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Your summary with links, if you’d like to pick and choose
Chancellor Rachel Reeves is signalling tax hikes, possibly the first rise in the basic income tax rate in 50 years, to stabilise public finances.
The pound has slumped to its weakest level since 2023.
Bond yields are falling (markets expect fiscal tightening).
Reeves is prioritising fiscal discipline over political popularity, echoing Denis Healey’s 1970s retrenchment — potentially laying groundwork for future growth, albeit at Labour’s political expense.
Amazon’s layoffs highlight rising AI disruption in white-collar sectors — not just coding but finance, marketing, and HR.
Research suggests AI may favour lower-skilled, male-dominated roles, reversing decades of progress for women and educated workers.
Youth unemployment (18.5%) and low female participation (<22%) could worsen as entry-level work evaporates.
India risks missing its demographic dividend unless it invests in AI R&D and upskills fast.
🇨🇳 China
Exports fell 1.1% in October, the first drop in 8 months — shipments to the US plunged 25%.
Exporters had frontloaded trade to dodge tariffs, but that effect has faded.
With weak domestic demand, Beijing faces rising pressure to stimulate consumption.
A mild rebound could follow from the recent US–China tariff truce, but global demand remains fragile.
💡 AI, Energy & Markets
Data centres used 415 TWh in 2024 (1.5% of global electricity); could hit 945–1,300 TWh by 2030.
AI workloads are growing 30% annually vs. 9% for normal servers.
DeepSeak models claim to use 40% less power than major LLMs.
Massive power demand puts AI on a collision course with energy policy, especially in places like Ireland (20% of power use now data centres).
💰 The “Equity Bubble”
Ray Dalio’s warning: the Fed is now stimulating into a bubble, not rescuing from one.
AI mega-caps drive almost all S&P growth since 2022 (AI excluded = +5.4% vs +19.4%).
Market valuations are stretched, but QE-fuelled liquidity may keep assets inflated — until it doesn’t.
Bonds remain “uninvestable”; commodities may benefit from dollar weakness.
The real danger: systemic risk hidden beneath QE gloss.
🪙 Bitcoin vs Gold
Bitcoin’s correlation with gold remains zero — still more a speculative liquidity barometer than a safe haven.
Gold, up 50% this year, retains its safe-haven status.
Bitcoin continues to lead tech sentiment and may be hinting at another equity correction ahead.
Global Economic Roundup in the last week
The Western Cape province launched a programme to deliver 5,700 MW of new energy capacity, aiming to shore up electricity supply and drive down costs.
Homeowners may see relief of around R1,400/month in repayments if a 25 basis‐point interest rate cut goes ahead(20th Nov)
Business‐activity data from the private sector PMI contracted in October for the first time in seven months, signalling output and new order weakness.
The South African rand paused its recent slide at ≈ R17.40/USD, as investors await a fresh catalyst amid global risk‐off conditions.
International tourism soared. 7.63 million foreign visitors travelled to South Africa in 2025 — a strong export‑economy lift for the country.
United States
The National Retail Federation projects holiday retail spending of $1.01‑$1.02 trillion in 2025, a 3.7–4.2 % increase year‑on‑year.
October layoffs hit around 153,000, the worst month for job cuts in over 20 years, with large participation from tech and automation‑impacted sectors. No Bureau of Labour Statistics data have been available for a month now.
The US national debt passed $38 trillion and economists are warning about fiscal sustainability, especially given rising interest burdens. With the ongoing government shutdown now the longest on record, the cost to the economy is estimated at about $15 billion per week.
Stock markets ended lower as tech valuations and a wave of layoffs triggered investor jitters; major indexes slid amid economic uncertainty.
Global (excluding US)
Global stock markets dropped as fears of an artificial intelligence bubble prompted a reassessment of tech valuations across the US, Europe and Asia.
The International Monetary Fund and other forecasters say world growth for 2025 is trending at around 3 % with significant downside risks from geopolitics and policy fragmentation.
Treasury yields jumped after stronger‑than‑expected US private payroll data (42,000 jobs in October, exceeding expectations of a 28,000 gain), but the underlying labour market shows signs of fatigue.
