You're listening to Strictly Business Podcast with Lindsay Williams. JSC has closed its doors for another day, so it's time for the 5 o'clock shadow. And as always, on a Wednesday, I speak to Skalk Low, Portfolio Manager, PSG Wealth, Old Oak in Cape Town. Now, Skalk, we haven't spoken since the war. Yeah. I've lost track of time. It seems as though it's been going on for weeks, but we haven't spoken since then. Sort of a muted market reaction in many ways. It could have been spectacularly good.
and bad in various asset classes. But it wasn't. It was fairly orderly. And I use that phrase reservedly. But yesterday got horrible on the JSC. Have you survived? Yeah, it's been surviving. I mean, you had to. Let's get the orange elephant out of the room. This was most probably one of the most anticipated wars ever. Yes. And, you know. reading, I'm sort of glued to my television screens for the past three days, like I think most people have been doing.
And I see there's been a report an hour or three ago coming from the New York Times, which indicates that the Iranian government has already reached out to sources within the CIA or something like that, if that's true. Then they want to talk on a proposal to end the war.
So. You're talking about we haven't spoken since the war started, and it seems like we're lucky that we're speaking now because a war that I, on Monday, thought was most probably not going to be one that's going to be able to end really soon, seemed like it's progressing very, very fast. Interesting factoid. Sorry, I'm going to... No, I hadn't heard that story that you just... I'm just turning my head as far as I can where I am from.
Have a look at... CNN just stay there you you just you just carry on talking Scott there's my CNN screen Turkey NATO air defense intercepted Iranian missile is there so if I mean CNN like all the other stations are American based American centric so it would have got that I think so your source is better than CNN or doesn't exist one of the two what else did you have to say you mentioned the word factoid.
No, the New York Times, one that we could just get the, I'm not going to read the whole article. It's Iran made secret outreach of the strikes, highlighting Trump's challenge. And apparently, if you look at the article itself, it seems like they want to talk, you know, how to end the war. What I thought, why this is progressing this quick?
because I think to a certain extent, you know, this morning, I thought that President Trump's commitment to now ensure, and literally at a price, that all ships can now actually go through the strait at a cost was an interesting one. But I think he could do that because if you look at, there's a very interesting article that I wrote, that I listened to, I read this morning. Did you write it, read it, or listen to it? Let's go for the latter. Okay. Let's go for the latter.
And this individual, I don't know if the author now, but he actually made a very, very interesting point. He said suddenly the war broke out. And that war broke out by the B-1 bombers, the US B-1 bombers. Those planes are something like $2. something billion per plane. And I think they mentioned that they've got 20 of those, and five or six of them went in there and literally with a thousand missiles. So we all knew the after effect.
And then on the 1st of March, which was on Sunday, then the B-1 bomber, that's a very, very, like I said, very sophisticated plane. It goes supersonic, but it's also undetectable by radar. So that goes in. in. On Sunday, the B-2 bombers started to go in. Now, those are supersonic as well, but they are detectable by radar. But they're so quick, they're so extreme. It's the fastest plane in the world.
They're so extremely quick that it's still difficult for these air defenses to be deployed quick enough.
Interesting enough, yesterday... what was it yeah the the third sorry the third of of march they actually started uh deploying the b-52 bombers now the b-52s were from the war from the second world war for good or post second world war weren't they they um they were around when the first nuclear uh bomb tests and uh deployments were around weren't they yeah you know called the sky fortress i don't know why i remember this but this thing is is massive it's It's a
beautiful looking thing, I must say. It's so wide. I think it's got three engines on each wing. Yes, it's massive. You can put a basketball court inside the plane. It has thousands and thousands of ammunitions. But they fly something like 650 miles per hour. So you're not even, you know, let's call it a thousand. And it goes up to 50,000. But they are slow and they are 100% detectable by… by air defenses.
Now, the fact that they've moved, the 3rd of March already moved the B-52s into Iran shows you that they've pretty much knocked out all of Iran's air defenses. Is this your surmise or is this what is stated in the article that you've read? It's stated in the article. It's stated in the article. And it makes sense.
