You're listening to Strictly Business Podcast with Lindsay Williams.
The JSC has closed its doors for another day, so it's time for the five o'clock
shadow.
And as always, on a Thursday, I've got the double-headed Dream Team edition of Viv
Govender from Ransuisse and
David Shapiro from Sasson Securities in Johannesburg.
Gentlemen,
I won't say that I'm not still sort of slightly under the weather mentally after
what
happened yesterday.
And but well done on both to both of you for predicting it.
But I don't think either of you could have predicted the margin of victory for Donald
J.
Trump.
Viv, it was quite startling, wasn't it?
Yes.
And it was it was startling for one major reason.
And that was the media did not do their job.
If you think about it, I mean, we were getting things from what was called the
gold standard of pollsters.
So that Harris is going to win, I think, in Ohio.
Right.
And she ended up losing by.
The margin of error was like 17%.
You know what I mean?
And this was, if you look back, like a story that was being published on like the
New York Times, as you know, the pollsters say there's a massive run-up before the
election.
The media did not do their job.
It should not have been a surprise how well Trump did if the media had done their
job.
And that's the only thing that I'm really concerned about.
It's the fact that we have somehow entered a period where due to partisanship,
we don't know what the objective truth of the world is.
And that is the really bad thing that we're experiencing at the moment.
Do you think then the media was trying to influence people by putting out these
rejections of a tight race, Viv?
And then, David, I'll come to you in a second.
I mean, obviously they did, because you look at the Republican guys, they were
always saying Trump was going to win by a ton.
Look at the Democrats, guys, often by too much, more than he ended up winning by.
And you look at the Democrats, they were saying, I mean, you put the New York Times
and CNN and those guys in the Democrats.
They will say, look, Kamala Harris is doing much better than...
that it's a very clear thing you're hardly there's no uh independent you know like
you know institution like the bbc in the
u.s um you know even though the bbc might be accused of being more left-wing than
right-wing in the uk that is considered to be
an objective source of truth right now in the u.s you could not find a single big
newspaper that's an objective source
of truth that i don't even read the uh jeff
bezos uh you know op-ed but why he didn't endorse kamala harris and it comes down to
the fact that
the US news media is now less trusted than the US Congress.
And we're talking about like, you know, like, there's low teens of trust in the
news media.
It's because depending on the newspaper you read, you get a little bit entirely
different world.
And yes, they get some things right.
But when it comes down to it and it's contentious, they're going to default to a
partisan kind of outlook, which is, you know,
they must be a market for an independent media source in the world.
I don't know why it doesn't exist at the moment.
Well, it's almost like a ratings agency style media outlet,
which just disseminates all the information and doesn't have any, there's
no partisan leaning.
David, you're obviously disappointed.
I've never asked Viv what his leanings were, but I know yours.
You know what really annoys me is that having looked at it, and I should have
seen it before, but I was too blinded by the fact that I wanted
Harris to win.
Campaign was so weak and her campaign team missed so many.
own goals, especially on the economy.
I could have written her script for the economy and how she should have approached
it.
They were so flimsy compared to the Trump thing, which was when he got on stage,
he'll do his normal thing, then he'll say, are you better off now than you were four
years ago?
That resonates with people, no matter whether they're simple or sophisticated.
I think the one thing that we missed was just how
important inflation was on the wallets of most people,
even if they were wealthier than they were a few years ago.
No one picked up what this meant.
And also,
no one picked up how the population were sick and tired of the status
quo, you know, nothing happening.
And that goes back to the whole Biden presidency.
And I think she couldn't distance herself.
In other words, she never had enough time to actually distance herself from Biden
and what he stood for.
But I think, you know, going back to your point and to Viv's point,
is that the media missed the feelings
of the population, the mood of the population.
And that's, you know, that's coming out now.
I mean, the fact that.
She didn't win the women's vote,
despite the fact that she had this abortion on her side or the anti-abortion,
attacking anti-abortion.
She didn't win that.
She lost the Latino vote.
She lost the African-American vote, you know, in droves.
And the traditional base of the Democrats also left her.
And the other one was, you know, normally the Republicans would win the rural areas
or the outlying.
No, they won, you know, in the cities.
There was even in New York and in California and places like that.
So she was abandoned.
I mean, let me put it another way.
The Democratic Party was abandoned.
People just left it in droves.
And as we go now and look at it, we say we were so far away from it.
And I think the journalists were angry.
They were bitter.
I like this Atlanta.