Cryptocurrency markets and Asian equities fell amidst weak demand signals and risk‑off sentiment broadly.
A “global economy limping” theme is emerging: multiple countries face structural disruptions, rising costs, and slower momentum, even as headline numbers remain okay.
UK inflation has risen while the economy is in the doldrums, and Chancellor Reeves is under pressure. Unusually, in the run-up to the budget (Wed 26th Nov), when it has been tradition for UK politicians to refrain from commentary, she felt compelled to speak and prepare what no democratically elected politician ever wants to do: break a promise not to raise taxes. She might inflict the first rise in the basic rate of income tax in 50 years.
That would hurt growth, as shown by the pound’s awful recent performance. On a trade-weighted basis, it’s the lowest since the end of 2023.
This sounds uncomfortably like the disaster that afflicted Liz Truss’ brief premiership three years ago. But there’s a crucial difference. Then, the pound and gilts sold off together, which showed a radical loss of confidence. This time, long bond yields are falling, as you would expect when a fiscal retrenchment is coming.
Reeves never mentioned tax rises. But she didn’t rule them out, despite the electoral pledge to avoid them. Frankly, preparing the Public for the inevitable isn’t the worst idea in the world. They can ‘test the waters’ and see if everything falls off a cliff, as it did with Liz Truss. Her statement, which has been treated as a virtual promise to hike taxes, says that Labour was “elected on a commitment to put country before party; the national interest before political calculation.”
With a choice between pacifying the bond market or voters, she’s opting to avoid Truss’ mistake.
No accounting trick can change the basic fact that government debt is sold on financial markets… The more they try and sell, the more it will cost them.
There are parallels with Denis Healey, the last chancellor to hike the basic rate in 1975, who presided over the worst years in UK economic history. His decisions to call in the IMF proved critical to subsequent growth, which came under the Conservative Margaret Thatcher. Reeves might be building a good economic bequest for the populist Nigel Farage, who is now leading in polls.
So, it’s not great for the already beleaguered Labour party, but good for the gilt market.
If you aren’t willing to control expenditure, you need to take measures to generate revenue. Fiscal discipline can result in either, and the markets like that, even if tabloids don’t. Whether it’s a progressive tax hike or regressive spending cuts is more of a political debate with potential long-term economic consequences. Short term, if you want borrowing costs lower, best stick to the plan.
There’s no political dilemma between spending cuts or tax hikes in this case, as Reeves’ party has already staged a revolt against cuts (which culminated with photos of her in tears in Parliament). If the markets are to be kept onside, she should tax income.
If Labour break their own election promises and raises tax on incomes, it will negatively impact consumption, encourage more monetary loosening and reinforce the positive credit cycle. If they tax wealth (and therefore capital/the supply side of the economy), the fiscal tightening will be less well-received by the rates market.
Reeves is pursuing the best option available to her in a dreadful situation. It might just work, given time. Her party has until the next election in 2029 to spend its money productively enough to win the electorate’s forgiveness. Unlike Republicans over the pond, where elections come around far more frequently, so there is always the temptation to postpone the hard decisions.
The US is in its longest shutdown
There is no end in sight to the US shutdown, and the real fallout is only just starting. If you’ve missed our other newsletters on this topic (back newsletters always available on our website) – Trump needs 60 votes to pass his BBL budget to extend massive tax cuts to the billionaires, and fund that with cuts to social programs. The Republicans do not have that 60 seat ‘super-majority’ and Democrats are not budging.
Trump is now encouraging the Republicans to nuke the Filibuster rule (I wrote about it in this newsletter).
Smart Republicans know the long-term danger of this option, and ironically, Donald Trump, in his Truth Social post, also knows it. If the Republicans nuke the Filibuster, they can steamroll their short-term agenda, but the Dems, if they get back control, judging on last week’s elections, it is not impossible, they will do those big forever changes. Like including Puerto Rico and DC as actual states with full voting rights (both are Dem-leaning), they could get around the Republican-dominated Supreme Court appointments by enlarging the court, and ‘terming’ the appointments (as happens at the Fed for example).
