Another week, and talk of another Viceroy report. Suspicion fell on Aspen (again), and even though it wasn’t the pharma, the share still fell from R256 to R230. Volumes were massive this week because of Futures Close-out and index rebalancing; on Thursday $4.2bn exchanged hands and on Friday $3.4bn. The Rand strengthened a bit after the announcement that Zuma would be charged, but our currency is struggling with all this talk of land expropriation.
SA Business Confidence was released on Wednesday, and jumped 11 points to an index level of 45 – it was interesting listening to my previous economic lecturer talk about how immediately after the Rubicon Speech the Business Confidence Index fell to 10 and in 2010, when GDP growth was 5% the index hit 85 and even though we struggled a bit post 2008, after the soccer World Cup in 2010, there was a steady increase to 55; but it just could not get back to the 80s.
Steinhoff continues to raise cash, this time by selling shares in Kap Industrial. EOH put out a trading statement and announced that they are breaking the company in two – the market did not love any of it. Old Mutual released a decent set of results, and the break up of this company seems to be going well. Patrice Motsepe’s ARC (African Rainbow Capital) also released results.
In offshore news, US shares had a bad week on the back of Trump reverting back to old habits (“You’re Fired!”). Toys ’R’ Us are closing all their US stores. Spotify plans to list and Snap market share decreases by another $1bn after the RiRi tweet.