I read the Atlanta, sorry, Atlantic.
Yes.
And even now they're coming, you know, the man elected president last night is a
depraved and brazen,
pathological liar.
a shameless con man, a sociopath criminal.
You know, they carry on like that.
I'm saying, listen, you've lost.
Take a few steps back.
Get rid of your anger and understand where you are and what needs to be done to
change it if you don't want this man.
So, you know, when I saw the results, I could not believe it.
You know, I'm still kind of trying to grasp it and hook on to it.
His tired old arguments about him being this and that, I mean, are exactly that.
He keeps on going on and on, and people, it just brushes, washes over people now.
It doesn't matter what he said.
I mean, J.D.
Vance said, he said that Harris was trash.
How can you say that?
How can you say that as someone that's going to be in the White House?
This is a woman who's worked her way up from a normal upbringing to being a
prosecutor in San Francisco, and then...
Vice President, why would he say that she is trash?
But people are used to that now.
So it doesn't matter.
So the Atlantic can say whatever it likes.
And people can say what they like as well.
The fact is that there was a landslide.
What really gets me is the smugness of Trump and that freaky family of his.
No, I'm not being nasty.
I'm getting as bad as Vance now.
But it is very strange that that picture that I sent you both earlier today, it's a
family photograph.
But Elon Musk is in there holding a child and no Melania Trump in there.
I mean, Viv, you thought that the woman standing,
the tall blonde woman standing to the left of Elon Musk was Melania Trump.
But no, Melania Trump, I think, has said to her husband, listen, I'm supposed to do
so many minutes a day,
whatever, over a month.
And that's why I signed the agreement to stop me from talking about our marriage.
And this photograph does not fall within those minutes.
I don't know.
But, Viv, didn't you find it sort of cult-like, that picture?
Yeah, look, I mean,
the thing is that it's definitely a victory of
personality.
The reason I would say that is because if you look at it, Trump won all the swing
states, right?
Yeah.
But I think he only managed to flip a single Senate seat in those swing states.
That means that the people that were also running as Republicans in those swing
states, like Nevada, he won by a lot.
But I think all the congressional seats and currently the Senate seat, it's quite
close, but it looks like the Senate seat as well is going to go Democrat.
Okay.
So it wasn't a case of Trump took on the Republican Party, going to rule the
Republican Party, and people are voting for Trump because he's the Republican
candidate,
if you know what I mean.
Yeah.
People have voted Republican because Trump is the candidate.
You can ask the difference here.
So it is a case of, it's not a Republican victory, it's a Trump victory.
Because he's basically overshadowed the Republican Party to such an extent that,
yes, like in, for instance, Texas,
he won by more than Ted Cruz won by.
Right?
Even though they are both Republicans or whatever.
People were splitting the vote.
I think in North Carolina, people voted for the Democratic governor and voted for
Trump as the...
presidential candidate.
So this is a case, this is a cult of personality.
I don't think, luckily,
that any of his children have the same personality or abilities to run this or do
something like this, except for his daughter, Ivanka Trump, Ivana Trump.
I'm not sure the name is one of the two.
Anyway, I think the daughter might have the ability.
The sons don't seem to have that.
I don't know what the youngest son is.
I'm not going to talk about him because he's a teenager, so it's not obviously
right.
Baron, the really tall one with the Donald mouth.
Yeah, he's got the same mouth.
He's got the mother's look that's fine, yeah.
He's a child.
You can't talk about children.
So, I mean, even though I think he's 18 or something, you can't talk about that.
I think Ivanka, I think it's Ivanka.
Ivanka, yes.
Basically, yeah.
Because the mother's name is Ivana, so it's very confusing.
Anyway, I think she's the only one that seems to have the ability to speak
English.
But she kind of diversed that through her husband, Jared Kushner, who's the one that
took a big step there.
But I want to talk about a couple of things here.
And I don't know if you guys realize this, right?
If you look at JD Vance and who he is, okay, and it's a bit conspiratorial, just
follow me for a second,
but this is something that I talked about before, and I think I mentioned it to you
guys as well.
Okay, given Trump's age and his weight, I saw somebody put a study out there that
the chance of somebody like that, if you had to do like an actuarial thing,
of surviving four years is something like 60-30%.
So there's about a one-third chance something happens to him in the next four
years, given his age and given his BMI.
You understand?
So that means J.D.
Vance has about one in three chance of being the president of the United States
in the next four years.
Well, this is what I saw today.
