A much respected colleague once pointed
out that it was so much more fun being a bull and being able just to buy at
anytime without too many concerns. Bears on the other hand have very few
occasions when they feel that prices have plunged far enough to warrant buying
and even then they still fret that things ought really to go a little lower.
Here we are, just half way into the month, and already the All Share is nearly
5% up and setting new highs. Bond yields are down and the bears there are being
thrashed. We have these concerns about Russia
outmanoeuvring the US over Syria,
consumers piling up debts, strikes in support of huge wage increases and shares
prices at more than 20 year’s worth of earnings. We can’t bring ourselves to
buy and yet tomorrow everything is more expensive. It’s not easy.
What is easy, however, is to write a
speech for Public Enterprises minister Gigaba that explains yet another
turnaround strategy (the ninth in probably as many years?) for SAA. Simply
empty the cliché phrase book into the word processor and off you go with
sweating assets, complex legal processes,
optimised operational efficiencies, turnaround strategy custodians,
growing revenues and of course all of this in the face of the headwinds which
are out there. The Minister should have tossed that back to the scribes in
embarrassment. The sole thing he didn’t say was how much the taxpayers are in for
this year. It is truly time for the government to sell this asset whether
sweaty or not. But would the new owner remember to reserve the front seats in
business class for VIPs?
Yet another state owned entity was all
over the news celebrating 20 years of operating what might be the most
expensive airports in the world. Among the fawning advertisements placed by
grateful suppliers there was one missing. That should have been from the association of luggage handlers
and looters. With two decades of experience ACSA have not yet been able to
introduce a system that eliminates the opportunities for the thieves and crooks
that work on their premises to open and steal from passenger’s luggage.
Astonishing. Mind you, ACSA are to the thanked for their
sponsorship of those brave people who play wheelchair tennis. In particular
Lucas Sithole who last weekend won the US Open, wheelchair quad division. What
an achievement by this really severely disabled young man
There’s a local
government official in Gauteng who is so delighted with her own record and abilities
that she claims to be able to turn any post she is given into gold. Exactly
what this means is a tad unclear and it may even refer to her ability to
extract large sums of money from the public purse. Allegedly this extravagant
claim is deliberately targeted at catching the eye of president Zuma when he
next has a national cabinet post to fill. Goodness knows there are already
plenty of ministers who are already hard at work lining their pockets with gold
while turning their posts into dross.
Just
to remind investors that there are securities listed on the JSE that enable an
investor to buy what in effect is the value of various market indices. Not just
South African indices like the Top 40 or the Resources 20 but also the US, UK, Japanese and European market
overall indices. These last are converted to and priced in rands so one gets
the double exposure (not always welcome) to a combination of a market move and
a currency shift. For some reason the USA one has been particularly
popular recently. Buyers are hoping for a simultaneous stronger rand and an
improving US share market.
Next week hopefully we can open Tidemarks
with the sports section. Today we can do no more than panic and trust that Heyneke
Meyer and the lads do the business against the All Blacks tomorrow morning.
James Greener
Friday the Thirteenth
While I am slowly extracting myself from
the sharp end of the stock broking business, my fascination about how hard it
is consistently to buy cheap and sell expensive will keep me reading and
writing for a long time still. “Tidemarks” is a more or less weekly result of that
self-indulgence.
Quiet
neat really. If the voters are complaining that they can't borrow any money
because the records show that they didn't pay back the last amount they
borrowed simply tell the banks to erase the records. Happy voters. The numbers
here are alarming. 9.5 m consumers currently are having problems with their
debts but 1.6 m would be eligible for having. Heir records erased.
At
an average price of Rr355 a liter (R.
266 aA bottle) its little wonder mthat the recent Nederburg auction was
deemed a success
.
It is notable that the taxman cheerfully accepts
that the revenue legislation in t his country is fiendishly complex by
insisting that anyone offering tax advice services must belong to a recognized
professional body. Why not just simplify
the tax codes so that taxpayers can easily do their own?
