| The talk of the town yesterday was the Naspers / Prosus group, a convoluted web of corporate confusion with a Chinese tech company at one end and frustrated shareholders at the other. The recipe has been simple, really: use the dividends from Tencent to invest in the numerous "growth" businesses owned by Prosus. Tencent is the cash cow and Prosus is the furnace. And my, what a furnace it is. Prosus invested $6.2 billion in the past financial year, a rather spectacular number. Keep in mind that Prosus invests in the types of businesses that have burnt a hole in your equity portfolio in the past few months: frothy tech stocks. The market hates this idea, which is partly why Prosus (and Naspers) trade at extraordinary discounts to intrinsic value. Naspers and Prosus closed 22.8% and 18.2% higher respectively yesterday, huge jumps fo r groups of this size. The unusual market exuberance was driven by just a few slides in the analyst presentation that talked about closing the gap to intrinsic value by selling down the Tencent stake and executing share buybacks. In theory, this is absolutely the right thing to do. In practice, what will happen to keep the fire in the furnace burning if the cash cow diminishes over time? I have a contrarian view on this group that doesn't support yesterday's share price action. As always, my promise to you is that I give my independent views on what I see in the market. To read my thoughts on Naspers / Prosus, refer to this feature article. It's a pity that the Naspers / Prosus conversation was so dominant yesterday, as ther e was plenty of other news on the JSE. For example, Invicta released results that saw its HEPS almost double and its dividend increase by 50%. Kore Potash released the outcomes of an optimisation study that gives us great insights into why junior mining companies ramp up investment when commodity prices are flying. We also saw a meaty dividend from Accelerate Property Fund, detailed numbers from PPC and information on insurance losses in Rand Merchant Investment Holdings from the recent natural disasters. There's also some news from everyone's favourite soap opera: Ascendis. For these details and more, be sure to read Ghost Bites today. Last week's Unlock the Stock event saw the executives from Attacq and Capital Appreciat ion Group present their businesses and engage in dynamic Q&A sessions. Even load shedding couldn't get us down, though it did cause a bit of havoc for the good folk at Attacq! In case you couldn't attend the live event, we've uploaded the video to YouTube. You can watch the entire thing at this link. At 12pm on Thursday, we will do it all again with the executive team from Tharisa, the world's only co-producer of both PGMs and chrome concentrates. Attendance for Unlock the Stock is always free. You just need to register at this link to make sure you can attend. We look forward to welcoming you! Looking beyond equities, Wichard Cilliers (Head of Market Risk at TreasuryONE) keeps us updated on the rand and commodity news. Our currency traded in the R15.70 - R16.00 range after some short-lived strength yesterday morning. Risk appetite has picked up in the past few days (despite signs of global economic weakness), which is good news for the rand and other emerging markets currencies. The economic concerns are hitting metal prices though, with copper at almost a 16-month low. Oil is holding up though, having traded slightly higher at over $114 per barrel. Gold was mostly flat for the day. Gold might go sideways all the time (as someone who punted on gold, this is my painful reality) but the rand certainly doesn't. For help in managing currency volatility and other market risks, speak to the team at TreasuryONE and tell them that a ghost sent you. For a podcast experience that will teach you new things about finance, make sure you listen to Episode 81 of Magic Markets. We had a great discussion with the team from Westbrooke Alternative Asset Management about the concept of "hybrid capital" - a debt-led approach to private equity investing. If that sounds like Greek to you, then you'll be pleased to learn that Magic Markets decodes it into English. If you've always wondered about how financial structuring works in the real world, this is a terrific investment of your time. Listen to the show at this link. That's it for today - good luck out there! | 