Sorry to interrupt you.
It said that the one person who clearly dislikes the Republican Party under the
stewardship of
Trump.
He said the only thing that I only reason I really want Trump to live.
And this is not me saying this is what I read.
The only reason I want Trump to live for the next four years is so that J.D.
Vance does not come.
into power because he is far more dangerous than Trump is.
Is that the sort of sentiment you're trying to get across?
Yeah, but it's also important, right?
Because, I mean, Fiddle Teal is the man that created Jerry Vance.
And I say that objectively.
Fiddle Teal is the guy that basically invented Vance when he was in Silicon
Valley, kind of gave him his career,
and then basically gave him his Senate seat.
Because he basically was a guy called, he sponsored two people, Blake Masters and
Jerry Vance, to get in.
to the Senate, and Vance was the one that got through and Blake Marston didn't.
So J.D. Vance holds his entire career, including his political career, to Peter
Thiel.
I don't know if you've seen Palantir share price.
I've seen that thing go up like a rocket ship.
It's Peter Thiel.
Yeah, okay, it's Peter Thiel.
And if something happens to Trump, Peter Thiel is going to basically have control
a very strong link with Vance.
And Keterfield's Palantir does a lot of business with government.
It's one of those, it's almost like a secret CIA kind of company.
Okay.
And especially if you look at what's happening right now with, you know,
Trump's talking about the intelligence system.
He's going to replace the CIA and the FBI basically with like Palantir.
Palantir, yeah.
Exactly.
Okay.
So Keterfield, if you think, okay, this is a territorial.
Let me give you an example as to Keterfield, right?
No.
think of 401k it's a it's an investment thing that you use to invest in the us
right what do you think the limits of
the 401k are it's about twenty thousand dollars okay it used to be uh you know to
this um so it's
irish sorry it's a thousand dollars okay it's this it's this it's this uh small
little kind of uh investment
uh thing you put in uh for you know investing uh money field just long term
yeah okay so you put it put your six thousand
dollars in each time right What do you think Philip Thiel's IRA is worth?
Go on. $6,000 limit.
Oh, yeah, you can put it.
What do you think this thing is worth?
Gosh, Viv, you're the stats man.
You must tell us.
No, no, take a wild guess.
If I give you an investment platform, I give you an investment platform, and
you're the world's best investor, and I say to you,
put $6,000 a year away, and after a couple of decades, what would be the value of
this investment that you put away?
That's a monstrous amount of money.
David, you've got to help me here.
I can't compound fast enough.
How many years?
If I can give you $6,000, right? $72,000 a year, okay.
No, no, $6,000 a year. $6,000 a year and a decade is $60,000.
It's nothing.
So even compounded, it's maybe three, four, five times up.
More $5 billion.
What?
Five billion dollars.
These are real numbers, Viv.
These are real numbers.
Peter Thiel's Roth IRA is worth plus five million dollars.
Back in 2019, it's probably almost double that right now.
Okay.
This man plans in advance.
He basically took the shares and the companies he had basically invested in,
all these kind of like, you know, unlisted companies, and you're buying them at
really cheap prices.
And he's putting his, I don't know if it's Facebook, but he's putting all these
investments into this thing.
And he has a Roth IRA, which in a couple of years time, he's going to retire and
get it tax free.
Because that's how the Roth IRA works.
It's a fixed means of income.
Yeah, the 401k.
What's it?
401.
Yeah.
The Roth IRA.
Okay.
Five billion dollars, right?
This is what this man did.
He once was insulted by a newspaper who published the fact that he was gay.
Okay.
This is a, it's a true thing, right?
And what happened was he decided to take revenge.
He concocted this huge multi-year revenge plot, but it involved Hulk Hogan, the
wrestler, I'm not joking,
okay?
And he bankrupted Gawker. He bankrupted the company, and
I think he basically drove the man that was the journalist you hated to attempt
suicide or something.
It is really like, this guy plans long term.
So what I say to you, that he put in JD Vance as a guy that said it a few years
ago.
Two, three years of planning is nothing to this man.
That explains a lot about J.D.'s stance towards life and to politics and how he's
switched.
I mean, the switch from saying Trump is America's Hitler to being his little
laptop.
I mean, it's extraordinary.
And that's what's so disturbing, that if he does get into power, what is he capable
of?
If he's capable of doing the switch, doing a full 180 on Trump, what can he do if
he's in power?
This is very, very disturbing.
He's younger.
It's significantly smarter.
J.D.