And also, if you look at the specific... I think it was the New York Times article where they actually mentioned one of the reasons why they wanted to reach us because they've lost so many Navy ships already. Their air defenses are really, really crippled. I think just somewhere along the line, they're going to realize, well, that's it. We cannot continue. But this is like taking a knife to a gunfight. I mean, so. So yesterday was a biggie. Let's go back to yesterday now. What happened?
I think the JSC was down something like 6%, nearly 6%. That's the all shit index. I don't remember seeing a 6% for quite a while. I don't remember seeing a 6% actually, apart from if you go back to no, never. Tell us more. Tell us more. That was just massive. If you look at the movement in some of these BGM gold counters. Well, let's look at most of our resource counters. That was horrific. And I sort of had a feeling that this is going to happen.
Because on Saturday, when the war broke out, every second, let's call it professional or financial guru sort of stated on Monday, when the market opens, we're going to see the gold price up. $500 per ounce. We're going to see the silver price surpass $100 and counting. They obviously weren't of the school of thought of Scout Glow that this was the most well-flagged war in history. Maybe it's just the contrarian in me, but yes, you're right. It was the most anticipated war in history.
And I think a lot of, not all, but... most of the, I would say, precious metals move that we've seen was in anticipation of this. I mean, but because you can't say it's only the weakening of the dollar because Trump is pressing that they should cut rates, and that's why the gold price suddenly went from $3,000 to $5,000. It just can't be. So I don't know if we've had this conversation on the AI bubble. Well, we've had several conversations.
We may have mentioned it in passing, but haven't gone in-depth on it. Why do you mention this? So people always say, and every second article I also read is, AI is a bubble. So I went like, what is a bubble? And what constitutes a bubble? Now, the National Bureau of Economic Research, they've got a very nice report on this matter, a research report. where they actually worked out how to quantify something as a specific asset in a bubble. And I'm going to save you the 76-page report. Please.
And just give you the executive summary. It comes down to three points. First one is that specific investment or asset class should have grown by 100% over the past two years. Yes. Second point. It should have outperformed the broader market. In this case, I'm just using the MSCI All-Country World Index. That's as broad as you get. That's two yeses so far. Yeah, it's going to be interesting. And then the third one is over the previous five years, it should have grown by at least 50%.
That just sort of sorts out where a specific asset class or investment has seen a correction. According to these people, but I think that's three yeses, isn't it? No, that was the interesting one. So I went in and I looked at the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index. That's the... I would say the one that represent, it's called the USAI. Where do you find the time when there's a war on? But anyway, that's another story.
I've got lots of times while the CNNs and the Bloombergs are talking at the background. But for interest sake, over the past five years, that index has grown in dollar terms by 66%. So then, no, there's the first tick, not 100%. It's outperformed. Over the same time, the All-Country World Index did 44. So. or actually 46%. So it's actually outperformed the broader market by only 18%. Now, yes, it's done 100 and something percent over the past five years. So you've got one out of three.
But it's all been condensed into the last two years, I would imagine. Yes, yes. And then it suddenly hit me and went like, hey, I always need to go and look at my favorite, favorite asset class or investment type, namely gold. Let's go look at... You really do take a long way around, don't you? In English they say you really went round the houses there.
I tell you what, next time I say to you, I said to, by the way, I said to Skulk before we started this, let's make this relatively brief, Skulk, because it's a lovely sunny day here and I want to go out for a walk in the late afternoon. And he said, yeah, we must do. And you deliberately did that, didn't you? So I can't go for a walk. Next time, just say, on to gold, Lindsay. So to all the listeners out there, that's exactly what Lindsay told me. He sort of prepped me. He groomed me.
He said, please, it's a sunny day. And yeah, in the Netherlands, they don't really come that often in spring. But so the gold price, here we go. Over the past two years, it has grown by 192% in dollars. terms. That's just a gold. That's not gold miners. So there's the first tick. Over the past two years, it's outperformed the MSCI All Country World Index by 144%. Second tick. And over the past five years, it has grown by 177%.