The shutdown is being blamed on the Democrats – this is the equivalent of a school-yard bully crying victim when the kid refuses to hand over their lunch. Usually, when you have a budget impasse in the US Congress, they negotiate their way out, but Trump has made it clear – all or nothing, or a tactic often seen with corporate bullies, pay now, then we’ll negotiate.
Which party is going to be first to blink, and when?
Remember that Thanksgiving is a little over two weeks away and is one of the busiest ‘migration seasons’ in the US. This last weekend 10% of flights were cancelled by Trump (in addition to all the regional cancellations already happening because air traffic controllers aren’t being paid and are increasingly joining the unofficial ‘sick out’).
Tariffs – emerging story, watch this space.
On Wednesday last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case alleging that the levies President Donald Trump imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act were illegal. Two lower courts have already ruled that he did indeed exceed his powers.
What we know:
The United States Supreme Court has agreed to stay the implementation of the tariff suspension until the appeal process is complete. They have effectively kicked the ball back to the court of appeals, but it could still end up on their doorstep (with an even bigger headache to solve w.r.t the possible refunding of hundreds of millions in tariffs.)
During oral arguments on November 5, 2025, the justices — both conservative and liberal — expressed serious doubt that IEEPA (which never mentions “tariffs” or “duties”) gives the president broad authority to impose sweeping duties on imports.
The justices asked pointed questions about whether the tariffs are simply regulatory or are instead “taxes” (which, by the U.S. Constitution, belong to Congress) and whether the president is overstepping the separation of powers.
If the Court strikes down the tariffs as invalid, companies might demand refunds of the tens of billions collected so far. And economic/trade uncertainty would spike.
As with abolishing the nuclear option on the Filibuster, this has long-term implications – there would be nothing to stop a future president calling Climate change an emergency, for example, (which it might well be) and making massive changes to the energy sector in the US.
Tariff power lies with Congress, and there is no mention of the word “tariff” or any of its synonyms in the emergency legislation. The administration argues that immediate action was needed. When the tariffs were levied, it’s true that the goods deficit was at record depths. However,
1) Services, more important to the US economy these days, were in surplus;
2) goods had been in deficit for many decades; and
3) that deficit got far, far worse as soon as the tariffs were announced:
Further, recent precedents have made it harder for the court to do what the president wants. Several decisions during the Biden administration used the “major questions” doctrine, saying that presidents cannot make big policy shifts unless clearly indicated in laws passed by Congress. On this basis, Biden’s attempt to forgive student debt was overruled. It would appear equally fatal for Trump’s use of IEEPA for tariffs. Justices would have their work cut out to find a form of words that says the biggest change to trade policy in a century isn’t a “major question.”
They will consider more than just the law. The justices need to safeguard the interests of their own institution, and in practice — if not in theory — will be aware of the consequences. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told the court that overruling the tariffs would “gravely undermine the president’s ability to conduct real-world diplomacy and his ability to protect the national security and economy of the United States,” and that repaying tariffs already collected “would be terrible for the Treasury”.
Bessent went on to say that “Tariff revenues are the balancing item that is keeping the deficit path relatively stable,” “Unwinding them will generate asset market volatility, at least for a while.” (Against this, paying tariffs back to importers would effectively be a new fiscal stimulus.
The administration can fall back on other legal avenues — one law still on the books from 1930 looks promising. And months of confusion already haven’t stopped the asset markets from having a bumper year.
A mess is in prospect, but it needn’t be any worse than the mess of the last half-year.
The Supreme Court, specifically the Republican appointed judges, are not going to want to upset their Dear Leader, so they might have to come up with a compromise. I suspect it’s going to be along the lines of “You can keep what you’ve taken, but it has to stop henceforth.” (Which will just lead to a rash of lawsuits, but nobody is going to win here).
Some market turbulence would be a small price to pay for a ruling that presidents can’t avoid Congress just by claiming an emergency; in the long run, the court needs to make that clear to everyone.
Monetising AI, the merry-go-round
In finance as in life, artificial intelligence is impossible to avoid at present. Many clever people are desperately trying to analyse what AI could do and — of greatest relevance to markets — how it can be paid for.
There are two big issues we should be looking at in this market.
