You're listening to Strictly Business Podcast with Lindsay Williams.
JSC has closed its doors for another day, so it's time for the 5 o'clock shadow.
And as always on a Thursday, I speak to the double-headed dream team of David
Shapiro from Sasser Insecurity,
sometimes in Johannesburg, and Viv Govender from Ransuisse, mostly in
Johannesburg.
And Viv, I'm going to start with you because I was talking to somebody
yesterday about a word
that I haven't used for a long time called stagflation.
And there's a tiny sort of microcosm of a hint of it today with inflation in the
United States going up
a little bit more than analysts projected, i.e.
3.3% for CPI year on year.
And also some employment data, which wasn't quite as good as expected.
No chance of stagflation, of course, but it sort of made the market think a bit.
What do you think, Viv?
Yeah, I mean, most definitely.
I mean, we saw jobless claims go to about 258.
thousand that's the people that are claiming jobs you know jobless benefits
and I think that is obviously you know partly due to things
like you know hurricanes and stuff not the current one but in the previous one also
was no quite important that there was a Boeing strike
was also affecting things so this was about basically 30,000 more than the
market minutes debating and in the CPI number like you said he
came in at 2.4 versus 2.3 expected but this little down from 2.5 you know I mean
so it's falling but not falling as fast as the
market would like So I do think it's a case of, you know, the good news is not
quite as good as the market would like,
but it's not terribly bad as well.
Once the hurricanes are over, I think we'll have an extract is over.
We probably will have, you know, jobless things, a little more normality.
And a point one miss on inflation is not a huge deal, especially when you consider
just how these things are often surveys of things and so on.
Yes, well, David Shapiro is there and he's assessing the mood of inflation.
He goes to, I think Vivi goes to Whole Foods every single day and gets himself a.
a lunchtime salad having gone through his run in Central Park and getting a bagel
and an orange juice and David sorry I'm talking
behind your back here what is what is
the mood there what let's talk about floods and inflation first of all and the
general mood in where
are you today Boston or New York?
Boston now I've been in Boston for the last week and uh it's quite intriguing to
because we
celebrated the Jewish New Year yes so there were you
Two big dinners that I attended with a lot of expats who are doing very well here.
In fact, I must comment on that.
But, you know, the dinner time table, I mean,
the talk turns to politics and that becomes heated.
You know, that really becomes heated, whether you're pro-Karmala or you're
pro-Trump.
And believe me, there still are Trump supporters.
Before we get on to that, I just want to contextualize this.
Was it because of the attitudes of the two candidates towards...
the Jewish people or Israel or was it just generally?
I think generally and also a big sway towards Israel. There is that attitude.
But, I mean, it depends where you are.
In fact, I've gone to two different lectures.
And what intrigued me, and especially in Boston,
you have no idea the size of the community here and the wealth of the community here.
I'm talking the Jewish community.
Yes.
An enormously powerful voice, you know, certainly here.
I was taken aback by the size, you know, both in New York and here.
You know, we're a very small community in South Africa, but their ability to raise
money and to raise their voices,
and they don't hide their faces, you know, they don't hide behind masks, and they're
openly supportive.
So it's, I'm not taking, you know, I don't want to.
be drawn into the discussion, but I'm saying it is a very much, you know,
it does sway their politics in a big way.
So you get the two, you know, you get, I'm on the side of, I can't stand Trump.
I mean, I cannot tolerate the man.
We'll talk about that.
Yeah.
Yeah, we are.
He was wearing a yarmulke at an October the 7th memorial service or something.
And I thought.
You're such a hypocrite.
But anyway, we'll talk about Trump later on.
Please go on.
So, you know, from that point of view, there's two different camps.
You know, those who detest Trump, regardless of Israel or not.
They just cannot think of having him as a president.
But there are others that are very supportive and believe that he's the right
man.
They don't like Kamala.
That's where I'm getting to.
It's outside of the Israeli question.
And I think more important, they just find her very, not spineless,
but she hasn't really got the charisma.
Even if you looked at a Michelle Obama, even looked at a Hillary Clinton, and I'm
talking about a possible woman president.
I don't think she's anywhere in their class.
She doesn't come up to it.
She's very sweet.
She's pleasant.
She's intelligent.
But she's not a powerful politician.