So, yeah, to all the listeners out there, if you're still asking if gold is in bubble territory, According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, and that, let's call it 76-page report, it is formally in a bubble. I don't want to know about bubbles, not from you. I don't want to know about whatever research institute you've just quoted. I want to know how, I want an article next Wednesday, for how long do bubbles inflate? And you can have a bubble and you can have it.
sitting there in your hand or whatever, and it's a bubble. So what? But how can it inflate more and become a bigger bubble? That's the key point. That is where the clever person, that's what the clever person is asking. No, no, no, for sure. So we'll have a look at it. But I think that the movement that we've seen yesterday was exactly that. It was sort of an anticipated war. We've seen the...
The gold price, the silver price, a lot of these precious metals really reacted really upward in anticipation of this war. I was actually quite surprised looking back now that oil didn't also be sort of priced in this most anticipated war. But be that as it may, and I think yesterday's movement was sort of a case in point. Suddenly, Mr. Marker just realized, wait a minute. But, okay, this is it now. This is the war.
It seems like the US and its allies, Israel and all those countries there, it's got a handle on this. What if it's done? What if the war is done in a week or two? Like the invasion of Kuwait, in other words, when Saddam Hussein was around. Everyone thought, well, this is a big war. It lasted 24 hours. Gold price was at much lower levels, but it had been bought up in anticipation of the war. When the war stopped, that was it. It's gone.
The difference with gold this time, of course, is there are different reasons for gold going up. People didn't know about a war two years ago. Two months ago, yes. Two years ago, no, they didn't. So all the recent volatility, war volatility, that's just part of the game. It went to 5,400, I think it is, came back to very close to 5,000 yesterday. Now what are we doing? Fiddling around in between those two levels.
But there are a lot more things than skirmishes in the Middle East, and I don't want to be disrespectful to the people that are suffering because of this war, but it's just a skirmish when it comes to... you The global financial system, if you see what I mean. Exactly. So let's say for a moment, I'm hopeful to all those people because there's no winners in any war ever. So let's say this war can be done in a shorter period of time. Where are we left?
So firstly, we've seen a very interesting thing yesterday and the day before. What happened? For the first time… in many, many months. When things got heated in the kitchen, people didn't run to gold. They didn't run silver. If you look at the movement in Bitcoin last week, they clearly didn't run to Bitcoin. They ran back to the dollar. And that was, I think, one of the most interesting points that still in this, let's call it uncertainty. Dollar index went above 99, didn't it?
And it's only this afternoon and it suddenly dipped back again. Correct. Correct. So let's say this war is done, and I'm hoping and I do feel that it will be done. Yes. Then where are we left? Well, we're still left with Trump that's made it blatantly clear. Because that's the one thing, one of the reasons why the dollar also attracted, because people suddenly realized, ha ha ha, there's absolutely no way Trump will put some pressure now. And it added.
pressure on the Fed as well to, you need to go and cut rates, not while we're sitting with an oil price of $85 per barrel. He's not going to put pressure on the Fed to go and cut rates aggressively as it is. So yeah, I agree with that. It's not going to happen. But now, let's say the war is done. He's then going to go and say, wait a minute. My playbook has always been we're going to cut rates and we're going to cut rates. aggressive.
And then suddenly the dollar is just going to realize, oh, wait a minute, we're going to have lower rates. If we're going to have lower rates, then the dollar should continue its weakening path, which naturally, again, will be good for the world. We are assuming, or you're assuming that the war is over. There's two schools of thought here. There's many, many schools of thought, but there's two schools that I'm going to focus on now. The ones that say it's all over, they're using B-52s.
Those old heaps that should have been taken out of service 20 years ago that are still flying because they're workhorses and they do their job. So the war is over now. There's another school of thought that says the Iranians are just reconvening, if you like. They are going to announce a new supreme leader. That new supreme leader will sit down. if he can...