Cobie and I have spoken about this several times in the last year… the big AI providers still have a fair amount of cash flow to devote to data centres, but nobody else does without incurring debt. This is one of the major differences between now and the Dot Com boom/bust. The graph below gives a different take on this go-go AI bubble – it’s only the whales that are cash flush – everyone else is going to have to monetise it if they want to invest in it. In an environment where even I, as an amateur enthusiast, can see how the LLMs (Large Language Models) are falling over each other to get market share, and thousands of start-ups are trying to carve out a niche for themselves. It’s becoming a dog-eat-dog AI world.
The S&P has risen at an annualised 19.4% since Nov 2022, when ChatGPT was launched, but if you then exclude the AI boomers and that drops to 5.4%.
Overall capital expenditure as a percentage of gross domestic product is exactly where it was in 2018, before the pandemic. From the massive growth in AI and datacentres, you’d be forgiven for thinking that there must have been a massive surge in capex in the US, but that is not the case:
Globally, data centres (including AI workloads) consumed about 415 TWh of electricity in 2024 — roughly 1.5 % of world electricity demand.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that by 2030, data-centres will consume around 945 TWh annually — meaning they might hit just under 3 % of global electricity demand. Within that growth, accelerated servers (those typically used for AI, large GPUs etc) are projected to grow circa 30 % per year, compared to circa 9 % for conventional servers.
For instance, a typical “AI query” might use ~2.9 watt-hours of electricity vs ~0.3 watt-hours for a typical Google search.
In Ireland, data centres already consume around 20 % of the metered electricity supply.
(Just as an aside, lest we forget, just one aluminium smelter in RSA consumes around 5% of Eskom’s supply – and they pay a fraction of what the average consumer pays – 0.22c per KwH, as opposed to our R3.71).
If efficiencies don’t improve, global data centre electricity use could rise to ~1,300 TWh by 2030. This is one of the appealing aspects of DeepSeak, it is estimated that the LLM uses 40% less power than the other major LLMs (ChatGpt, Anthropolgy etc), and needs less water to cool the installations. Smart use of renewables is obvious, except perhaps for The Donald Quixote.
Bitcoin and gold – finding their ‘niche’?
In just 31 days, Bitcoin has tumbled from its record high of about $126,000 to below $100,000, a level it last saw in June. The slide began in mid-October with a cascade of liquidations that erased billions of dollars in bullish bets. But after dropping as much as 20% from peak to trough, it’s showing tentative signs of recovery. There was an appetite to take it under $100,000, but not to keep it there.
It’s striking how swiftly the asset has surrendered so much of its gains, leaving year-to-date returns at barely 10%. For crypto believers who thought Washington’s friendlier regulatory regime would ignite another rally, this is a letdown. Doubts about Bitcoin’s haven attributes have been accentuated by its tendency to sell off when geopolitical risks look worse.
Bitcoin’s fall from record high delivers stark reminder of its volatile nature. It still has its uses, though; it’s a leading indicator for risky assets, particularly in tech, as the correlation with the Nasdaq suggests:
Is Bitcoin forecasting a tech stock correction? Correlation doesn’t prove causation, but still.
Bitcoin’s correlation with high volatility stocks is even closer than with Big Tech. The big difference is that Bitcoin has been a better performer over time. It led the bull market in equities in the last two years and rolled over in February this year, ahead of the tariff crash in April.
Beyond its tech correlation, Bitcoin is yet to prove its supposed kinship with gold, which has recently snapped a record rally as the US-China trade truce eased tensions. It’s still up about 50% for the year, far outshining its distant digital cousin. If crypto were indeed digital gold, the correlation should be reasonably high. Correlations between Bitcoin and various asset classes using monthly returns show a nonexistent relationship over the last five years — exactly zero.
Instead, crypto is seen as a speculative investment driven by financial liquidity, also typically the driving factor in asset bubbles. Risk-taking increases as financial conditions ease, lending expands, and overall economic liquidity grows (so Bitcoin might be telling us that conditions are indeed a bit tighter than they appear):
Liquidity appears to be a driving force of the crypto bull market. Bullion’s haven attributes are still unrivalled and time-tested. Bitcoin is nowhere close to matching gold as a haven asset.