You know, I can't see her sitting around the group of 20 or dominating the group of
seven discussions and that.
I don't think she's that strong.
So I think that's where a lot of people are kind of anti-Karmala.
They might be anti-Trump as well, but they're also anti-Karmala from that point
of view.
You know, they don't find her strong enough, powerful or intelligent enough.
OK, we'll talk about politics later.
But before we go back to Viv, David.
the mood of people and the because trump keeps on going on about and again i said i
wouldn't mention politics until later but he
keeps on going on about inflation they all do but inflation's down i mean it's not
it's down from where it is i mean you go to
whole foods as you do and
it's okay it's it's up but inflation is always up there's no way that you're ever
going to get minus two percent like you do in china
it's always up but why do they keep on harping on about this because it's old
news it's not a story anymore No,
it's not a story.
I don't think it's a story in any way at all.
And again, I've come up, been here for almost three weeks now.
I've never heard people complaining about prices.
Yes, prices go up, but I think that's, you know, that also depends on the weather.
It depends on a whole lot of other factors here.
But it's, Lindsay, you know, I can't explain.
When you go to New York and you see the throng of people, you know, and you see.
The shops just absolutely overflowing, you know, packed with people.
Restaurants is always, you know, there's never, there's no emptiness there.
So I know it's, I think I discussed this with you as well, I think last week as
well.
You know,
New York is actually indicative of the demographics of what America is
becoming.
Yes, and just to let Viv in on this one, I said to David Viv,
I keep on going on about New York and Boston where David visits regularly,
are not representative of the United States of America.
But in fact, if you go to New York and you walk down the street,
and after 10 minutes you've seen 10 different nationalities and creeds of
people.
So in fact, when you go to New York, despite the fact it's a wealthy city and
is very cosmopolitan,
it sort of encapsulates what America is all about.
In other words, immigration.
and integration just briefly would you agree with that it's maybe what america is
all about but it was it's not what the election is all about because the
election is going to be held in states that haven't looked nothing like new york
see that's the thing like new york and california and you know they
may be the bigger part of the economy they may have more people uh you know they may
do many things but they're not going to be reflective of
pennsylvania wisconsin you know michigan you think of these places if you travel
you know those places they're
not exactly new york city you know what i mean They are more like the, they're
called rust belt, sun belt kind of places.
They are more rural.
They're more, you know, industrial.
They're poorer also.
And the thing with inflation, like you mentioned, is the number for inflation is
the increase has stopped.
But it takes a while to notice a stop.
You know what I mean?
So let's just say the price of milk goes up, you know, 10 times and then stops for
two, three months.
You don't feel like you basically stopped inflation for two, three months.
You still remember the price has gone up, you know, 10 times.
And that's the thing with inflation.
It takes a long time to feel.
inflation stopping.
It's very easy to feel inflation increasing.
And that is the thing is why it's a story there.
But the one thing I want to mention about the election is interesting out there.
I don't know if you guys follow polymarkets.
No, I don't.
Polymarkets is this election.
So it's a prediction market, right?
Okay.
And it's like on the US election, there's billions, literally billions of dollars on
the line at the moment, betting on the election.
And for some reason, something happened in the last week.
You know, it went from basically, I think about
50 something percent to Harris to 40 something percent to Trump.
It just reversed in the last week.
It's been a pretty substantial change around.
And people are saying, I don't know if you follow Mark Halperin,
he's the guy that predicted Biden was going to drop out like three days before
Biden did.
Right.
And he's saying that there's internal pollings, and there's an article in the
Wall Street Journal about this as well,
in which a senator, I can't remember the state she's from, she's a Democratic
senator,
and she's saying that her private polling, that's the polling that her organization
is doing,
is showing heresy significantly worse than the public polling in the places like the
New York Times and so on, she's publishing.
So I think there's a danger right now that...
Harris is letting these key states, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and so on,
slip away because these are the places that are going to determine things.
It doesn't really matter what despite Trump, I think, renting out Madison Square
Garden to try and get New York.
He's never going to get New York.
He's never going to get California.
And despite Schumer saying that he's going to go to Texas, they're never going to get
Texas.
But Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, those are the places that count.