He's got to keep his eye on the window at all times, though, because with Israeli and U.S. intelligence, the likelihood of him getting taken out is quite high. But let's say that they do have a new supreme leader with a council that replaced all the others, all the other people that were killed. And then he says, OK, now I'm in charge. We're going to do this. He's still got the Revolutionary Guard there. He may still have some missiles hidden away somewhere. He may still have a navy.
And then say, right, what we've got left, let's attack. Let's keep on attacking Israel with the missiles. Let's attack American ships with missiles. And let's have a go at blockading the Strait of Hormuz so that the West suffers and oil prices go to $90 to $100 a barrel. And then that's when the Donald Trump factor comes in, Scott, because Donald Trump will get bored then.
He likes to make big splashes you know he loves to say things like he said recently he said we're going to cut all ties with spain no trade with spain because the spanish wouldn't wouldn't let his his planes his b-52s refuel or take off uh and attack iran he there's the spanish the left-wing spanish government says no you can't do that you're not going to use us as a platform for your murderous activities so trump immediately blurted it out in three weeks time he won't even remember that
There'll be trade going on between Spain and the United States. It's the same with Iran. If it doesn't happen quickly, and let's face it, it happened quickly. They killed the leader on day one. The first bomb killed him. So then he'll have to move on to something else. It's in his interest to get this thing over with, or in everyone's interest, because otherwise he'll just leave the mess behind him and then move on to goodness knows who knows next, North Korea. That's my big bet.
He goes on about, we've got to... No, no, listen. No, listen. No, listen. This is me and I promise I'll get back in my box after this. Donald Trump said that the reason that the war is... is occurring now, their rationale behind it was because they wanted to stop Iran developing missiles that could hit America and hurt American citizens. North Korea's already got that, or is very close to getting that.
Quietly behind the scenes and with the help of money from China and Russia sometimes, has got the money to have its nasty ambitions fulfilled. So Trump must surely say to himself, Okay, Greenland, I'm bored with that. Panama Canal, I did say that once, but I don't really care. Venezuela, that's already done. That was too quick. That was nice and quick. Colombia, I forgot about because I met with the Prime Minister, the President rather, and we got on quite well.
So I'm not going to hit Colombia like I said I would. So let's have a look. Iran done. What can I have a go at next? No one in Europe I can go for.
uh russia ukraine gosh that's been a bore so north korea that's how his mind works it's like a child he wants a toy one day he wants a batmobile one day oh please can i have a batmobile and then a day later it's in the back of the cupboard he wants spider-man you you use the word you use the word bored i i'm gonna use a different word but i'm gonna use his own word so i think my tweet of the week was by far by a country mile. This tweet although It was retweeted this week.
Actually dates back to the 9th of October 2012 by a real Donald Trump. So this is POTUS himself. I'm going to read this. Now that Obama's poll numbers are in a tailspin, watch him launch a strike in Libya or Iran. He's desperate. That's his tweet of, let's call it 14 years ago, close to 14 years ago. So you say. You say, yeah, he's bored. I say there might be a case of a bit of desperation in it. I think it's a difficult one. I don't want to speculate on what Trump is going to do.
I think for now, when I look at the actual facts, and the actual facts are showing us that, let's say the war is done. The actual facts say the Fed, remember the Fed tool, the Fed watch tool, the one that we usually look at. the probability. Now, you remember the last time we spoke, I told you that there was pretty much now no more probability. I think on that side, it got down to about 20% probability for a rate cut in March.
And then I told you there's pretty much no chance of a rate cut anymore, but we're looking at more than 60% probability of a rate cut in April. Now, still no chance now anymore for the 18th of March, but for the 29th of April, it's now only a 10% probability. for a rate cut in April. And when you push it out to June, there's only about a third. There's about 34 odd percent probability for a rate cut in June. If this war ends today, I promise you those probabilities... Exactly, exactly.