Vance is significantly smarter.
I think you'd have to go back to Obama and Clinton to see comparable people with
brain power in there.
He may even be above that in terms of his raw ability.
If you look at him on the interview shows he did, he was handling hostile interviews
so easily.
He's really clever.
But like I said,
this is a editorial, I know, but...
Peter Thiel, and what he did with Jenny Vance, looking at his history, this is a
man that was like a chess champion.
He was really fast.
And, by the way, he's a Christian.
Is Thiel, I mean,
is he that power mad that he wants to control these people through them?
You know, is his aim to, you know, to control the American economy?
I'm trying to go further.
Why would one do this?
I mean, he's an enormously wealthy man in his own right.
He's behind very, very successful Silicon Valley companies.
You know, what's the driving force of Peter Thiel?
You know, why would he want to be in that kind of position?
I don't know.
Look, I mean, Peter Thiel is one of the weirder guys.
By the way, he's South African as well, right?
Oh, with the name Thiel, of course, yes.
t-h-i-e-l i think isn't it yes and so he he's born in germany but he's lived in his
family lived in south africa although also i mean
like no no this is weird if you look at the paypal mafia and kill was part of the
paypal mafia okay again
goes tutorial i'm going to admit that but
what happened was as a party was ending a lot of people sent their money overseas
you know with their young kids and these young kids
go to the us and what are they They're young people, they're outside the culture,
and they have this money that was given to them by their family.
Where do they congregate to?
Silicon Valley, because that's the opportunity.
That's like the crypto of the past, except Israel.
And a lot of the money that you see floating around Silicon Valley was
effectively apartheid exile money.
And so Peter Thiel, David Sachs, is also South African,
Big Shot, Zooling podcast, also a billionaire.
Elon Musk, Rothwater.
Yeah.
Well, Musk, and they also had the PayPal connection, right?
They're all PayPal guys, yeah.
So yeah, these guys all came from here.
And I don't know whether or not it's just a megalomania.
Interesting.
I'm looking up now.
Yeah.
He was also in Namibia.
Yeah, he lived in South Africa and Namibia.
South Africa.
And changed elementary school seven times.
He attended a school in Swakopmund.
that required students to wear uniforms and utilized corporal punishment such as
striking students hands with the ruler
okay i had that as well but i didn't become a multi-brilliant he said this
experience instilled a
distaste for uniformity and regimentation and later reflected in his support
individualism okay
this is fascinating he can't be because he was born in germany yeah yeah and you can
mask by the
way but i mean if you're looking at you know again why are they doing this and
this is
again conspiratorial okay but
please follow me okay i'm going really far out you're going head down on this one viv
okay
what is the one thing that either teal and the inner mask that everybody else seems
to believe in silicon valley at the moment it's ai yeah but
we are entering maybe the next five to ten years where ai is going to disrupt
everything okay
And if you basically, or in the case of Elon Musk, it's space travel, or in the
case of Elon Musk, it is driverless vehicles.
Okay.
And if you basically are going to have, and Elon Musk is in his 50s,
he has maybe 10 to 15 years in his mind of productive life left.
If he is able to control or have strong influence about things like the EPA, about
the SEC,
about, you know, all these little regulatory bodies, which, by the way, I
don't think Trump cares about at all.
I don't think Trump would give a damn about whether or not you changed the water
regulations at SpaceX or not.
But that's a big deal to Elon Musk.
I don't think he'd care about whether or not, you know, where chips come from or
not.
But it matters to Peter Thiel.
I think these guys saw a point in history in which we are going to enter a period of
extra innovation, extra, you know,
uncertainty.
And that if you basically controlled not just the company, but also the levers of
government around it, you could come out of this particular event with,
you know, spectacular power and money.
And I think that is the reasoning that you're seeing the Silicon Valley guys
enter.
As Chukwulu said, this thing at the moment, there's a movement in Silicon
Valley called effective accelerationism that
wants to get technology moving as fast as possible.
Also, maybe it has to do with the fact that people are getting older and they're
thinking mortality comes around.
And before you say I'm going to work this tutorial, have you ever heard of a blood
boy?
No.
Why do you do it, Nats?
I know exactly what he does, but no.
Oh, OK.
I'm not joking about this, right?
This is not crazy good at theories, right?
You know, okay?
It ejects himself with the blood of young people a little longer.
You're kidding, no.
No, I'm not joking.
You're making me worried now.
Seriously.
Google it, okay?