And internal polling right now is saying there's a shift towards Trump that has
happened.
two weeks and you've seen that happen only markets do the political uh which was the
uh like i said you look at
um holy markets until about a week ago harris was ahead and i'd been ahead for a
few weeks and then suddenly out of nowhere trump goes up to 54 she's
done at 45.
is it because of his uh sort of emotional and oh goodness me i've been shot i'd shot
at twice is it because of that viv do
you think or david do you know i think what happened is that she's lost any
events
All the events that happened so far, except for the assassination that happened
before she became the nominee, were positive for her.
So the debate worked in her favor.
The Democratic conference worked in her favor.
Replacing Biden, you get the euphoria of Biden going away, worked in her favor,
right?
But without any kind of event happening, she doesn't do media, right?
uh the media that she does do i don't know if you've seen the 60 minutes interview
that which was poor yeah she was poor very
poor very poor and then you watch trump this is an interesting thing as well you
may not realize this but about 10 million more women voted men
in the us if the same amount of men voted as women trump would win in the landslide
if
you notice what trump has to do recently he's been going on this podcast but this
very male podcast he went to the podcast called call me daddy right which is a
which
is a big female podcast but he's gone on things like andrew schultz he's got with
the award he's done all these these male
centric podcasts and he goes in there and he's just like you listen to him speak
he's very charming like there's a thing called the flavor one
it's very very charming it's not the the demagogue
even these guys who are more democratic on the podcast laughing he's trying to get
the male vote coming in and that's that's i think
also what's affecting things here because if you get the male vote coming in oh and
finally one last thing I don't know if you saw as well,
Elon Musk is paying $40 something dollars for every person that's selling some
petition.
And you may think, okay, that's stupid because you could just fake selling the
petition.
But what it's actually doing is it's incentivizing people to go out and talk to
people about Trump in the specific
areas.
And it's one of the most effective things you can do because effectively that knock
on the door is something that, you know, is very persuasive.
So all these things are working.
really behind the scenes.
But one final thing, if I go.
There's a great, funny interview.
I don't know if you've seen it, with Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson.
Tucker Carlson, yeah, who used to be Fox News, but was sacked from there.
And it was the most absurd thing I've ever seen in my life.
He said, if Harris wins, I'm going to be effed.
And he'll probably go to jail or something.
And he laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed.
And I watched CNN after that.
And the presenter, a woman called Abby Phillip, We watched it and her face went
deadpan, a black woman,
and she went ashen white and she said, yeah, that's really hilarious because he
was talking about the assassination of Harris
and why it wouldn't be worth it because she's a non-entity.
And I just thought, and did you see, sorry to digress here,
did you see Musk jumping up and down like an idiot on the stage?
David, you come in on this one because that offended me deeply.
But, you know, what Viv says is that.
The thing is that Trump has got a lot more charisma when he gets in front of a crowd.
He knows how to stir them up.
He knows, and correctly on the podcast, that's why I'm saying, you know, when I
said that she hasn't got the personality,
the power to be, she doesn't appear presidential.
She appears to be a very nice, sweet lady,
but she's not a powerful character that can hold her own against a Putin or
against
any of the… any of the leaders, you know, is the,
and I think this is where you're very worried.
Now we've got how many more weeks to go for 26 days.
Yeah.
And, and he's on the, he's on the move.
You know, he's going, you heard Viv said, he's going to medicine square garden, you
know,
and he just says that New York has been overrun by migrants.
You know, in other words, we've got to take it back.
He knows he's going to lose it.
But, you know, he goes there with a message of anti-migrant, you know,
migrant.
And believe me, as I've said to you before, Lindsay, this country would fall
apart without the migrants.
And it's just built on migrants.
It just would not function.
But it's an emotive issue.
And, you know, I'm sorry to say you feel the momentum.
shifting towards definitely but it can shift again it shifted toward harris have
a look at him he now has his hair
coiffed nicely not in
1970s style slightly more up to date you know it's been cut a bit and it doesn't go
wild and blow in the wind and everything
so he's on that charm offensive at the moment and i'm i'm afraid that this is
going to be very very close well i
think it's going to be less close than we think but on the other hand after harris
and he debated
Harris went up a couple of points, but now she's gone down a couple of points because
of all the things.
But don't forget, Obama is coming in now.
Barack Obama is coming in and he will be by her side in every single event that she
is hosting from now
on.
