If you enjoy Ghost Mail, then please give me a few minutes of your time to fill out this survey. It really helps in discussions with brand partners and those partners help keep Ghost Mail free to read. By filling it out, you're literally contributing to all the students who get to read this for free thanks to the existence of brand partners. You also get to feel like a good person this morning as an added bonus!

The latest article written by Nico Katzke of Satrix has been getting quite a bit of attention and with good reason. Once you've seen a chart of the power of compound interest, you'll understand how the likes of Berkshire Hathaway built an empire by being somewhat better than the index over a long period. This is required reading for literally anyone on a wealth creation journey.

I also highly recommend an article by Trive South Africa on four energy stocks, including fundamental and technical analysis, They covered Sasol, Chevron, Renergen and Brookfield Renewable Partners in this article.

Is Altvest misplaced, or misunderstood?

If you're active on local Twitter, you'll definitely be familiar with Altvest and the company's firebra nd chairman, Koshiek Karan.

Warren Wheatley has generally been a far less vocal figure at the company, despite being the CEO and having originally conceptualised the business. This seems to be changing, as Warren approached me for a fireside discussion on what the team at Altvest is really trying to achieve. I appreciated the opportunity, having had a few instances of butting of heads with the key protagonists of Altvest on Twitter.

Is Altvest misplaced or misunderstood? In this raw, unedited podcast, you will have far more information at your disposal to make an informed decision. Listen to it here>>>

An Afrikaans Turkish what? font>

A telenovela. It sounds like an exotic starter that includes mozzarella. Instead, it's the Spanish equivalent of a soap opera, generally with a faster-paced storyline. Soap operas, Spanish or otherwise, are a mainstay at eMedia Holdings. Alongside the 8127213th rerun of Anaconda, obviously.

I've been writing recently about the impact of load shedding on MultiChoice. I always find the commentary at eMedia to be a useful precursor to what might be going on at MultiChoice, with Eskom causing huge hassles for advertising revenue. The latest numbers at eMedia confirm my worries.

Of course, this is just one part of the Hosken Consolidated Investments (HCI) empire. Media might be down, but gaming and hotels have shot up beautifully and so has coal. The group is investing in oil and gas in Namibia, so there's no final dividend.

Funnily enough, ra dio seems to be doing well at the moment. African Media Entertainment reported a juicy year-on-year jump in earnings. The TV may be off but apparently the radio is just fine for advertisers. I guess it helps that car batteries aren't linked to Eskom!

Aside from the companies in the HCI stable (which also includes Deneb and Frontier Transport Holdings), we saw important updates from AYO Technology, Lewis, Life Healthcare, MiX Telematics, Old Mutual, Premier Fishing, Reinet, Southern Sun, Stefanutti Stocks and Texton.

All of this is just a click away in Ghost Bites>>>

Don't miss these!

Episode 126 of Magic Markets is about a topic that we haven't covered for a while now: crypto arbitrage. Harry Scherzer of Future Forex returns to the platform to update us on the arbitrage (including recent challenges and how they were addressed during a period of US banking troubles) and the evolution of the Future Forex business model. To hear the latest from this talented young entrepreneur, listen to this show>>>

If you are a business owner, remember to value your company for free on the bizval p latform before the end of May. I am so proud of what we've built there and I want you to experience it. Just use the coupon KNOWYOURVALUE on checkout for a bizval Live valuation at this link>>>

A busy week for DealMakers

In line with what we are seeing elsewhere, deal activity for Q1 2023 in Africa showed a significant reduction as conditions have become more difficult. You can read about this in the Africa Q1 2023 summary from DealMakers this week, alongside the usual weekly summaries of local M&A, local corporate finance and African dealmaking,

There's also a very interesting piece from the team at CDH on Takeover Law and specifically the need for silence, with the recent happenings at Caxton as the example given. For something completely different, a partner at Baker McKenzie has written on the resilient rise of African FinTech. There's something for everyone in Ghost Mail!

The rand loves breaking the wrong kinds of records

As expected, the MPC raised local interest rates by 50 basis points. This is supposed to help the rand, except it immediately went the other way. Our currency lost over 2% on the day and touched an all-time disaster of R19.74 against the US dollar. It's tricky to figure out why, with the impact of load shedding on economic growth as a potential reason. It also didn't help that the dollar had a good day, with jobless claims coming out better than expected and once again showing how robust the US market is,

Finally, has the shine come off gold once again? It is now trading at around $1,940 per ounce, having cooled off considerably in recent times.

As always, this macroecon omic update was brought to you by TreasuryONE.

That's it from me after an incredibly busy day of news. Have a great Friday!