So you see people like this, they're getting older,
they're getting to a point at which they are worrying about mortality and whatnot,
and they see a future in which they do medical science, whatever.
It could be that.
It could be just the fact they want money and power, but...
These guys have spotted a point in history in which technology is changing, the world
is changing,
and if you can get yourself a very strong influence in the US government, okay, at
this point in time,
you basically could control the most powerful technology in the world as it's
created.
And that, I think, is what is pushing these guys at the moment.
You see what I've done?
Let's just stop this now.
I really wish I hadn't mentioned J.D.
Vance.
I'm not joking.
Everything I've said, you can Google and look up.
It sounds crazy.
Okay.
Right.
Calm down, everybody.
You're beyond Trump.
That I can assure you.
No, no.
You're beyond Trump.
Trump is not the person driving this.
Trump would not have an understanding as to why.
They'll come to him and ask him to do things, and he will be concerned about
Israel-Gaza.
He'll be concerned about Ukraine.
He won't understand why this particular regulation about this particular kind of
nuclear power plant.
or the particular relation about, you know, chips and so on, matter.
But Musk and
Thiel and those guys will know that these small changes will give them a huge amount
of power.
And that is what is going to happen in the next couple of years.
And mark my words, Tesla, Palantir are going to benefit from the Trump presidency
like you would not believe.
Talking about benefiting from the Trump presidency, a gentleman last night read
about this time.
I looked at my screen and I saw Tesla was up 15.6%.
or something like that.
David, over to you on this one.
I know you're not a fan of Musk, nor am I, but everyone seems to think that the
reason Musk is in the family photo,
for goodness sake, holding a child, is that he's going to be given benefits
galore, whether it be SpaceX,
whether it be electric vehicles.
I don't know.
Yeah, exactly.
You know, what is he wanted for?
What's a driving force?
You know, why does he want it?
Does he require that much attention?
You know, what is it that he wants to do?
You know, why does he want to cozy up to Trump and be part of this inner circle to
run America?
I mean, you know, I can't understand it.
He's running a business.
He's got enough on his plate.
Make those cars better.
Sell them.
He's got SpaceX, et cetera.
Why involve yourself in politics?
That worries the hell out of me.
Because he's a deeply insecure person and needs constant affirmation.
It's very simple.
It's a classic mail-over compensation.
I suppose this is all part of it.
of this inner core that Trump's going to put together, which is, I think,
incredibly worrying about, you know,
the people that he's actually going to choose to run government and what their
motivation is.
They're playing him.
I've always, you know, and listening to Viv, and for not a second am I going to,
you know, contradict him or disagree with him.
But what concerns me is that where you have these characters in the background,
you know, for me,
government is government.
They're the people who must make sure that the infrastructure is there so that
businesses
can grow, or that if you come in and build a factory that there's going to be
electricity there,
water there, you're in the right area, labor, etc.
They're civil servants or those kind of people that are there who aren't ambitious
in terms
of, not capitalistically ambitious.
They don't want to make huge amounts of money.
They want to serve their country.
You know, you get them in the military, you get them in all over, people who
become mayors,
the people who become governors and so on.
But this sounds completely different.
I mean, this just sounds absolutely awful,
that you want to get into the inner core just so you can increase your power base.
Anyway, it's happened.
It's all settling down a little bit.
I mean, we'll see what unfolds over the next three months, six months, four years.
The good news, though, What's the good news?
It's really good.
The markets are just screaming higher.
And that's kind of given me some kind of relief.
I must say.
It's kind of eased the pain.
you know so from that point we have to talk about a little bit about the jsc
companies anglo gold ashanti came up with an update in the share price
touring world after the resources stocks getting absolutely slaughtered yesterday
there's been a bit of a bounce back today
but david trueworth's i don't know if you had a chance to see it they always come
out late with their updates and their results but i think the growth in revenue
of 2.8
percent you and you're really disappointed because if inflation is whatever it is
four percent
and your revenue is only up 2.8%, something's going wrong there.
Well, the economy is going wrong, which they point out.
They say despite all the optimism in the background about the government and
national unity,
it hasn't translated into anything materialistic,
material for them to build a business on.
So consumer demand is still very low.
In the UK, the same kind of thing is happening with their...
their investment, their office, you know, which sells shoes.
So I think it's just a reflection of, hey, nothing's happening.
You know, we're all partying and we all think things are going to be better,
but nothing's really there for us to get a grip of.
And I think that's going to come through as well in a lot of results.