And that's a really, really big factor because he is eloquent.
He has all the eloquence and charm and presence that she doesn't have.
So I look forward to that.
But I have to tell you, gentlemen, that I watched on X a live stream of his.
event in Pennsylvania last night.
He was outrageous.
Do you know what he said?
He said, she is spending 94 billion.
Then he said, no, not 94 billion.
She is planning to spend 94 trillion on cleaning up the air of America.
And he said, that'll be good for the Chinese when they take over so they can
breathe clean air.
And I sort of did a second take.
And I played, he was outrageous last night.
I mean, kept on talking about the Congo.
Which doesn't exist, of course.
It's two different countries.
But anyway, Kipton's talking about the Congo, and they're letting people in from
the Congo.
And I've said this before.
How do you get from the Congo to America if you've just been let out of prison?
You're not going to get a visa.
What are you talking about, you idiot?
Viv, do you watch these Trump things like David and I do?
Not all.
I watch all the interviews he does, and I think that is the thing here.
Like David says, it comes across charming.
If you watch the...
Like I said, you watch the Andrew Schultz thing.
Andrew Schultz is like a middle kind of the road kind of comedian.
He is quite a big podcaster.
He does a show, somebody called Charlemagne.
And Charlemagne is, if you know like American black culture,
he does the biggest podcast or biggest radio show among black people.
It's called The Breakfast Club.
And so he's like a really big shot.
So this is like his co-host in some of his podcasts.
And he does a show with him.
And he comes across really like funny, he makes jokes about himself and that kind of
thing.
He comes across as charming.
And the thing about this year is that, unfortunately, the thing comes down to at
the moment,
not about what you're going to do or what your policies are.
It really is about a popularity contest.
You know what I mean?
And unfortunately, that's what politics is at the moment, a popularity contest.
And I think Harris tried to do something.
And Fox News offered him a debate at the end of the month.
He's probably going to say no to that, even though it's Fox News, which should be
on his side.
Because he sees basically, why do I bother if I'm going to win?
Why do I put an obstacle that might not win?
And so, yeah,
it's a very it looks like very strongly like he's got a chance.
And here's the weirder thing.
If we assume that the polls
are the same as they were in 2020 and 2016 in terms of how uh undone as they are
against trump
in terms of the the voting he's not just gonna win he's gonna win a landslide we
say the polls are even only because the polls come across as
even but remember in 2016 when he won the polls were like
99 against him one percent for him i think the best one was saying two to one against
him this time he's 50 50.
okay and if you look at even with biden uh the polls did overestimated Biden's
support by like 4-5%.
You know what I mean?
He needs 1% against Harris to basically, you know, make it up.
So they have not adjusted the polls, by the way.
The polling is still the same as it was there because the polling assumes that the
margin of error means that sometimes it's going to go in one direction,
sometimes in another.
If it's twice in one direction, it's just a bit of luck.
So the chance of him winning and winning significantly is, I think, if I had to
bet, I'd bet on him.
I think Polly Markle is probably right.
You're wearing me and depressing me both at the same time.
But you're absolutely right, Viv.
I'm terrified of what's going on now.
And I do think he's...
It's not good for South Africa. It's not good for the world.
No, I know.
For the world, but I mean for Africa as well.
You know, he has no time for it.
Nothing.
No, he calls them, I'm not going to say the word, but he calls the whole of Africa
S-hole countries.
I mean, there's going to be nothing.
If there's any money going into Africa, or South Africa or any favourable trade
deals.
He's just going to get his great big fist out and just draw a big cross across those
agreements,
and it won't be good for them.
After what Woodward came up with in his book about the Putin calls and everything
else, that's very, very dangerous.
I don't know, people say, no, of course they should chat.
I mean, it's diplomacy.
No, it's nothing to do with diplomacy.
It's to do with Trump saying, I'll do this because you know...
that I was in a hotel room in Moscow with three hookers.
And I've got pictures of it.
That's what it is.
It really is.
Gentlemen, the markets now, before we get on to more stuff.
Dollar round is 17.54.
British pound against the round is 22.88.
And the euro round is 19.15.
Euro dollar 109.20 after the data today.
So nothing much going on there.
British pound 130.50.
Looks like there will be a first black woman leader of the Conservative Party.
