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 Wednesday, I speak to Skulk Lowe, Portfolio Manager, PSG Wealth, Old Oak Division, Cape Town. What a time. What a time to be alive. What a time to be a gold trader, investor. What a time to be an investor in any of the asset classes that we usually talk about, Skulk. Yeah, I mean, what? What can we say?
Every week we sort of say, is this it? And then we say, no, it's just crazy. $2,000 per ounce. And then we went through that and we still made the joke. I think that same day when it broke to $2,000 and we said, I still ask you, remember the days when it was trading below $2,000? And we still laughed. Maybe too soon. And I mean, so we... broke through the $3,000, $4,000.
And, I mean, we still choked, I think, a week, no, two weeks ago, two weeks ago, that's the last time we chatted, about some of these economists and analysts and people now, you know, coming forward and saying, big houses, I think it was Bank of America that came out two weeks ago stating, no, they're adjusting their forecast, $5,000. And boom, it didn't take two weeks for us to pass that. And now I see a few reports stating that. $6,000 is just going to be easy.
This year, and I've got another one that says $10,000 is the target. You can pick a number, basically. My worry is that Donald Trump will suddenly wake up and say, wait a second, I've got 8,000 tons of this stuff. Let's offload a bit so we can do some of the things that will win me the midterms. But that's just the wildest of scenarios. I will say this now, and this is the first time I'm going to say it and the last time I'm going to say it. because I'll be shot down.
The gold price peaked this morning, and I'll tell you why. I know. Sit down. I am sitting. Have another sip. Now, what I want you to do is listen to me carefully. It's based on nothing. The fundamentals are great. The dollar is going to continue to be debased. The bond market is going to come under pressure. Equities are going to come under pressure, and gold will still be a safe haven. Inflation will run away.
Look at the CRB index, 399. Highest level since it was, as you said off air to me cleverly, 459 back in 2008 after the global financial crisis. But anyway, on my 10-year graph, it's at an all-time high. So that's inflationary. So all this will come together for gold. But if you look at one of the tried and trusted technical analysis methods, when there used to be the old days of open, high, low, close bar graphs.
and there weren't 24-hour markets when there was a civilized gold market that opened at one time and closed at another in New York, you would get gaps in the chart. Let's say the market like it did on last Friday closed 4,980, something like that. Well, that was the high. And then the next day it opened close to 5,100. So there was a gap. And then there's been another gap and another gap. These three gaps are... The breakaway gap, the first one. The runaway gap, the second one.
The exhaustion gap, the third one. And I don't know if there has been a gap because I can't for the life of me find a chart that has an opening and a closing a market. But I think there's been three gaps. I think today was the exhaustion gap. And I do think that after the Fed decision tonight, everyone's going to go, OK, and start selling some of these asset classes that have served them so well. I've said my piece, Skullclaw. You heard it here first. Or it will just continue running.
That was Skullclaw from PSG. No, I mean, Lindsay, I think I've had this question a few times, not just today, but the past few days. And you and I, I mean, this is a listening podcast, so people luckily can't see what I look like now. I think you look very well. I'd like to see a pre and post gold bull market picture. But anyway, carry on. You know, we've got both a few grey hairs. So we've seen a few things.
And the one thing that I tell all my clients and all the people that ask me, the one thing that these type of rallies has taught me over the years is not to call tops. No. That's it. That's it. I think personally, if you ask me, do I think these levels are totally overdone? And when I talk about these levels, I'm talking about gold. I'm talking about silver. I'm talking about, I mean, I'm looking at the silver price. But it's just crazy. And people are talking about not.
The hundreds of $50 or $200, they're talking about $400. That's going to be easy, $400 per ounce on silver. That's massive, massive gains. And who am I to jump in front of this freight train? I mean, it's going at about a gazillion miles per hour. I'm not going to be jumping in front of this thing for now. And you also, while we were off here, you were talking about somewhere along the line, they were going to be selling them. They've got over 8,000 tons of this stuff.