You know, I don't think it's whatever's happened is translated into optimism is
there and
people feel better, but I don't think it's translated into.
money being spent on anything in any form in that you know we can talk about
electricity improving and so on but i
think read that that's why i'm saying to you lindsey always read results you know
you get a true reflection of what's happening on the ground
phil do you ever think when you talk about it so expansively and enthusiastically and
you keep on kept on saying that it could be
conspiratorial but obviously there's some truth to it do you ever think that when
you look at these characters the musks and the
teals and the Bezos's of this world.
Do you often say, do you know what, I'm going to focus completely on America and
forget about
South Africa apart from paying it some cursory interest for clients that want to
be in it.
Do you think that South Africa is being shunted aside and you have to focus on
where the
action is at, as they say?
I don't think South Africa will be shunted aside for a couple reasons.
Firstly, we remember the BRICS, right?
And I think we, again, this is on the left field, but look at us on the map.
Okay, if you are entering a period of global instability, you definitely want to
be friendly with the country at the bottom of Africa.
You can keep running.
Yeah, because you're basically able to cut off the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans, if
you think about it.
Now, let me tell you something, Viv.
There used to be, there was a movie, which was one of these horror movies.
probably in the 50s and 60s which i can't which was that there was a nuclear bomb
left and the fallout
started to come and the only safe place was down in cape town and everybody fled
down to the west you know down to the southern
cape so so
they've already made the movie of your views yeah i think that it breaks as well
as the future in south africa geographic
especially if something happens in the middle east that closes through at canal
if you're going to ship stuff from china to europe around the cape that's an
important thing i think south africa is important from that point
of view but i do think if you're looking at it internationally i think you are
probably this is my view a global a geopolitical
view from an amateur but i think we're going to see the russia uh situation shut
down very quickly okay uh because i think trump people are right about this is going
to give russia what it wants uh
for the tourist the uh The deal is going to be Russia gets what's left of the
Ukraine,
but Russia kind of stays neutral or moves away from China.
And I think that's the deal he's going to do there.
What about Zelensky?
You haven't mentioned the word Zelensky.
Do you honestly think that the Ukrainian people are going to say,
you illegally invaded our country and you've illegally occupied and taken these
particular territories,
you can have them and we'll go quietly?
I mean, it's an affront to their sovereignty.
I mean, unfortunately.
You know, a front doesn't match with weaponry.
And without the U.S.
weaponry, Europe, unfortunately, for, you know, maybe they're starting up right now,
but it's too late for them to do anything really effective against Russia.
So unless they're going to step up and do that, you know, it's going to be a case of
Trump coming in, saying, you know,
Russia, make a deal with Russia.
It may not even have to be the whole of Ukraine.
It could just be give back some of the territory you've taken.
But I think the main deal he's going to make is going to be around sanctions.
He's going to say, we'll put you back into the fractional system.
We'll put you back into the, you'll be able to sell your oil again.
The sanctions get reduced.
It may be a case that he has to give back parts of Ukraine to make it work,
to show that he's giving up part of the Ukraine, etc.
And the Ukraine doesn't become part of NATO.
I think that's all going to be to basically split China and Russia up.
And I think that is the geopolitical thing that's going to happen.
I do also think that the Russia-Iran connection is probably going to also be
cut as well as part of that deal.
because with Russia and Iran, they do a lot of stuff together.
The Iranian drones are being used in Russia to the Shahid drones in Russia.
I think that's also going to be cut off.
It's going to give Russia the deal.
Neutral on our side will get you back into the system,
but you have to cut off or basically be more cold towards China and towards Iran.
And I think that's a deal they might take.
Interesting if that happens, Viv, because apparently, according to the New York
Times, Elon Musk has been chatting quite frequently.
with our pal Vlad the Destroyer, Vladimir Putin, who's in Sochi at the moment at
some investment conference.
He said to, according to the New York Times, but again, it could be a lot of
fake news, he said,
don't give Taiwan Starlink, and this was during one of their typhoons, because
I don't want President Xi to be annoyed about it, and I've got this alliance with
him,
so if you could please refrain from initiating Starlink in Taiwan.
That's another very disturbing thing.
You've got Musk in the White House, potentially, or having a desk in the White
House, and him talking about Putin.
I don't understand it.
Musk will not have a desk.
He must not have an official position in the White House, because even the US has
things about conflicts of interest.
He'll be much more of an advisor.
So, because...
It was a figurative term, but I know what you mean.