And I must say, she's very good.
She's very spicy.
She says what she means, even if it offends people.
It doesn't offend me.
The gold price, 2625, up $19 an ounce.
Platinum 976, up 28.
And palladium, up 29 to 1066.
The other commodities, that's interesting.
The oil price has been very interesting.
It's up strongly today again.
It's all over the place.
depending on which country is being bombed and by whom.
$78.19 for Brent, up 2.1%.
And West Texas, $74.79, also 2.1% higher.
What else have we got?
Copper up 0.7%.
Yeah, coal down 2.5%.
Steel up, no, actually doing nothing.
But anyway, commodities after the China story don't really know what to do.
The S&P 500, record highs yesterday, record closing highs.
Slightly down today, 0.2% weaker.
The December futures, 5,828.
US 10-year treasury, 4.10%.
The South African 10-year bond is 9.32%. And Bitcoin,
what is that thing doing?
60,700, let's call it.
Down nearly 2%. So, yeah, not much going on there.
David, any South African corporate news we should...
Hi.
I've been so out of it.
I really and I haven't even got a computer here in Boston.
I'm operating off an iPad.
So I'm a little out of touch with what's happened over the last year.
No, there hasn't been any.
I haven't seen much.
No, there's not news.
Viv can come in on this one.
Yeah, I'll talk in a second.
Also, I don't want us to forget to mention there's a big Tesla event tonight.
I don't know if you've heard about that.
No, go on.
What's he doing this time?
Dancing?
Jumping in the air?
What?
what's that uh it's called we robot uh this is when he's going to unveil the
robotaxi remember it's always been tesla
yeah and the driverless vehicle yes uh and if you i don't know if david has seen any
in the in the us at the moment but way more is operating these
vehicles right now you can actually get the driverless vehicle taxi in in the us
from waymo uh and
he's basically likely that's the prediction to announce his version of the
driverless taxi uh today uh it's called we
robot There's also the possibility it might be the Optimus Prime, something
happening there, but it's most likely to be the Robotaxi.
There's been apparently videos of this thing going around, et cetera.
And so, yeah, big AI news.
In terms of the market, really weird kind of like thing.
I mean, the platinum stocks are looking great.
We're looking at Sibania, one of the smallest being.
Down 8.3%.
That's not an ex-dividend story.
That's a real price, is it?
The Sibania weakness today, Viv?
I don't check it out.
I don't think it is yet.
I think it is actually.
Let's check the statistic correctly.
17,61.
What was the high on that?
It was in the 40s or 50s, wasn't it?
David, you would know this.
You haven't got a computer, but Sibelius is a...
It was 7,500 at one stage.
75 round a share and is now below 18.
What an extraordinary story.
The destruction of wealth in that one.
Because it was the darling at one stage, obviously.
Sorry, Viv, we interrupted you.
No, no, basically, yeah, it happened basically in the middle of the day.
They lost the court case, and that's kind of hurt them.
It's about 1.2 billion.
They may be liable for damages.
That's what's hurting them there.
At the same time, we also see, from the positive stocks, a lot of gold producers.
uh you know harmony is up angular gold is up drd is up uh you know it's also it's a
bit of a bifurcated
market uh in terms of other stocks out there chasel is one of the beginnings of
the day as well and you can make sense of that
because of the quality of you know all the way higher and in the fall is strange
enough the process was
down uh you know you know we're going to talk
about uh china but uh you would think that when they introduced this what's it five
trillion uh 500
billion dollar a stabilization fund, the market would expect to be pretty stable.
But unfortunately, I think that the issues in China are pretty negative, I think.
Well, they had the Golden Week, which is their week off, and they were also
celebrating the
75th anniversary of the foundation of the People's Republic of China in 1937.
And everyone was very optimistic, and the share prices went through the roof.
And yet in the last two days, they've had the worst period for, I think, 27 years or
something for China equities,
the biggest falls.
And it's strange, and it doesn't engender much...
confidence in China.
David, I don't know if you're a China investor or if you've had more
opportunities.
It is unpredictable.
It's unpredictable.
You can't call it.
And I know that they were disappointed and waiting for further stimulus, which is
absolutely needed.
And now the whole story is waiting for the end of all those celebrations and various
talks on fiscal policy to see
if anything else does come.