Yeah, it's got a massive amount. But that was just a side conspiracy sort of theory. What would Donald Trump do? He's the sort of person that would say, OK, it's sitting there doing absolutely nothing, apart from backing the dollar to a certain extent, of course. We haven't got a gold standard anymore. But the fact that that stuff is there is a support for the US economy and the dollar, in my opinion. But, yeah, don't worry about Donald Trump and his gold reserves.
Let's talk about what you're invested in. We've never really mentioned it, but I think you're mainly in equities, aren't you? You're not in ETFs or bullion itself. Can you tell us? Are you allowed to tell me? Yeah, I'll tell you. I'll tell you. I mean, it's easy because I've been quite verbal about this and seeing that I haven't sold anything yet. Well done. It's people can sort of go and... reference things I said previously. So, I mean, on the local front, I'm still invested in gold fields.
And I mean, you and I are at the interesting conversation. And great question there. I mean, I'm going to, actually, I actually want to read this question to the listeners. And I need to really filter through Lindsay's because sometimes his WhatsApp is not. Well, I was sitting in the physiotherapist's waiting room and I didn't have my glasses with me, so I kept on missing out letters. I totally understood you.
So he said, hi, can you look at a South African gold miner and PGM miner and work out the dollar margins at these levels? So I had a look at it. And great question, Lindsay. I mean, what a question.
I sort of... mind-boggled today when I looked at ASML's profit margins and are they talking about 51 and 52 percent those are the top of profit margins these these companies are you're talking about the tech you're talking about the tech company based in Eindhoven in the Netherlands okay so get you to give some sort of context to what you're gonna say now about the miners that's it and and you know the likes of the NVIDIA's are running at similar profit margins gross profit margins.
But I mean, this is This is our tech companies. When I look at the, let's call it the most recent results, and I use gold fields now again, and I'll do, just for fun, I'll do Anglo Gold as well. Gold fields, when they reported their six-month ended results for June, so they haven't done December yet. If you look at the sales and you look at the average gold price, which they mined on that stage, I think it was something like 1,000. $1,900 or something like that, which was the all-in cost.
If you look at the actual growth profit margin back then, it was just shy of 55% because we had such a massive run in the gold price. So I asked my team just to have a look, and they looked at the average gold price over that period for that, let's call it six months. And I just said, well, let's use the $5,260, which is now. If this is going to be the norm, the growth profit margin is going to increase from 54.7% to 72.8%. Goodness me. That's a money printing machine.
I mean, Anglo Gold, similar story, went from 47.3% and at current gold price levels, that will increase to 68%. I mean, that is literally, as I mentioned, a money printing machine. And yeah. I'm still invested in gold fields, so this is still my preferred entry into the local gold miners. And in my international portfolio, I've got a investment in wheat and precious metals, which is predominantly gold. They sort of assist the gold. It's a very interesting structure.
I'm not going to go into this because otherwise this is going to be an hour podcast again.
But both of these companies have been… or miners has been doing doing really really well uh and so i like the geared effect and also if you can recall i think it was about a year ago i told you the gold miners lagged the actual gold price yes and and for that reason i i did prefer to rather go into the miners that did catch up naturally but i mean as i mentioned at at 70 odd percentage uh growth profit margins i will not be selling this is going to be companies that's going to be either
paying a heap of dividends very, very soon, or going to start looking at other opportunities, buying back shares and those kind of things. So, yeah, very, very, very happy to still be in. And I think you asked for the PGMs while we're on that topic. Yeah, because they haven't been lagging. They're just coming a little bit late to the party.
But when I look at these things, And when I look at the lack of investment in South African mines and the low stockpiles and everything, and there's going to be a deficit this year and maybe next year as well, I can't help but think that these things are relatively thin because there's not much metal produced. And if you take the market capitalization of any company that produces platinum group metals and its associated spin-offs, it's very small.
