It was astonishing that neither of the newspapers I looked at this
morning bothered to devote any headlines of consequence to the fact that the
All Share index shed more than 1000 points on Thursday. There was a bit of
space devoted to Governor Marcus’ “no change” announcement on the repo rate.
And of course acres of space is devoted to coverage of the wonderful scrap amongst
the politicians about last month’s Indian airborne invasion of our air force
base in Pretoria.
The funniest idea to have emerged from this fracas is the suggestion that
name-dropping should be designated “a gross misconduct”. The bigger the name,
the greater the infraction? Or does the height one drops it from also count?
It is of course way too soon
to see if this share price correction merits the title of a bear market but it
does have a different feel to it. Some bad stuff has been happening to offshore
markets particularly in Japan
and the USA.
In America
there have been self-congratulationary noises that all the official
interventions since 2008 have worked and the economy is now good to go.
However, the merest suggestion that the Federal Reserve might slow down the
flow of crisp new notes into the market spooked a few people and the recovery suddenly
looked rather ropey. .
Labour difficulties on the mines – especially the platinum ones at
present – are growing larger by the minute. It is hard to sort out who is
speaking for whom when at least two rival unions are claiming to represent the
workers. Wouldn’t it help to identify the real union support if the current
patronising and archaic system of using the employer to deduct the union
membership fees from worker’s salaries was scrapped? The sole beneficiary of
this system is the union treasury, while it is difficult for any worker to
withhold their subscription because they don’t think that they are getting
value from their membership and they have something else they would like to
spend the money on. In an era when
labour oversupply is a tragic reality it is important that workers are free to
derive the maximum value from their efforts and not have to share it with
layers of bureaucracy. Investors obviously also don’t think the present system
works very well. Only the very bold and eternally optimistic are buying for a
recovery at this stage.
In the light of the JSE and other authorities tightening the
compliance requirements on people who work in this investment industry, the
news from England
is deeply worrying. Reportedly an investment advisor was unable to show that it
was giving clients the right advice, and so the Financial Conduct Authority
handed them a three million pound fine. Undoubtedly the devil of this story is
in the detail but it does make one wary of telling folk anything beyond what
the weather in Durban
is like today. Suddenly those 500 word
disclaimers at the end of an email which end with an invitation to visit a
website for even more disclaiming don’t look so silly. Fear not, Tidemarks will
continue to say what it thinks. After all it’s priced right and you don’t have
to read it. How’s that for a disclaimer?
With sell-out soccer match taking place simultaneously at the Moses
basket next door and the first real test of the booze ban it is going to be
rather tense at Kings
Park when the Sharks host
the Bulls tomorrow. Allegedly there is an arithmetic possibility that the
Sharks could win the Super 15 this year. However it is much more likely that
they will rain heavily on the Bulls parade. Sports Minister Mbalula will not be
watching. He is far too busy planning how to spend R65m of taxpayer’s money on
the next South African Sports Awards event. He has warned oppositions MPs that
they will need “good suits and proper shoes” if they hope to attend.
Foolishly I sent the yacht in to have its bottom scraped this week,
completely forgetting that it is the Monaco GP weekend. Ah well I shall just
have to watch on TV like everyone else. I doubt there were any berths left
alongside the Swimming Pool Straight anyway.
James Greener
24th May 2013
