The media have been delighted to soak up all the New Year forecasts pouring from the heated brains of proper economists and analysts and fill their pages with the inevitably different views about what will happen to the price of everything in the coming weeks and months. “Proper” economists and analysts are those who have convinced their employers and their clients that their work is sufficiently prescient or interesting that they should be paid to produce it. Thanks to the internet, however, pretty much the whole world can immediately also access the pearls of wisdom and the so period of exclusivity for the payee of most information is about nil. That business model must be near its end. Old bears like me lumber on in the secure knowledge that half of all investment research is useless and harbour shrewd ideas of which half that is. Which sage, for example, predicted a year ago that the All Share total return would exceed 30% in 2009? Not I for one!
On the face of it, it should be an easy game sifting through all the numbers for a hint of what is hot and what is not. Take the government’s expenditure, currently growing at over 20% per annum as an example. While it is a trifle worrying that the President appears to have chosen the wedding industry – starting with his own enthusiastic and allegedly serial contribution – as one of the main engines of growth, areas of business beyond the provision of leopard skin accoutrements and white dancing shoes must also be benefiting from flows from the public purse. Are the construction counters now all fully priced? Is there any consumer goods share still offering value? Just who will make money from the World Cup?
Regular readers will be disappointed if I did not remind them of the trouble brewing in the Revenue department at that National Treasury where the inflow of funds has been slowing alarmingly. Unsurprisingly there have been record government bond and money market issues. The good news is that yields on offer are still proving attractive for local and foreign lenders alike and there appears to have been little difficulty in raising the cash. In some other emerging market this has not been the case and some spectacular scenes of “failed auctions” have been reported.
It was claimed that the President, by making public and formal the social escapades that many other national leaders allegedly keep private, was seizing “the moral high ground”. This is just as alarming as the newspaper article that included his name in a list of “school failures” along with Sir Richard Branson, Albert Einstein and the lady who founded Weigh Less. The item was supposed to hearten those poor kids who had failed the increasingly irrelevant school leaving examinations by pointing out that there was a future without a certificate.
On a clear day from the top of the world’s latest tallest structure, the Bur Khalifa in Dubai, it is claimed that the horizon is 80km distant. I presume that for a fee one can ascend the almost 900m and savour the view which would I imagine be dominated by sand in three directions. Hmm. Down here in the kingdom just R75 buys you a ride to the top of the new Durban soccer stadium arch. For a smaller sum you may climb the stairs. I have not yet attempted either route but I am certain that the little bit of sand you might see from there will be camel free.
After the test in Centurion I spent some time explaining to a baffled Mexican guest how a game lasting 5 days and which could have been won with even the last ball, still ended in a draw. Yesterday’s identical result at Newlands that brought near delirious excitement to the Barmy Army has me pretty baffled too. Something about once is bad luck but twice is …?
James Greener
8th January 2010.