It can be not manipulated, but it can be pushed very high. very, very quickly. I mean, even higher than it is now, of course. Yeah, no, no, no, for sure. For sure. I mean, but I mean, just I ran through that one as well. I ran through the platinum minus. I chose Volterra because it's the bigger one, and I like the way they report. And just to, again, put some context to some of the listeners out there, when we sat here exactly a year ago, We already had a sort of a gold frenzy.
It didn't start in the beginning of 2025. This has been a bull run going on, you know, since just post-COVID. Yes, it did. The aggression of the moves has been really increased a lot. But the gold price was already, you know, doing extremely well this time last year. This time... last year, the platinum price was still very much the $950 level. Exactly. It was lagging, yes. Yes, and only started, if you really go and look at that graph, actually, I actually got the graph now.
May the 19th, it was still below $1,000, still trading $900 odd dollars. And from there, it moved. So when you take Volterra's growth profit margin for the six-month end it again, 30 June. So that's. Very much still prior to the platinum, palladium, rhodium prices started to move, the growth profit margins was trading at 12.1%.
Now, if you take their mix, and they've got a mixture of 44% platinum, 22% palladium, and 34% rhodium, that's as 30 June, their growth profit margin now will kick up to 53%. And so that's also... You know, it's very glamorous. It's very glamorous compared to the doldrums that this thing has been in. Year on year, the platinum price, incidentally, up 170%, 27% year to date. But I'm just going to get my graph up as I look at this. $2,630 an ounce is the prevailing price. Has been high.
Look at that. I didn't notice that spike it had, too. What was that, about 2,800, 2,850, something like that, recently? But anyway, it's back a bit. And 10 years, 10 years, let's go for 10 years. Just trying to see. This is an all-time record high, isn't it? Yes, yes, yes. That's for the white metals. And that thing took off. The base is these. Let's say that Elon Musk or someone else comes up with some pill that will mean that you can live for 500 years or something.
It's a terrifying prospect, but it will happen. I don't know what sort of state you'll be in in 500 years, but you can wait. And all you have to do is wait a long time. You have a look at something like silver or platinum, where the market goes sideways, doesn't do anything for, I don't know, five years, ten years. I'm looking at this platinum chart back in. It essentially went sideways from February 2016 to the takeoff point. which you just talked about May of this year.
So nine years of doing absolutely nothing. A couple of little blips here and there, but the blips were always smoothed out. So a smoothing thing is around about 1,000, 900 to 1,000 for all that time, and nothing happens. Options are granted above the market. Options are granted below the market. And as soon as it takes off, people scramble. The fundamentals suddenly change. And off we go. And that's what's happening now. Where can it go? I don't know. It's blue sky on this one. It really is.
If the world economy keeps on going with its status as an industrial metal, the PGMs in general, it could go anywhere, Skulk. It could go anywhere. Have you got exposure to this as well? Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've got it. But I mentioned that back then as well. I do have Impala Platinum and Volterra, both of them. Originally, I only had Impala Platinum.
But then luckily, luckily, when Volterra were kicked out of Anglo-American, I decided to, rather than selling that little position, to increase it. That wasn't luck. That was skill. What are you talking about? That little position. Yeah, yeah. But we also had the discussion back then. It was mainly due to the fact that we had the overhang of stock. And Volterra back then was sort of, I would say, unfairly punished for the overhanging stock. And I used that opportunity to buy into it.
But here's the thing. I think a lot of listeners will look at that and say, Scott, well, that's my dad. I mean, he's also you know my dad. I mean, he's also in the investment industry. And he'll always when you did something right, and then he'll sort of say with a question mark, and for my next trick. Yes. So, And to the listeners, I think we're the listeners are listening today and say, what do I do? So I'm not selling my gold yet, but I do have a different style of investing.
I'm a long-term investor. And for this, I didn't bait the firm, so to speak. I do have overweight positions in gold and PGMs. But I'm not a if the gold price should go back to $3,500, I will still be happy. But here's the thing, and we talked about our gray hair. Last time we saw something like this, and you mentioned it earlier, you talked about the CRB Commodity Index, which hit highs there in 2008. That period is very significant.
