The bull is very alive and supremely fit. Anyone still plotting
share prices by hand on graph paper will have been busy with the scissors and
sticky tape tacking extensions on the top of their pages to accommodate the
latest points. The US
share market surge has been exceptionally steep as investors become convinced
that growth is gaining traction in that land. Closer to home the yields on
local bonds have plunged to levels seen before only by much older people. Lending
money for 10 years to the South African government at less than 7% displays
considerable optimism I think. The All Share Index is also very perky and
attempting to test the March highs around 41 000. Fascinating stuff.
Reporting season for February year-end companies is hotting up. The
impression is that quite a few of them are finding business is rather tough and
not everyone is boasting of double digit earnings increases. One bank scared the
market quite badly with the news that it is becoming harder to get people without
jobs and money to repay their loans. Hence, they warned, the bank was not being
as profitable as everyone was hoping. Some of us were unsurprised by these revelations.
I wonder if the JSE is satisfied that all shareholders are getting equal
access to company results now that companies are no longer compelled to publish
them in a newspaper. While it is true (perhaps) that the dreadful Stock
Exchange News Service (SENS) offers simultaneous and equal access to everyone,
those people who actually want to use and study the data are now far worse off.
Anyone who disagrees ought to be forced
to compile a report on a company using only the results as they appear in that utterly
dreadful SENS format. It’s about time that the JSE outsourced that service to
someone who understands style, layout and format.
Cape Town has been hosting one of those World Economic Forum shindigs. Those
are events when people who have loads of theoretical experience dish out advice
about how we ought to be running our lives, businesses and countries. Such a
large gathering of busybodies and analysts is hard to beat for creating
wonderfully rich and thick seams of foolishness for old cynics like me to mine.
Despite the revelation that the austerity measures now being forced on the Greeks
and others arose from an error-filled spreadsheet model of how economies are
supposed to work, the nannycrats have not skipped a beat. The buzzword of the
moment is no longer “sustainable”. Apparently we should now all strive for “competitiveness”.
Those of us who actually have clients and customers who will take their
business to someone else in a heartbeat if we cease to be competitive are
bemused by this instruction.
The African Development Bank has reportedly spotted a “pool of
surplus funds ... globally” that they
believe they can tempt into investing in a USD 50 billion bond. The money would
be used for infrastructure financing. That’s a whole heap of money, but it
could be a great deal less if municipalities and councils began collecting the
billions they are owed by people using the existing infrastructure. It’s odd
that many of those who owe that money will complain bitterly if their pension fund
was to invest in this bond and it failed to perform.
It is probably mathematically let alone physically impossible for
the Sharks to reach the Super 15 playoffs. Their only hope would be if Australia
quietly slipped under the sea one night but that would probably cause more
excitement than simply promotion for a few underperforming South African rugby
teams. It’s so nice that the Formula 1 season has returned to the old European
tracks for a while. Those long and carefully designed circuits seem a little
soulless.
James Greener
New Moon May 2013