AI’s impact on jobs – the Indian experience
Amazon.com Inc.’s latest global layoffs should come as a singular warning to India. For policymakers dealing with the world’s largest youth population, AI suddenly poses a very real risk to jobs, wages, and a white-collar future. The e-commerce and cloud services giant’s elimination of 14,000 corporate positions worldwide may not have a large direct impact on its sizable Indian workforce.
The more worrying thing is the kind of occupations at risk: Generative artificial intelligence is starting to affect more than just entry-level computer programming.
Outsourcing hubs like Bengaluru and Hyderabad are already feeling the pinch from AI. But Amazon’s cuts may affect finance, marketing, human resources and tech employees, according to local media reports.
In an interesting piece of research, after parsing nearly 200 years of data on labour markets and technological change, finance scholars at Northwestern University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have concluded that advances in natural-language processing may favour occupations that are lower-educated, lower-paid, and more male-dominated, such as construction and trucking.
It would be a dramatic departure from how previous innovations affected demand for workers. Until the 1980s IT revolution, most advances in automation supplanted manual effort while supporting cognitive tasks. Take, for instance, Irving Colburn’s early-20th-century invention of a machine to substitute hand-blown glass in window panes. The blowers’ wages fell 40%. Within one generation, mechanisation drove an entire class of artisans out of business.
By contrast, the arrival of electronic calculators in the 1970s helped accountants and auditors to become more productive. It didn’t replace them. The tilt toward services such as finance and health care favoured women, facilitating their entry into the workforce as 20th-century innovations also eased the burden of domestic chores.
Over time, these improvements went global, but the hard-won gains may now reverse. With the capital costs of implementing AI expected to become cheaper each year, cognitive tasks that don’t require at least five years of specific vocational preparation will be at risk from automation, the researchers say. That includes many entry-level jobs, such as analysing financial statements at Wall Street firms.
Mechanised production of sheet glass did little to hurt women. At the cusp of automation in 1900, they held few of the 53,000 jobs in the US glass industry. Employers preferred men. (In 1900, the industry employed twice as many children under 16 as women.) But to lose out now to Lilli, McKinsey & Co.’s proprietary AI tool that’s drafting client proposals and preparing slide decks? That would certainly rankle, especially since it’s named after the first woman professional hired by the consulting firm in 1945.
Women are taking the lead as more Indians head for college
All this may come as a particularly harsh blow to the 375 million Indians who are between 10 and 24 years old. At 18.5%, youth unemployment in cities is alarmingly high. Young women’s participation in the labour force is abysmally low at under 22%. Large-scale adoption of AI tools by companies will further muddy the picture. If AI does away with entry-level grunt work, which employers will bother to train fresh graduates? How will they rise up the career ladder to higher-wage positions?
Artificial intelligence may still surprise us by creating new tasks that don’t yet exist. It’s also possible that young people will invest in their own AI training. But if Amazon is any indication, the technological exposure of higher-educated, better-paid, and more women-oriented occupations is indeed high.
This won’t be the first shock to India’s labour market in modern times. Its cotton spinners and weavers, among the world’s best in the early 18th century, took a large hit from the Industrial Revolution. As the economy struggles to move from lower-middle to higher-middle income, AI is threatening its biggest advantage: the youth bulge it enjoys against other countries that are rapidly ageing.
India’s youth bulge is its big advantage. AI can turn it into a headache.
The right approach to AI would contain both carrots and sticks. The preponderance of Chinese large language models among the world’s top 20, makes it obvious that India isn’t doing enough fundamental research. This must change. The government also needs to read the riot act to outsourcing firms. They have to halt share buybacks and invest in meaningful AI projects, not just data centres.
Finally, the broader corporate sector should be given generous tax breaks for research and development. Instead of coming up with generic copies of drugs going off patent in the West, pharmaceutical companies must be encouraged to use AI to discover new molecules.
The next quarter-century offers the most-populous nation a chance to get rich before it grows old. Ending up on the wrong side of technological change for the second time in 300 years won’t be a good outcome — either for India, or the world. Amazon’s job cuts are the proverbial canary in the coal mine. The time to act is now, before the outlook for white-collar work turns more toxic.