That period, that five-year period between 2003 and 2008, is extremely significant because... We had a similar environment, and I don't want to say, let's talk about wars, inflation, and Trump, and those kind of things. I'm talking purely about, suddenly there was a massive interest in commodities, and the commodities that South Africa is some of the largest producers of in the world, attracted more interest.
And that suddenly helped us, that suddenly helped our economy to grow way quicker than... everybody expected. We've already seen the IMF now come out a week or two ago stating that we're not going to be growing 1% anymore. It's going to be more towards the 1.5%. Hey, I wouldn't even listen to them. I mean, I listen to this and I suddenly look at the RAND in the 15 RAND levels. I look at the massive interest. We're the largest platinum producer in the world.
We're the second largest palladium producer in the world. We're by far the largest rhodium producer in the world and we're still the eighth largest gold producer in the world. So now suddenly you had an environment you had an environment where we had this interest in the commodities that helped our currency back in the days. You remember gold price, the rent was there around about the 2003 levels were 12, 13 rent to the dollar and then went below five rent. More importantly, we had an Yeah.
unemployment level in 2003 of 30 percent very similar to what we we're seeing today 30 percent unemployment level by 2000 in 2007 our unemployment levels was at 21.5 percent so so it was great for unemployment but suddenly there there was flows we had inflows we we had flows and commodities and that's spilled over to other industries. So I suddenly... I'm looking at smaller companies.
You know I always, well not always, for the past five years liked my SA Inc companies and that has done well for me. But I mean take for example a company like Afromat. Predominantly it's an African story. It's the second time I've heard that name in the last two days. Yeah people are having a look at this. Yes go on. Yeah, this is, I mean, suddenly this company is looking really attractive.
It's like, if you go pull up the graph while I'm, rather than making yourself a cup of tea again, just pull up a graph there of AfriMet. And you'll see it's been a company that actually came back. I mean, they went from being a pure, let's call it, quarry type of miner to buying into iron ore. And in an environment where iron ore sort of retraced. sort of under pressure. And then they went and bought into cement. And cement also, we're looking at things like PPCs a few years ago, also struggled.
So they sort of caught a perfect storm on two commodities that were struggling a bit. But they've managed. This is the one thing about Afromat, great management.
They've always been able to work through these storms and position themselves better in the, let's call it the... bad environments and i think this is going to be no different now when you look at and and i it's come down i mean it's more it's more than halved hasn't it well it's just it's about half it's come down from 70 back in what is it uh gosh i can't uh yeah what is it denominated in it says here 6930 what is that 69 69 man 30 a share what is that
yeah that's that's that's a share price yeah i know i'm just saying it's the dots are the decimal points all in the wrong way but anyway It's gone from, let's call it 70 down to 43 at the moment. It hasn't got the base that I would like to do a silver or a platinum or to a lesser extent gold. But I see what you mean. But what I'm alluding to is when you look at that period 2003, that period, PPC in 2003 was trading at six rand a share. By 2007, it was trading at 33 rand a share.
We didn't have Kumba iron ore back then because I think it was only unbundled out of Anglo-American as well, I think 2007-ish. But when you look at something like Rio Tinto, it's also in things like iron ore. When you look at Rio Tinto share price, it was trading at £1,150 in 2003 and went up all the way to £5,000 in 2007. So it's maybe not a like-for-like scenario, but I'm starting to look at these secondaries.
Which areas, which sectors are going to benefit from this massive precious metals rallies? That's the other thing that I want you to do. I couldn't ask you this week because I already asked you a question. I want someone who's clever enough to say how much money are they going to make with these margins that Skank has just been talking about compared to how much money they were making five years ago. And say to yourself, right, I'm the Treasury. I'm the Treasury Department.
how much more tax is SARS going to receive in 2026 versus 2021, for example? Because it must be a bonanza for the local treasury. Undoubtedly. This is going to be massive for treasury. This is going to be massive for taxes. And a lot of people say, well, but just remember, goldfields only got South Deep still left in South Africa. Agnagold don't have any South African mines left. It's interesting. I can't remember what the company's name or mine's name is.