And that will put some pressure again on the dollar, which again, I think will sort of support wherever the gold and silver stabilize. I think it will support those precious metals again. But I think more importantly, there's a massive correlation with a weaker dollar and emerging markets. That's why we've seen such a nice flight to emerging markets. Good for South Africa, yes, but also other. I mean, look at the likes of South Korea.
I mean, that market has been the number one market in the world in 2025. And this year, I think year to date, it was up. already something like 50%. I had a massive retracement yesterday, but these emerging markets are attracting a lot of money. Eight out of the top 10 countries year-to-date up to Saturday, all emerging markets, purely because on the back of a weaker dollar, that's what you should expect. You should expect a flight towards emerging markets.
I still think that theme is very much intact.
I spoke to a fund manager yesterday just to end the war talk and I said what have you been doing he said well we went into the war in a slightly defensive with a slightly defensive stance and we felt that certain asset classes were priced to perfection so we took a bit of profit and we are now looking at opportunities because if you look at a geopolitical chart And look at how the markets behaved, overlay the charts on the geopolitical events on whatever date they were.
You know that some dips lasted longer than others, but no matter how long they lasted, the markets go to new high after that. I'm talking specifically equity markets. So just, I'm not going to say buy, but I'm saying that a pattern has formed, not over the years, but over the decades. Correct. Skulk.
so we've sorted that out now we've sorted out the war we need to take this home if you still want to catch some race so I'm going to lead now And you are going to tell me, because this is the 5 o'clock shadow and it's a predominantly South African-based podcast, tell me about Woolies, please. And I don't want to know how many frozen lasagnas they sold. I want to know the general feeling about these numbers, please.
I thought it was, you know, I've been tough on the company for many, many, many, many years. And mostly to do with the Australian businesses. and then we know David Jones is no more. So the only one that's still there is Country Road Group. And last time, that still seemed to struggle. This time around, with this, let's call it the unordered interim results for this 26-week period, it did seem like Country Road's, not massive growth, but 2.3% growth at least showed an uptick.
In general, it looked good. When I look at the total performances, turnover up 5.4%, which is good for a 26-week period. That's quite a few inflations plus. When you look at the headline earnings per share, that we always knew was going to the earnings per share is always going to be down. When you look at the headline earnings per share, that's going to be positive, 10% up. In general, just when I went through this, it looked good. The show still remained Woody's Food Sales.
That site was up 7% compared to the previous 26 weeks. It was good year on year back in the days, 5.2% growth. So that's really, really good. The online site is still growing. I mean, you know, we often refer to 60-60 as the online delivery. But, I mean, the Woody's Dash, I mean, that has grown by 23% over this. 26 week period so that's really good. And the market likes it Skull?
Oh yes, I mean up 1.4% at one stage, it was quite a bit high, I looked at it I thought it was sort of 4.5% rally at one stage. It was, it was it was but it did retrace a little bit to the latter part of the day and it up 1.4%. Okay, not bad you Right, let me give you some numbers now. The dollar round is 16.33, got into the 16.60s yesterday. The euro round is 19 on the button. And the British pound against the round is, what is it?
There it is. 21.84 euro dollar, just around about the 116 to 10 level. I've got the gold price at 51.51, which is 64 dollars higher, one and a quarter percent platinum price. is nearly $100 higher at 2163, up 4.8%, whereas palladium has gone down by nearly 9%, so a complete diversion between the two major platinum group metals. And 1703 is the current prevailing price of palladium. Now let's look at the oil prices, which has been fascinating today.
As soon as Trump said he would help vessels going through the straightforward moves with its own navy... after the threats from Iran to firebomb all these poor sailors. Crude oil in the United States, West Texas crude, $73.74, which is down 1.1% on its lows of the day. Brent crude oil, $80.65, down nearly 1%. The copper price is $5.86, was above six yesterday. That's per pound in New York. And what else have we got here? The Bitcoin price has been very interesting.
