My X feed certainly seems to know who won the US election. I'll just wait for official results - and enjoy the inevitable circus along the way. Geopolitical concerns have been the theme of 2024, a year of seemingly endless elections. The latest Investec No Ordinary Wednesday podcast is a helpful look at what's on the mind of global banking executives, featuring Investec's Cumesh Moodliar and Ruth Leas fresh from their trip to recent meetings in Washington. Hosted by the excellent Jeremy Maggs, you'll find it here>>>
With another episode of The Trader's Handbook about to drop, make sure you're up to date by listening to Episode 9 covering the opportunities related to trading forex. If you're in the mood for something different, you can also consider the piece on the IG Markets South Africa academy on moving averages and why they are a useful tool to add to your toolbox.
In company news, I'm afraid that lab-grown diamond denialists really do need to lift their heads from the De Beers marketing spin of the past decades and see what's happening around them. Diamonds may be forever for the wealthy, but not for the mass affluent who would frankly rather spend on the honeymoon. This impacts more than just Anglo American, as evidenced by Murray & Roberts releasing a rather frightening update about their exposure to De Beers and a pullback in mining projects there. This issue is very, very real.
Gold, on the other hand, is delivering. Sibanye-Stillwater even has some good news (!) thanks to gold, while Pan African Resources has announced an acquisition in Australia.
In other news, Sirius Real Estate announced further property deals in the UK and Germany, while Zeder has announced a special dividend from the proceeds of recent asset disposals.
For details on these stories and the other Nibbles, read Ghost Bites here>>>
Dominique Olivier's latest piece on incredible corporate marketing campaigns and how they changed the world covers not just De Beers, but also Coca-Cola, Gillette and Sunkist. If you just cannot bring yourself to see the view of a younger generation on lab-grown diamonds, perhaps it's because you haven't realised just how successfully people were brainwashed for decades? Santa Claus, orange juice, even hair - it's all in this great piece>>>
In a country where the sun shines and the wind blows, renewable energy has been an important part of South Africa's story. These deals tend to require bespoke funding structures, as they are essentially infrastructure deals with long-dated cash flows. To dig into this space and get a flavour of the funding approaches out there, you can read this article by Johan Marais and Taona Kokera of Forvis Mazars.
Have a great day!