But we've had the first gold listing in, what was it, 20 years now, a few weeks ago. And why? Because they said, well, when the gold price was trading at $1,700, $1,800, they couldn't start up the mine again because it's too expensive to. Yeah, well, at $5,200, $5,300. I see quite a few decommissioned gold mines or even platinum mines. Lady of Mines, that's going to suddenly be started up again.
And that's going to be naturally good for people that need to be employed to go and work at the mines. This is going to be good for, like you mentioned, the taxes. And it's going to have the spillover effect. It's going to go through to the likes of the shop right checkers where people need to shop for food. Mr. Price, which we saw today. Lewis, which we also saw today. I mean, I might sound like… And good for Capitech as well and other banks, of course. Correct. The same sort of thing.
Yeah, OK, I get your point. South Africa, there's so many reasons to have a really good look at South Africa. I had so many podcasts in the last quarter of last year that made me think 2026 is going to be better than 2025. And 2025 was a good year for the JSE, even outside of the miners. I reference John Bickard, for example. His last interview with me, he was ragingly bullish about South Africa and the sort of companies that you're talking about. Anyway, let's not get too much into that.
We've got the Fed tonight. We've got Jerome Powell. He's going to keep his cool. He's very collected, that man. And he'll stay there. He'll leave rates unchanged. But then he's going to say some things afterwards, which is what we're all going to hang on all of those words, of course. And when I look at the CRB index, I think of inflation and I think he'll sound a cautionary note on inflation, especially with the dollar under pressure.
And that's one of the reasons why I think the market may say, wait a second, this is all a little bit too frothy, given what he's just said. Let's take a few profits off the table here. It's one of my reasonings for this, apart from the analysis of the potential gap technical analysis trade skulk. So I've got a case. I've got a case. You've got a case. I've got a case. Your case is stronger than my case, as usual. And... A case I have. The thing is, I hear what you say.
And I know they're fighting for the 7,000 mark on the S&P 500 currently. So if you say the market starts looking through this and it starts becoming a little bit frothy, and we do suddenly see a bit of a retracement in markets, remember, gold is still seen as a safe haven, as sort of a protector against weaker markets. Again, I think not calling tops or bottoms, I agree with Biggie, John Beckard. I do think there's still a lot of opportunities.
And this is sort of a, I know history doesn't necessarily always repeat itself, but what I say often rhymes. I do think that when you look at South Africa, we are in a very similar scenario. And just be careful. Looking at last year, because I had so many of my colleagues in this industry, which I've heard over the past few weeks, we shouldn't see a repeat of last year in terms of returns for South Africa. Why not? Yeah, that's the thing.
If you look at that period, 2005, 2006, 2007, I can't remember the exact levels, but we had a great recovery in the latter part of 2004. And then 2005, the market has grown 30%. percent, 30 odd percent. And then everybody said, ah, we won't see a repeat of, and then it went like 70% of the next year. And also I think it was, it was the final year was before the, for the crash of 2008 did also something about 40, 41%. So be careful.
Um, I think my message to the listeners out there is have a longer term view and, and make sure you don't have serious overweight position. If you've got a serious overweight position in something like the S&P 500 or ai stocks those type of things i would caution you now just to have a look and and maybe if you've got an overweight position in gold miners gold or silver only have those things again same story just maybe just be careful We've got a crazy market now. Yes, we have indeed.
Let's have a look at some of those crazy prices. Dollar around 15.95. British pound against the round, 21.95. Euro around 19.05. Euro dollar, I haven't got the bit on the end. It was above 120 yesterday. It went to about 120.50. I've got it at 119. I don't know why they've suddenly cut off the last two digits on my ShareNet screen. But anyway, very good service, by the way, if you're listening ShareNet, apart from your Euro dollar, which I don't like. Gold price is $52.62.