Yes, yeah.
Okay.
So, he'll be much more on things.
There'll be a degree of separation here.
Because an important thing, people like the New York Times mentioned the fact that
he must want it to.
He could get a position in the White House and then sell his assets in Tesla and
SpaceX or whatever tax-free.
Because that's been a deal he's done in the past.
You know what?
Even after tax, even if he spent a billion a day, he's not going to run out of money.
You know, that's bad.
I mean, it's insane.
If you were concerned about money, you would not do what Elon Musk is doing.
Because, you know, it's...
you have to be broken as a person to get that rich.
That's my belief.
If you have a billion dollars, if you have a hundred billion dollars, and you're
working for a living, you're broken as a person.
You have to find something better to do.
But anyway, I think that is going to be a real shakeup in the next, say, six months
or so.
In Ukraine, Russia, I think that's also,
the Chinese are also very scared about this because the stimulus packages the
Chinese were doing were on the idea that, you know, that Trump wasn't going to win.
But if Trump wants to do it, those stimulus packages are going to be much,
much larger because they're going to have a huge backlash.
And here's the other thing.
Speaking of the UK, I saw a study that showed that if Trump's tariff packages
come into play,
the effect of the UK economy will be worse than Brexit.
So Keir Starmer is already, you know, I've just said messages across the country.
He was the first call, actually.
Yeah, exactly.
But he wasn't the handhold.
Anyway, yeah.
And you see BW share price.
OK.
on the day of the Trump announcement, he went down like, I think, you know, 5% or
something on the day.
And I think the European carmakers, European countries, because Trump is
coming with this kind of thing up front, big stick in hand,
are going to try to make extra carefully, you know, it is true, he's right about one
thing.
People think he's crazy and therefore they are afraid of him.
And they will be much more like, you know, meanable to whatever he says than a normal
person.
And the European countries are not going to be as...
as tough against him as you think they would be, considering they're like, you
know, analytical things, because of this tariffs that he's kind of wielding at his
hands.
On that VW note, Viv, they're closing down two factories, which is the first time in
the history.
I mean, I don't know how old VW is, but they're closing down two factories.
And it's a really, it's a very big deal in Germany.
I mean, Germany's in turmoil politically today because of the sacking of the
finance
minister and the coalition breaking up and maybe a snap election next month.
So as...
The latest it will be is March.
But Germany's in turmoil under Schultz.
And anyway, do you know what?
Viv, in particular, is on fire tonight and has exhorted me.
And I think David as well is going to have to go for a lie down at the end of this.
So let's have a look at some prices here.
Dollar Rand is $17.31.
That's a 1.4% move stronger for the Rand.
British pound against the rand 22.50.
Euro rand is 18.72.
Euro dollar is 108.15, which is a euro that has gained 0.6%
after yesterday's post-election currency movements.
British pound won nearly 1.30.
I'm going to call it 1.30.
Gold price, having had a horrible day yesterday, is just below 2,700,
which is up nearly $30 on the day.
Platinum has recovered by 1.25% to $9.98.
And palladium has barely changed at $10.37, the all-important oil price,
which hasn't really done much with Trump.
It's down two-thirds of a percent for Brent crude, $74.43.
And West Texas crude, $71.17, which is down 0.7 percent.
Natural gas down two and three quarters.
Copper having been down 4 percent yesterday, up 4 percent today.
And, yeah.
what else not much s&p 500 can you believe it you know during the financial crisis
2007 2008 the s p went to 666
666 it's now nearly six thousand five thousand nine hundred and eighty eight
for the december futures on the s p what an astonishing recovery it just shows you
just got to buy the dips constantly
on these things the us 10-year treasury bond yield It's recovered its sanity a
little bit,
but with the Trump expansionary talk, the bond yields rose yesterday.
Fear of inflation now 4.36 percent.
The South African 10 year bond yield 9.40 percent.
And Bitcoin also a Trump factor there.
I think this is record high, 75,700 and change.
Something like that.
It could be.
David, please give us the.
Oh, no, no.
Let me give you some.
Some shares on the JSC.
After all, this is a mainly South African podcast.
I have got on the upside, Sappy up 9%.
Look at that.
Implats bouncing back after yesterday's mauling.
5.8% higher.
Anglo-Golda Shanty after its numbers, 5.3% to the good.
And Tungela, 4.25% higher.
Trueworths, we spoke about that, 6.1% weaker.
TFG, another retail.
