Well done. You've made it to the end of a week that looked more like a video game than real life.

Amidst the chaos, there was opportunity on the markets this week. A weakening of the rand was good news for the rand hedges, which includes commodity stocks and companies like Karooooo, which I've been holding since around September last year.

The likes of Massmart had an incredibly tough week both on the market and in real life. The management team seems to have reassured staff that the company remains committed to South Africa, which will come as a relief to the 45,000 employees in the group.

The big story on the JSE yesterday was the announcement by Standard Bank that an offer is being made to buy the remaining shares in Liberty that the bank doesn't already own. This is an interesting play by the bank to fully integrate a so-called bancassurance model. However, it means that yet another listing is likely to be lost to the JSE.

The property funds kept the SENS machine busy yesterday as well, with numerous funds releasing updates on damages to malls and other properties. I've summarised the latest set of announcements in a single article.

To end off the week in the usual way, DealMakers gives us a summary of the M&A activity on the market this week.

These are difficult times that we face and empowering yourself with knowledge can only assist in navigating them.

To help you understand financial concepts at a deeper level, which will also greatly improve your insights into the stories you read in InceConnect, I suggest that you sign up for my weekly Ghost Mail. It goes out every Tuesday and is my platform for deeper dives into investment themes and analytical tools. If you read it alongside InceConnect each week, you'll be amazed at how quickly your knowledge will grow.

Remember to send your letter to the editor using the banner link at the bottom of this email. The winning letter receives a R250 Easy Equities voucher each week!

That's all, folks. We made it. Only just.

"Stay home and stay safe" took on new meaning this week.

The Finance Ghost