The Guilty Get Rewarded

2010 looks like it will challenge humankind to the end. Everywhere are reports of hardship, from the humanitarian crises in Pakistan and Haiti, mudslides in China and the global recession have touched everyone – success, good health and progression are rare.
Times like these remind us all of the importance of a rainy day fund, whilst governments are [...]

Friday, 12 February 2010

Global
The past week has been dominated by Greece’s debt crisis and attempts by the EU to help them out of it. Greece switched its currency, the drachma, to the Euro in 2001 and gained a seat at at the big boys table in the financial markets. Overnight investors saw stability (Euro, Germany, France) where yesterday they [...]

Dubai World’s Debt

Dubai World, the holding company in charge of developing Dubai’s premier tourism and housing projects such as The World Islands and The Palm Islands is yet to confirm how it will repay $59 Billion in debt that it owes creditors, $22 Billion of which it has delayed repayments upon and needs to “re-schedule”. In laymans [...]

Wednesday, 11 November 2009

London, 23.30
 
Local
The Johannesburg Securities Exchange (JSE) ended higher today thanks to a continuing weak US Dollar boosting resources, the gold price has risen to $1,108 per ounce.

Indices (at close of trade)

Index
Value
Rise / Fall

All Share
26,663
+1.09%

Top 40
24,021
+1.12%

Resource 20
48,968
+1.40%

Industrial 25
20.588
+0.85%

Financial 15
7,294
+1.02%

 
Currencies (at close of trade)

1 US Dollar buys R7.32 (Rand rose 1.03%)

1 Euro buys R11.03 (Rand rose 0.94%)

1 [...]

Monday 9 November 2009

London, 19.30
 
Local
The Johannesburg Securities Exchange (JSE), having ended down most of last week, started with a decent rise today. Resources (gold, mining and related) and financial stocks led the way rising by over 2% at the close of trade.
It looks like the recovery is due to two things:
1.       The markets looking to recover from the [...]

Friday 06 November 2009

Cape Town, 21.00
Overview
The Johannesburg Stock Exchange closed a little higher in the end today, after spending the afternoon in negative  territory after the United States released its highest unemployment rate numbers for 26 years. It’s been a tale of ups and downs on the real economic data front, US markets were celebrating good productivity numbers [...]

Of Real and Financial Economies

I thought that it would be appropriate to comment on how the “real” and “financial” economies seem to be working these days, as their movements are tracked throughout this week’s market updates. By financial economy I mean banks, by real economy I mean manufacturing, mining, farming and other activities that create the bulk of jobs.
 
The [...]

Thursday 05 November 2009

Cape Town, 17.30
Overview
It has been interesting this week, it appears that gold traders have cashed in on their profits today causing the top three indices in my table to dip slightly. If you recall in yesterday’s update the gold price hit a record high, clearly those in the know had bought beforehand and are taking [...]

Wednesday 04 November 2009

Cape Town, 22.00
Overview
The Johannesburg Securities Exchange closed marginally higher today thanks to a record high gold price of $1 090.47 an ounce. As discussed in yesterday’s market update, South Africa is a key commodities exporter including the world’s second largest gold producer after China so good prices for commodities such as gold drive our markets upwards.
The [...]

Tuesday 03 November 2009

Cape Town, 19.00
Overview
The JSE closed lower today thanks to negative sentiment in the United States and other First World Markets. The negative sentiment caused investors in the United States to be risk-averse, meaning that they preferred selling their shares and holding on to cash or other safer instruments. This in turn weakened the dollar, in [...]