It was in the 60s all of last week, went down to 62,500, 63,000, is now 72,500, 73,000 at the moment, up 7.6% on the day. It likes no war, it didn't like the war. It's not a safe haven. It's just a speculative tool. 8.22 is the South African 10-year bond yield, which is 10 basis points higher than the US 10-year, having gone below for a couple of days, below 4%. Now 4.085%. S&P 500 futures close to their highs up 0.7% now, 6,873. And Skulk, what about the JSC today? Horrible day yesterday.
All the diggers were the losers. What were the winners today? We'll start with the winners. It sort of started off way better when you look at this morning. But I mean, the likes of Afrimat, I think that was done. Wow, massive. And one stage, AfroMAT, I think today, recovered most of its losses, yes, and it gained something like 16 or 17%, but still down from the previous day, up 10% for today. Northern Platinum up 8%. Aspen, interesting one, 5.6%, up.
Valterra, 5.3%. African Rainbow Minerals, 4.8%. I'm just going to mention the sixth one because that's also a company that brought a trading statement today that's cash flow not going to go into that because then you definitely can have a walk but brought out some some positive numbers on the trading statement that helped the cash flow company now to increase by 4.5%. When you look at the losers, Tungela, a massive day yesterday, so maybe just a bit of a breather today, down 6%.
Also a company that had on one stage, I think on one stage it was up over 150 Rand per share. It was, and I thought about you and I thought, has this thing tripled over the last two years or even less? Less, no, less. It was trading 50. 50 Rand last year, I've never groven from it, I'm going to go into that, but I know one stage it was trading at 50 Rand last year, so yes, on one stage, way over 150 Rand, today down again 5%.
After, initially, opening a little bit higher, but 138 Rand, 81, very much back to its levels prior to the war started. Spore, I mean, just, it had a better day, so to speak. But I mean, at 65.85, it's still down 3.5% again today. Quilter also brought out a trading statement talking about preliminary results. Not going to go into that as well. Market did not like it, down 3.4%. And yeah, and now it's a bush. I mean, one that you would have thought is a serious defensive stock today.
Also some news on that side, they're down 2.6%. Very good. So, Carl, I want to talk about one thing just before we go. And we spoke about this stock on a couple of occasions, and I asked you to look at it on one occasion, and I think you did do. And we said to ourselves, why isn't it going up when volumes on the JSC itself are going up? I looked at the graph of JSC Limited. It's up 66% in the 52-week period, 66% from its low of 106.
This is when I looked at it yesterday, not yesterday, the day before, I think. it. It had made a low of around 106, 107 in the 52-week period. And on the day I looked at it Monday, 176 rand per share. Just has taken off skunk. Yeah, you called that one. We did have a look. We looked at the volumes back in the day and how the volumes, and I'll read the volumes. But usually, you and I, we read the daily volumes as well.
And we had this conversation, I think a year, year and a half ago, where we said, oh, that the volumes on the J's is just shocking. We're still trading at similar trading days that we've seen in 2016, 17 and 18. And then suddenly it just picked up. And you called it. You said we had to look at it. That definitely will have a positive effect on the share price, which it did. Always a nice dividend payer. And yeah, maybe the easy money has been made now. But yeah, good call on that one. Good call.
Okay, let's talk about volumes now and the closing indices, if you would, Skulk. So let's start with the closing. JSC today closed at 121,114 points, just shy of 1% positive for the day. The top 40, however, up 1.1%. And today was driven by the resources. Originally up close to 3% earlier today, but at the end of the day up only 1.4%. Industrials up 1.2%, while the financials... were up 0.7%. The SA property index didn't get itself in positive territory. That was down 0.8%.
When we look at the volumes for today, solid, solid trailing days. And just, I don't know if you've looked at this the previous few days, but what we've seen, we've had Thursday, there was over 33 billion that went through the market. Previous day was 29, so it's also a 30 billion day. 51 on Friday just before the war started. And it just didn't stop. We had 37, then 46, and again today over 32 billion value traded over the course of the day. So yeah, you're 100% right.
The JSC definitely is looking way better with these type of volumes. Excellent, Skull. Thanks so much for your time. Skullclaw is from PSG Wealth Old Oak in Cape Town, 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.