This will be the last newsletter for 2025. Thank you to all our clients and readers for a great 2025, and wishing you all a happy, peaceful, and prosperous 2026. We will be back early in the New Year. We will still be available to ask any questions you might have – or have a chat if you’ve got some time as things wind down.
If you missed my latest posts, I have consolidated the 2026 ‘planning’ posts into one ebook, available (free) on request.
Your summary with links, if you’d like to pick and choose
The NHI debate is heating up as court challenges mount. The Health Minister claims people won’t be forced into the public sector, but that contradicts earlier versions — and the Act still restricts medical schemes to covering only what NHI doesn’t. Proposals to phase out medical-aid tax credits (worth R33bn) cover only a fraction of the ~R1 trillion annual cost. The policy risks overwhelming the public sector, triggering medical-professional emigration, and raising constitutional concerns. Implementation is likely decades away, but the uncertainty is already causing damage.
Central Banks: The Big Picture
Developed markets are struggling with choppy inflation, tariff shocks, and political noise, while emerging markets — unusually — now have lower inflation and stronger currencies after moving earlier and more decisively. EM local bonds have outperformed sharply. The UK may cut rates aggressively next year as growth estimates collapse. Overall, most central banks are cautiously easing, except Japan, where the BOJ may hike amid yen pressure and rising inflation.
The Fed
The Fed is cutting through tariff fog with half-broken data, a softening labour market, and declining confidence in AI-fueled growth. Another 25 bps cut is expected next week. The easing path supports a weaker USD and gives EM central banks room to loosen policy without destabilising currencies.
Japan & China
Japan is suddenly facing a possible rate hike as inflation rises and the yen slumps. China, meanwhile, is stuck in deflation, with weak demand and price competition. The PBOC is expected to stay cautious: modest easing in 2026, not before.
Carry Trade (in one breath)
Borrow cheap in a low-rate currency → invest in a high-rate one → hope FX markets don’t throw a tantrum. Great when the wind is at your back, brutal when the currency turns on you.
AI Update
Nvidia showcased a 10× jump in inference performance on leading mixture-of-experts models (including China’s DeepSeek and Moonshot). The leap comes from packing 72 chips into a single server and leveraging ultra-fast interconnects — reinforcing Nvidia’s dominance in AI deployment even as AMD prepares competing hardware for next year.
Mozambique LNG
Huge gas finds (65 Tcf) promised a transformational project, but insurgency halted everything in 2021. After years of instability, financing reshuffles, and international hesitation, TotalEnergies now targets first LNG in 2029, five years behind schedule and at a higher cost (~$24.5bn). Security remains fragile, and some major backers (UK, Netherlands) have pulled funding. The project still has economic potential, but only if political and security conditions stabilise.
2025 Market Review
A roller-coaster year: strong January, tariff-driven sell-offs in February/March, and a rebound as negotiations calmed markets. Tech dominated returns again — the top 10 stocks delivered more than half of the S&P 500’s performance and now make up nearly 36% of the index. With valuations stretched (S&P 500 at ~29× earnings) and liquidity a key risk for 2026, investors enter the new year with cautious optimism after three blockbuster years globally.
RSA
USA
Global
A stablecoin is a type of cryptocurrency whose value is tied (“pegged”) to another stable reference asset — often a fiat currency like the U.S. dollar (or sometimes gold, a basket of assets, etc.).
Instead of volatile swings like you see with most cryptocurrencies (think 10–20% daily moves), stablecoins target a fixed value (e.g. 1 stablecoin ≈ 1 US dollar), which is secured via reserves or other mechanisms. The reserves backing the stablecoins are typically traditional assets — cash, treasury bills or short-term liquid securities — held by the issuer. That gives holders confidence they could redeem their stablecoins for “real money.” Because of this structure, stablecoins combine crypto’s flexibility (digital, fast, global) with the relative stability of traditional money — making them useful as a “digital dollar.”
Why are they becoming more talked about? They allow for Instant payments and settlements around the clock — no banking hours, no SWIFT delays. Lower fees and friction for cross-border transfers or remittances (often much cheaper than traditional remittance services). For traders and crypto-users: a stable “parking space” — when they take volatility off, they convert crypto → stablecoin rather than crypto → traditional fiat. For emerging markets or places with currency instability: stablecoins can act as a store of value (especially dollar-pegged ones), bypassing fragile banking systems.