But it's very difficult to read.
You know, it's still a massive economy, still contributes hugely to world growth,
you know, as does India.
But to invest there is becoming more and more difficult.
And Viv was talking about process and NASPERS.
Yes, they recovered on the 10 cent recovery that we have seen.
But, you know, that's also got to be sustainable.
And it's always a worry, Lindsay, with recovery stocks, even the SA market.
You know, we come from a very low point and we...
I don't want to say a knee-jerk reaction.
Everyone gets excited.
But you need sustainability.
You need follow-through for those markets to continue.
And it's very difficult to see it against the backdrop that you said of
stagflation.
I don't believe in stagflation, but I think the economy takes certainly the
American economy is more
service-orientated than investment-orientated.
So just got to be very careful about that.
how you play it just with caution not not with great excitement it will go up with
the rest of the world as growth returns but it's
not uh you know and i'm talking mainly china and south africa as well which is
commodity driven just just be careful
think it through okay we'll do so let's have a look at the stocks i mean viv has
very well described
the ups and the downs on the jsc today but i'll just reiterate what he said harmony
top of the list up four and a third percent angler goldish
shanty up 4.1 percent drd gold up 3.6 Sassel a 3.4% winner.
On the downside, Sibani Stillwater.
Gosh, how the mighty have fallen.
8.3% weaker, R17.61 per share.
Bytes down 8%.
Mondi down 3.7% after a really good day yesterday after they bought something
somewhere in Europe.
And I'm sorry for being so vague, but anyway, they did.
And people are saying, well, hello, what's that all about?
3.3% down for PHP prop and Northam's down nearly...
Two percent.
David, can you give us the closing indices before we come to our closing?
Oh, you can't, can you?
I wish I all I know is that I can give you the foot.
Sorry, the top 40 index was down.
I can give you these.
Don't you worry, David.
You get your closing thoughts together on what you think is going to happen in the
next couple of weeks.
But I've got the top 40 flat at seventy seven thousand three hundred and sixty
eight.
Industrials down point six percent.
Financials are flat.
It's a boring day, let's put it that way.
The all-share itself, 85,393 on the day,
which again is essentially flat.
So yeah, not much going on on the JSE, which is unusual after the US inflation
data.
Viv, any AI news?
Didn't I say something about ChatGPT and its market valuation of 150 billion or
something?
Viv, I tend to turn off, and the reason I turn off...
as an aside is because after 150 years of having linesmen at the wimbledon tennis
championships they've been scrapped because of ai and technology so you've got
lots of um unemployed lines people
walking around london at the moment uh looking
for a job i mean come on viv that's not right but i mean if you look at the latest
version they give it out right this
preview version and there's a guy called i don't know if you know terence town He is
considered to be the greatest mathematician in the world, right?
He's got a Nobel Prize or something.
A Fields Medal.
Fields Medal.
You don't get a Max Prize from the Nobel.
But he basically came out and said he's looked at and he's played with the GPT
thing.
This is the case where, you know, it can do things that, unfortunately, I don't
have the intellect to judge whether or not it's smarter or not.
You know what I mean?
It's smarter in such a level that I can't judge it.
But the mathematical jump up that it's done has put it in the level, he says, as
a...
is mediocre to like good graduate students in mathematics right it helps okay this is
terence tau
do uh problem solving now if something can help this town Trust me, it's a, you
could, we,
I don't know about you guys, but I could barely like, you know, hold the pen that
he's writing with, you know what I mean?
That's how smart he is.
He has like a two-stuff.
The stuff he could do at seven, I can't do that.
But he's basically saying that this is a step up in a way.
And so, yeah, the GPD stuff is one.
But the interesting thing about this, and this is also, I don't know if you guys
know, that Sam Altman, right, who somebody said once,
if you do an island of cannibals, you come back at five, yes, you do the pig.
he is the sole remaining executive at openai right he's got open the eye from
being a pro non-profit
company to a for-profit company like lindsay mentioned worth 150 billion
dollars yeah he's been awarded 10 billion of those dollars by the way as a
stock thing and
here's the here's the thing this guy basically has managed to do this all while
claiming that he's working uh
for the love of this thing he he he really does come across i mean
as somebody that's an absolute psychopathic business person.