Equalums, yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, TFG down 3.5%, Mr Price following suit down 2.8%, Adcock Ingram down 2.6%,
and Vodacom down 2.1%.
David, any others that you picked up?
Well, a happy story.
They published their quarterly report.
So for the fourth quarter, there was a vast improvement, but they also published
the annual results, which were absolutely awful.
But the market responded to a turnaround in the fourth quarter, and that's why
they're up.
You know, this is notoriously difficult to read.
the paper industry.
It's from one quarter to the other.
I think the only thing that disturbs me in the results is that their debt is on
climbing once more.
It might be seasonal.
But anyway, it's a company I just watch out of interest, never invest in it.
But the other one is that, you know, you mentioned Mr.
Price, Fashini and Fuworth.
I think both of those came down on the back of what Fuworth showed, you know,
that things aren't really picking up.
Okay.
It's one day up, one day down for Platinum and the miners.
All over the place.
David, I'll stay with you because I want you to give us the closing JSC indices and
the value traded, please.
Value traded, again, just before we got on there,
the values traded were around about $12 billion.
But after the auction, it's up to $21 billion.
Just shows you all the balancing that takes place in that closing auction.
So $21 billion, NASPERS, First Rand, Anglo Gold Process, the big traders.
Just on the indices, all share up 0.78%.
That's a bit of a recovery, driven up by a big turnaround in the mining counters.
Resource index up over 3%, with gold and platinum shares leading the way up.
Banks, yeah, the rest of the market pretty flat.
Banks up almost 1%.
But then with the RAND improving, you had AB InBev, British American Tobacco,
NicePurse,
all of those companies coming under British... ...
pressure on translation and so your industrial index was down about a half a
percent mainly on the back of
those companies but overall a big improvement from the trouble we had
yesterday even some of the property stocks
doing pretty well you and david just talk for one minute i've quickly got to get a
book which i want to
read a couple of pages from uh for you so just stay there and
you'll hear my my chair screaming so yeah you have a quick chat now hold on
take me carry on seriously I'm going to read this because if this is for you hold
on go on
talk away bye Yeah.
David, when you mentioned Volkswagen, how old it was, I thought you were making a
joke about the Nazis.
Because they didn't start Volkswagen back in the day, did they?
Oh, no, they, yeah.
You know what happened?
I think the world moved far from that.
I mean, even if you look at Boss, you know, Boss in the old days.
Oh, you were Boss, yeah.
Yeah, maybe.
The uniforms, yeah.
But I think Volkswagen was literally started by the Nazis.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, it was the people's wagon.
You know, the people's car.
I know.
There were a lot of motor vehicles.
I think we've all had a Beetle, haven't we?
For a long period, I must tell you something.
After the war, the Jewish population, a lot of Jews would not drive Mercedes or
BMWs.
Some people to their dying day.
Yeah, yeah.
It was...
Yeah.
because of the association, they wouldn't touch German cars for a long time, you
know, well into the 70s and 80s even.
Okay.
Now, Viv, off to your Peter Thiel.
It wasn't a rant, but you were very enthusiastic about it, and David actually
prompted this by saying, what do you do at night, Viv?
You said that, David, didn't you?
I did say that.
Yes, you did say that.
Now, what I want you to do, Viv, I'm sure David will echo my sentiments, is take
your young child.
and read her a bit more.
Is it a boy or a girl?
I've forgotten.
My daughter.
Okay, your daughter.
Okay, I want you to read her a book.
I want you to get her a few books by Roger Hargreaves.
I've kept mine that I used to read my children.
Yeah, the Mr.
Men books and Little Miss books.
Little Miss Shy.
First page of Little Miss Shy says, Little Miss Shy just couldn't help it.
Being shy, that is.
She was terribly, desperately shy.
She was so shy it hurt.
which is what they call painfully shy.
If at any time at all, anyone at all said anything at all to her, she blushed like a
beetroot.
And she lived all alone in a little house, quite a long way away from where you live.
And so it goes on.
I want you to get a little bit more wholesome in the evenings, Viv.
And stop all this conspiracy stuff.
Read your daughter.
Oblix.
Oh, do you?
Oh, okay.
Just enjoy it.
Yeah, because he has the pictures, you know.
She likes the dog.
Dog gratics.
Yeah.
Okay, gentlemen, thank you very much.
It was a really good chat.
David Shapiro is from Sessom Securities in Johannesburg and Viv Govender from Rennes,
Swiss, in that same city.
And that was the 5 o'clock shadow.
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