in a circle. Get a fair view when you go to a pub, have a drink. and then dash back onto the train and just keep going. They now have the Circle Line zero alcohol pub crawl.
So you don't drink alcohol. You actually drink a zero beer or alcohol-free gin or whatever it is. And I thought to myself, what's going on with the youth of today? But no, it's to be applauded. I mean, for example, you just look at the cost it'll save for the National Health Service in the UK longer term with people not having their livers removed at huge costs. So It's generally a good thing, but if you're a Diageo shareholder, not so good.
Right, enough of cars and alcohol and 340-page... reports on things I don't understand. That's why Viv is with us. One of the many reasons. 1774 is the dollar round, which is a half a percent fall for the dollar. The British pound against the round is 2413, barely changed. The euro round is 2032, the euro down 0.2% against the mighty local currency.
Euro dollar 11450, 0.3% up for the euro despite the ECB cutting rates again and the british pound is 136 on the nose which is a pound which is a third of a percent up against the greenback. Commodities, gold price, 13.65, up nearly a percent, or $31 an ounce. Platinum on my screen, David, 7.8% higher, $11.40 an ounce, or $82.50 an ounce. And palladium, a laggard, but still up, on the coattails of platinum, up one and a third percent, or $13.50 to $1,016. Watch that PGM basket.
It warrants attention, I think. the S&P 500. You mentioned it earlier on. It's now up just over a third of a percent. It's broken through 6,000. The futures there is 6,003. I think they expire. I think we've got triple witching or something in a couple of weeks' time. Anyway, above 6,000, nearly 0.4% up now. The U.S. 10-year Treasury bond yield is 438.5. Bond market's doing well globally. And what else have we got here?
Bitcoin, 140. what is that 105 000 we'll call it down just uh slightly south african 10-year which we've already mentioned that's back above 10 now it did dip below there this morning 10.05 percent at the moment and what else have we got uh oil price which haven't given you uh brent crude oil is down again it's 64.55 please oh no 65.57 thank you for refreshing she's up 1.1 and West Texas $63.64 up one and a quarter percent anything i'm missing there markets wise either of you two i
don't think so other than their prices that you know some of the prices today oh yeah yeah the uh i'll go i'll go to that now um i've got on my screen here as i said dominated by diggers of white metals sebani still water 11 up valterra formerly the platinum producing wing of anglo-american up nearly nine percent northern's up six and a quarter implants five point four percent And Anglo, the parent, up 3.8%.
Downside, what, Alphamind down 3.3%, Spar down 3.2% after its numbers this week, and Equitas down 2.5%. Any others, David? No, those are most of them. Tungela has come under quite a bit of pressure. This was the stock of 2023, which has just fallen back on the fall of the coal price. Nothing else. Most of them, a couple of gold shares have just retreated slightly, and some retailers.
but it's all platinum today but you know that's that's where the the big gains on the jsc were and and dict and dominating value as well um lindsay yeah you know just this value today 35 billion terror getting used to it you know made of 27 today over the market yesterday it was 30 8.6 billion rand trading so a lot of activity around that and you know yesterday was down, today it's up.
So obviously either institutions are coming in or their BlackRock users kind of put, you know, got the market going. That's a big story, it really is. Tonight, gentlemen, I will continue my sloth-like existence by watching Spain against France in international football. Yes, tonight. I want to see Laminia Mal, the 1 billion euro boy, see what he can do.
But also Okay. I'm going to be watching Mertz and Trump because when he came up against a straight talker, i.e. the new Canadian leader, Mark Carney, he didn't fare as well. Trump, that is. And I think Mertz is an organized, disciplined, typical German, because that's I mean, that's a stupid thing to say these days. But he's a he's a straight talker. So I'm quite looking forward to that. Viv, will you be watching that one? Yeah, well, I mean, the thing is that if you look at the.
the stuff that comes out of this year generally they are a bit more friendly than what trump says you know uh when these guys are not in the room and i think that's going to be the case again this time around i think the examples where he doesn't do this is but places that are no power like ukraine and south africa that's what he tries to pull these crazy things look if he comes across an intellectual uh man who's articulate you know he falls apart
because he can't match them as we saw with carney and i would imagine the same will happen with the german chancellor Good. I hope so. Thank you very much for your time, as always, David. Bon voyage on Saturday. If you can fit us in, that would be great. If not, we'll speak to you in a couple of weeks' time. David Shapiro is from Sessom Securities. I hate to be drinking that non-alcoholic beer. Terrible prospect. David is from Sessom Securities. Viv Govender is from Ransuisse.
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, organisation, 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.
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