He looks to be somebody that says what he needs to say, does what he needs to do,
and yet at the end of the day comes out with the most money,
the most power.
He fired the bomb that's supposed to be able to fire him.
He changed everybody else that said no to him or was even a threat to his power is
gone from the company.
And he's trying to raise money right now, okay?
And this is where the $150 billion valuation comes from.
And one of the rules for...
investing in his company is that you can't invest in the company formed by his former
basically people that work there like at Tropic
or the guy that used to be his chief scientist, Leah.
So he's not only basically trying to make sure that he's throwing his company, he's
trying to cut off funding for all the other AI companies out there at the same
time.
A real tough business man this guy is.
David, Viv said that he wouldn't be able to hold the pen of the mathematician that
he was talking about.
I think after hearing what he's just said, that maybe he could.
The thing that bugs me is that mathematician, these geniuses of which we
speak, are they all happy?
David, you're happy walking around Central Park every day, aren't you?
Yeah, yeah.
Exactly.
I'm not after making that kind of money.
I'm quite happy just looking at the flowers.
But, you know, credit to Sam Altman, I mean, and the release of Open, of ChatGPT
at the right time, November 22,
which really changed everything.
brought it to our attention.
I think you've got a lot of those kind of people hovering around in the cutthroat
U.S. market.
That's what makes America.
It's not for sissies.
And this place, if you don't perform, you're out the next day.
You're not even given 24 hours.
You're given an hour.
They cut down your computer, give you a pink slip, and that's it, and an agreement
to sign.
And that's America.
That's the kind of competition you've, you know, Lindsay, just on that,
just being with family here and being around people who came from South Africa,
mainly ex-South Africans, a lot of, you know,
other people as well.
But what interests me and what is so fascinating is the culture of
choosing your college.
You know, you, the kids are in now, my granddaughter now is in, she's a senior.
She's now full into choosing where she's going to go as a college.
And this is an industry.
You know, choosing a college is an industry.
It's not, you know, you haven't got, oh, I'm going to go to UJA or I'm going to
Cape Town, Stellenbosch or Wits, whatever.
This is, you know, you've got country.
You've got many, many choices.
And all of them are good colleges and all, in a way, businesses.
So, but where I come to is that...
It breeds, you know, you breed this intellect that is so competitive.
You know, it's not just open for you to, oh yeah, my dad's, you know, he runs a
grocer down the road that gives me security.
This is far from it.
It is a very, very competitive country.
And you have to start from the time, Viv, you send your kids to nurseries.
That's what I was going to say to Viv.
I was going to say, in 16, 17 years'time, 18 years'time, Aviv,
when your youngster is not so young anymore, where is that child going to go?
Are you going to say, well, it's South Africa?
Are you going to send her overseas or something to go to Yale or Harvard or
wherever it is,
Wharton Business School?
I mean, it's an interesting decision, isn't it?
Yeah.
The scary thing for me is that I'm so into the AI stuff.
I look at the technology developing, and I don't know what job, what I can trade her
for.
My brother had this vision.
So his daughter, right, so not to like, you know, like, but he wanted her to be an
artist.
He saw AI company, he's an engineer, he thought this thing was going to happen.
So his daughter plays like the flute, she paints, she sculpts, he does a whole bunch
of stuff.
And then you see the first thing that this thing does is it plays music, it draws, it
does video.
You know what I mean?
The first thing it takes down is art.
you know what i mean and then you say okay maybe be a programmer and other
programmers are losing their jobs i don't know what i can show
a career she could have in 20 years time that this thing you know where i'm getting
at as well
lindsay and it's so important from being south africa yeah
is that you realize that you know the world is getting smarter certainly the us
is getting smarter
and i'm not sure we can keep up with it you know each year that goes by
We actually slip a little behind and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with our
varsities or anything wrong with our schools because there's some
really excellent private schools as well, but as a population,
even as a continent, we just slip further and further behind.
And Lizzie, thank goodness I'm old because I wouldn't know how I could survive in
this kind of environment.
You'd survive, don't worry.
It's so different from the way we were brought up.
When I meet all the kids, which are almost grandkids to me at that age, they're at
Yale, they're at Brown,
they're at a math school.
I don't know if you've heard of this one, Colby.
No.