China’s exports unexpectedly contracted in October as global demand failed to offset the deepening slump in shipments to the US, dealing a blow to an economy already slowing amid sluggish consumer spending and investment at home.
Exports fell for the first time in eight months, dropping 1.1% from a year earlier, according to official data released Friday. Shipments to all nations except the US rose 3.1%, not enough to compensate for the more than 25% decline to America.
The exporters in China have been frontloading their trade in order to avoid high tariffs in the US. It seems the frontloading finally faded in October. Make no mistake, as much as China wants to transition to a consumer-led economy, that takes years, and there is just not enough domestic demand to pick up the slack.
Slowing growth from the rest of the world can’t compensate for the US drop.
| Chinese exports have been resilient until now, as other destinations made up for drops in shipments across the Pacific Ocean. Sales abroad had grown every month since February, when activity slowed because of the Lunar New Year holiday. But October marked a break in the trend of growth driven by the pursuit of new markets among Chinese companies. A range of trade indicators started to cool off from the record numbers seen in earlier months, with Shanghai port processing the fewest containers since April. The decline in overall exports in October came as a surprise to almost all forecasters, with the median estimate of those polled by Bloomberg at 2.9%. Only a single analyst in the survey had predicted a decline. October’s surprise drop in exports suggests that China’s external resilience is starting to falter under high tariffs and global trade uncertainty. This highlights the need for Beijing to keep supporting domestic demand and prevent weak spending from dragging on growth..” Tensions with the US over trade escalated last month, before a deal was reached later in October by Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping at talks in South Korea. With the US reducing tariffs on Chinese goods by 10% from Monday, it’s possible trade between the world’s two largest economies could see a pickup through the year-end. The effect may prove limited, however, because duties on Chinese goods are still higher than those on products from countries such as Vietnam. And if the slowdown in demand from the rest of the globe continues, that could pull down shipments and the broader economy in the final two months of the year. Already last quarter China’s economic growth decelerated to the weakest pace in a year even as exports boomed. It risks an even steeper slowdown in the months ahead. Analysts forecast the weakest growth this quarter since the final three months of 2022, when the nation was nearing the end of debilitating Covid Zero lockdowns. Exports to some other major markets fell, with sales to South Korea, Russia and Canada all dropping by double digits. China doesn’t report bilateral trade data with all nations in the first data release, with the remainder of the figures due later this month. Even so, Chinese export prices have fallen in every month but one since mid-2023 due to domestic deflation, compensating for the stronger currency and making shipments cheaper. As a result, Chinese companies will likely continue to add to the inroads made abroad during the trade war with the US. |
| Author: Dawn Ridler |
Following on from my piece last week, the financial world has now awakened to the Federal Reserve’s upcoming action in the treasury markets. One keen watcher of this space is Ray Dalio the founder of Bridgewater Capital. He posted a thoughtful piece in the week called “Stimulating into a Bubble”, and as part of that, the following table appeared:
It shows previous stimulus periods in history and shows this data in relation to what we have today. Clearly, past experiences with Quantitative Easing had to do with a contracting cycle, whereas this time around, The Federal Reserve is easing into a bubble. I agree with Mr Dalio. Look at the following 4 companies:
