November wasn't a great month for retailers despite the lure of Black Friday sales. Massmart is the latest group to report weaker numbers for the month, following on from The Foschini Group earlier this week. And data from Statistics SA back it up, with retail trade sales contacting by 4% from the same month a year earlier.

There were few surprises in a sales update from the retailer and wholesaler yesterday. What may have surprised the market, however, was news that former Amplats CEO Chris Griffith is ending his gardening leave to take the top job at Gold Fields in April as Nick Holland retires.

Also in today's newsletter, updates from South32 and RDI REIT. And Barloworld has finalised a deal that will see it sell its Motor Retail business to a joint venture that it holds a stake in.

In the latest Magic Markets podcast, The Finance Ghost and Mohammed Nalla (Moe-Knows) discuss Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), an economic framework that been received a great deal of attention in the media. They also discuss inflation, interest rates and how these concepts interact in the markets - topical after the Reserve Bank's Monetary Policy Committee decided to keep interest rates unchanged at its first meeting of the year yesterday. You can access it for free by following this link.

Finally, DealMakers is back with all the latest mergers and acquisitions action.

I hope you have a good day.

Stephen Gunnion

Managing Editor, InceConnect

The latest from Ingham Analytics

With BHP having published their half-year operational review Ingham Analytics has released a Mining Monitor featuring BHP entitled "The gift that keeps on giving for BHP". They have edged up their full-year forecast to June 2021. Is the share price fair? What's up with iron ore? The note follows on from another mining theme this week entitled "Lithium's Tesla disconnect". Other popular recent notes include "2020 Redux?" and "Saxo's outrageous predictions for 2021 and our take".