I don't know.
Which is math.
I'm talking to Viv as well, who might know the best math schools in the US.
But math school, I mean math colleges.
But this is tough.
You know, when I say the kids.
Have it tough, and if you're going to survive and do well, which you can, you
must see my grandkids come home,
9 o'clock, half past nine.
They do all the extra murals.
Lindsay, the other point.
Sorry, I know we're going on because I won't speak to you next week.
No, this is interesting.
What are you doing next week?
What's wrong with next week?
No, I'll be flying home.
Oh, I see.
But what I wanted to say is my grandson, I went to watch him play.
You've got to call it soccer.
You can't call it football.
Otherwise, you're talking about that other game.
But, you know, he's in the, he plays for his school.
He's still a junior, which means he's like, you know, next year, senior.
He's a pretty good player.
I watch them.
They train, they train virtually every day.
You know, this is not, when I was at Wits playing high level soccer,
we might've trained at one hour twice a week or something like this.
These kids train every day.
That is unhealthy, David.
I'm sorry.
And again, I'm digressing now to both of you.
I watched an episode of Boston Legal, which is one of my favourite legal
programmes, old things with James Spader and William Shatner,
and what's that beautiful woman's name?
I can't remember anyway.
But anyway, there was a court case, and the woman was suing the school because her
child, who committed suicide, no,
she fell asleep at the wheel and crashed her car and died.
And she sued the school because there was so much pressure to do well.
And she felt that she had to stay and do three or four hours after normal school
hours,
and she was so exhausted that that's what it did.
I don't know if it's healthy, David, and Viv will come on this in a second.
Yeah, I'll let you point something out, right?
If you look at people that work the hardest, South Korea, most hours in
school, hard-working people and so on,
Japan did the same thing.
It gets you far.
It gets you to almost a first-world country level.
but the u.s has something different the u.s is so much richer than south korea
it's like twice as wealthy as south korea twice as wealthy as japan per
person right uh and the reason is not because they are the hardest working it's
not because they are the the the grinders
it's because they have the spark the inspiration you know what i mean yeah and
i think and i think also if you look at some africans going to the us and david
mentioned our
schools may be falling behind actually some african immigrants are some of the
wealthiest immigrants in the u.s the
top two or three i think a lot is immigrants in the u.s South Africans.
I don't just because we're in a mosque.
I could see it, yeah.
Yeah, I heard doctors.
Yeah, carry on, sorry.
The reason is, I think, is that freedom.
And we were just, as you spilt it up, discussing this at work, and talking about
the Norwegians and the Dades, who at one time were Vikings.
Sorry, not to be offensive, yeah.
Norwegians and Dades are like...
In place for Man City, yeah.
The opposite of what the leader of a Viking is nowadays, isn't it?
a norwegian person is the opposite of the marauding pirate you would imagine same
with the day right
right and i think that yes obviously they're probably nicer people for being
that but there is a spark that's lost when you you just basically
work it out and grind it out there is something to be said
for the daydreamers and the you know the crazy people in the world yeah gosh what a
lot to think about david you want you want to end this um this uh Very illuminating
discussion with you.
Your final thoughts, please.
No, I'm saying for, you know, in the Boston community here, as I said, which
are mainly made up of, you know,
that my daughter hangs out with many expats.
All of them have done incredibly well.
All their kids are at good schools.
And you can see the opportunity that they've been given, which is I doubt would
have been given in South Africa.
You know, you can become, they can become ministers of finances or secretary of the
treasuries or, you know,
go in rounds in politics and so on.
And I think that's, you know, vivid.
You bring up a very important point.
It is the freedom here to do what you want to do and the pressure as well.
You know, you do have peer pressure, but still successful and rich.
When I say rich, Boston, you know, when you go around New York, you go around
Boston.
I'm not talking about ex-South Africans.
I mean, the level of wealth here is something that we can't quite comprehend.
It's just beyond us.
Okay.
On that note, we will leave it.
Gentlemen, thank you very much, as always, for such a fascinating chat on all sorts
of different matters.
That was the Five O'Clock Shadow.
Viv Govender is from Ranswiss in Johannesburg.
David Shapiro speaking to us from Boston.
He's from SAS for Insecurities.
And as I said, that's the Five O'Clock Shadow.
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