| The first three are well-established technology companies. They have entrenched positions and long-term business plans showcasing their cash flow capabilities. No argument with the fact that they are not cheap. The next 2 on the list is 2 of the most talked about ideas on Wall Street today. Palantir is the new technology kid on the block, giving enterprise software companies a run for their money. A frothy valuation at a P/E over 400x (forward P/E of 220x). Grab which is hoping to become the delivery and financial services king in Asia isn’t any better. Both Palantir and Grab are great examples of this bubble in motion. Whereas the first three on the list are expensive, the last 2 are in a league of their own. Back to Mr Dalio’s table… and the thing that everyone is worried about is the Debt to GDP number. Economies have a few ways to deal with this long-term. One could either go through a period of austerity, but this would be negative for growth. One could also inflate one’s GDP so that the debt number shrinks in comparison, and in a way, policymakers are hoping that AI could achieve some of this long-term. The benefit of an increasing GDP is that tax revenues should also go up, assisting with debt repayments. Will this growth materialise? This is the big gamble at this stage! The path to option 2 requires that the wheels of finance continue to turn to ensure that one can reach the point of GDP growth. Hence the FEDs decision to start purchasing treasury securities again. What does all of this mean for asset markets? Here are some of my thoughts (which should not be seen as advice). Equities may be expensive, but they do provide a hedge against Dollar weakness, a direct result of QE. The problem is the valuations. As long as earnings continue to materialise, there is very little catalyst that can send stock prices lower, unless of course there is a systemic shock to the system… this is also entirely possible as QE tends to mask lurking issues. You see, in the past, when QE was used, this was done during contraction, where any financial problems were already uncovered or known…. Quite different to today. Bonds remain uninvestable and I have no doubt that some investors will make money from this asset class at some point, but it requires more than knowledge of what is happening at the US Treasury to implement this. Commodities will continue to benefit from a weaker Dollar, which again is a direct result of QE. The net effect of all of this is that asset prices can continue to rise despite valuations. It does, though, require the much-needed liquidity. In the absence of this, valuations start playing the dominant role again. |
| EXCHANGE RATES: |
The Rand/Dollar closed at R17.27 (R17.31, R17.25, R17.38, R17.50, R17.22 , R17.35, R17.33, R17.37, R17.58, R17.65, R17.44, R17.61, R17.74, R18.15,R17.76, R17.72, R17.90, R17.58, R17.89, R17.99, R17.92, R17.77, R17.95, R17.88, )
The Rand/Pound closed at R22.69 (R22.76, R22.96, R23.34, R23.37, R23.19, R23.22, R23.35, R23.55, R23.73, R23.84, R23.53, R23.84, R23.84, R24.09, R23.88, R23.76, R24.22, R24.08, R24.49, R24.22, R24.35, R24.05, R24.18)
The Rand/Euro closed the week at R19.98 (R20.02, R20.06, R20.26, R20.33, R 20.22, R20.30, R20.35, R20.38, R20.61, R20.62, R20.44, R20.56, R20.64, R21.04, R20.86, R20.61, R20.93, R 20.70, R20.91, R20.74, R20.68, R20.24, R20,37)
Brent Crude: Closed the week $63.61 ($64.66, $65.04, $61.27, $62.14, $64.28, $69.67, $66.57, $66.80, $65.52, $67.38, $67.73, $66.08, $66.07, $69.46, $68.29, $69.21, $70.58, $68.27, $67.39, $77.27, $74.38, $66.56, $62.61, $65.41)
Bitcoin closed at $101,562 ($109.936, $112,492, $106,849, $111,888, $124,858, $109,446, $115,838, $115,770, $110,752, $108,923, $114,916, $117,371, $118,043, $113,608, $118,139, $118,214, $117,871, $108,056, $107,461, $103,455)
Articles and Blogs:
Medical Risk Mitigation NEW
Next Year is going to be different – Consolidation NEW
Abdication or diversification?
Spoiled for choice
Who needs a plan anyway
8 questions you need to ask about retirement
What to do when interest rates drop
How to survive volatility in your investments
What to do when interest rates drop
Difficult Financial Conversations
Financial Implications of Longevity
Kick Start Your Own Retirement Plan
You matter more than your kids in retirement
To catch a falling knife
Income at retirement
2025 Budget
Apportioning blame for your financial state
Tempering fear and greed
New Year’s resolutions over? Try a Wealth Bingo Card instead.
Wills and Estate Planning (comprehensive 3 in one post)
Pre-retirement – The make-or-break moments
Some unconventional thoughts on wealth and risk management
Wealth creation is a balancing act over time
Wealth traps waiting for unsuspecting entrepreneurs
Two Pot pension system demystified
Cobie Legrange and Dawn Ridler,
Rexsolom Invest, Licensed FSP 45521.
Email: cobie@rexsolom.co.za, dawn@rexsolom.co.za
Website: rexsolom.co.za, wealthecology.co.za