It was $53.45 at one stage this morning, but still up 1.4% or $73. And that's platinum price $2,618 at $81 or 3.2% palladium. That's the star of the PGM show up 8% to $2,031, $151 per ounce. Let's have a look at the all important other commodities.
notably the energy price why do i lose my cursor do you find as you get older you lose your cursor on your screen more skill don't answer that all the things i've lost i miss my mind the most brent nice one uh brent crude oil 68.5 cents per barrel at 0.7 sorry mr trump gasoline prices are not 199 a gallon in many states across the u.s not at these prices The West Texas crude, $62.90, up 0.8% gold price. Oh, we've given you that. Sorry, silver, $113 per ounce, up 0.9%.
Copper, $5.92 per pound, up 0.9%. And yeah, looking good. I was looking at the Baltic Index the other day. That's been doing so well as international trade shrugs off the tariff story from April of last year. And trade going along very nicely. Thank you very much. So the Baltic Freight Index doing very well. So lovely across the board more or less on the commodities that we look at. US 10-year bond yield, 425. It broke through 420. That's the new support level.
Had a look at it a couple of days ago, back at 425 now, going along slowly. That's a slow burner. That's another pick of the year for me, as I told you, Skalk. Sell the US bonds by the yield. S&P 500. has been toying with 7,000. I've got the futures above 7,000, of course, for March of this year. 7,020 up 0.2%. Doesn't like it, especially ahead of the Fed. South African 10-year bond yield. Oh my goodness me, look at this, 8.13%. An unsung hero, the bond market last year.
We're talking about gold and clever people also had a bond portfolio which saw In April, the yield being 11.15%, now 8.15%, 300 basis points in less than a year. Fantastic stuff. Bitcoin, 89,284. What have you got on the movers and shakers board, rather the movers and downers on the JSC today, Skarnkov? I imagine some gold miners are involved there. Yeah, it's, I mean, on the downers, it's... We've seen some of the telecoms today. That was an interesting one, Vodacom, Telcom.
I've also seen Richemont in there, in the mix. And naturally, the big loser today is Sapi, dropped by 8%. On the upside, I mean, you called it. Harmony, 9.5%. Goldfields, 8.1%. Anglo Gold, 6.4%. Northern Platinum 6.2%. Subanya Stillwater 5.7%. Pan-African Gold 5.7%. Do I need to continue? It's all in the diggers. All in the diggers. Fantastic. And what about the indices? How's that resi doing? Start with that if you would today. Yeah, we need to start with that. That's 40% of our all share now.
So we need to start with that. The JSE resi today increased by 5%. Goodness me, stop the world, I want to get off. And it's not exactly off a low base either, is it? Fantastic. What a performance. And here's the interesting part. I'm going to say that JSC All Share ended the day 1.34% in the green at 125,069 points. But both the industrials were down 60 basis points and the financials were down 70 basis points.
So all driven by the… But as I mentioned, the diggers, all the commodity stocks actually kept the all share in the green for today. Very good indeed. Skalk, I've got to ask you one personal question. When you get you're exhausted because your mind is going all over the place, your clients are phoning. You've got three phones going and you've got client, sorry, your colleagues coming in and asking you this and that. When you get home, do you have time to decompress?
Or will you, for example, be waiting for the Fed tonight and sitting there? And your long-suffering wife and kids will be looking for your attention. You'll say, I'm sorry, Jerome Powell. He's my wife tonight. Tell me, do you switch off? Because it must be difficult to sleep when so much is going on in your favour as well, I might add. I'm in the privileged position, Lindsay. You remember the JSE floor. I met my wife on that floor. So she's been in the industry.
She's in this industry and she knows my passion, luckily. So she'll most probably be sitting next to me, you know, listening to Paul delivering his speech. What a couple of nerds. Fantastic. Skulk, thank you very much for your time as always. Skulk Lowe is a portfolio manager at PSG Wealth Old Oak in Cape Town, and that was the 5 o'clock shadow.
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