Stablecoins are having a moment because recent shifts have moved them from crypto sidelines toward mainstream financial infrastructure. In 2025, landmark legislation and regulatory proposals will provide clearer rules for stablecoins. In the U.S., the GENIUS Act was passed, establishing a formal regulatory framework for “payment stablecoins.” That kind of clarity reduces risk for institutions and encourages adoption.
Many other jurisdictions are moving similarly. With stablecoins now “legit,” banks, fintech firms, payment startups, and even big tech players can consider using them — for remittances, treasury management, or cross-border payments. In places where traditional banking is slow, expensive, or unstable, stablecoins are filling a meaningful gap: stable value, easy transfer, fewer intermediaries. By early 2025, stablecoin market capitalisation was estimated at around US$250–260 billion. As use keeps growing (payments, remittances, settlements), regulators and traditional financial institutions are paying attention, which in turn adds momentum. In short: stablecoins are bridging crypto and classic finance — and regulatory + institutional tailwinds are turning them into serious financial plumbing, not just speculative toys.
While stablecoins offer convenience and stability, there are valid concerns and caveats. Their stability depends on how well the reserves are managed and audited. If backing – asset quality or liquidity suffers, there’s risk of “de-pegging.” Because many stablecoins (at the moment) are issued by private firms (not central banks), there’s regulatory risk. Different countries treat them differently — which can lead to uncertainty about legality, consumer protections, and systemic risk. Widespread adoption could challenge traditional monetary policy tools: if lots of people use stablecoins instead of bank deposits, central banks may have less control over money supply,raising concerns about financial stability, currency sovereignty, and regulation.
Stablecoins offer digital, fast, low-cost, and potentially inflation-resistant money. In economies with volatile currencies or weak banking infrastructure, stablecoins can serve as a viable alternative for saving, transferring value, or making cross-border payments — even if formal banks fail to deliver. They could improve remittance flows and international payments: cheaper, near-instant transfers instead of expensive and slow wire transfers. If adoption grows, stablecoins might reshape parts of global finance and money flows, but that comes with regulatory and systemic risks, which you’d want to watch closely (especially as an advisor or investor).
The passage of landmark stablecoin legislation in the US is supercharging the debate on Wall Street over the digital assets’ true potential to become a meaningful source of demand for short-dated Treasuries.
While views vary, strategists at firms from JPMorgan Chase to Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs all agree that it’s far too soon to declare stablecoins game changers, no matter how upbeat Donald Trump and his advisers are about the tokens. And some see risks as well.
Passage of the Genius Act in July bolstered stablecoins, with backers championing the legislation as paving the way toward their wider use in the financial system. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent estimated the dollar-backed stablecoin market could reach $3 trillion by 2030 from about $300 billion now.
The law in the US requires issuers to back dollar-based tokens with Treasury bills and other cash equivalents, and Bessent’s contention is that stablecoin-induced demand will allow the Treasury to issue more bills. That, in turn, would reduce government reliance on long-term debt and ease pressure on mortgage rates and other borrowing costs.
For now, stablecoins are still used primarily to facilitate crypto trading, and recent volatile markets show how sentiment around digital assets can shift dramatically. The boost to Treasury-bill demand may not be as great as some estimate.
Sceptics point out that stablecoin inflows largely come from channels such as money-market funds and bank deposits.
Given that stablecoins are prohibited from paying interest under the Genius Act, yield-seeking investors have little incentive to shift money out of savings accounts or money-market funds.
And even if investors do move funds from money-market vehicles — currently the largest buyers of T-bills — the net effect may be zero. Instead of creating new demand for bills, it simply shifts who holds them.
This continues to be a very important topic to follow as it evolves and is challenged in RSA courts. This bill has the potential to cause massive disruption to not only our lifestyle as we know it, but could also cause mass migration of health professionals, from which RSA would never recover.
Health Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi (who is given a bewildering amount of airtime and credibility by the current administration) has “clarified” that nobody without a medical tax credit in South Africa will be forced to access medical care through the public health sector under the National Health Insurance (NHI) Act.
In response to a recent Parliamentary question, the minister explained that scheme members and their beneficiaries will continue to choose between accessing private or public providers as they do now. This is in complete contradiction to the Act (which I have read, in all its iterations from green paper to enactment last year). One of the most contentious aspects of the act, which has been ‘obfuscated’ in later versions, is that medical aids will only be able to cover what the NHI doesn’t, and while what that exactly is has been made more vague in the Act, in earlier versions it listed explicitly what the NHI will cover – which is everything except cosmetic surgery. This is the wording as it stands in this version of the Act.
This renewed interest comes after Motsoaledi floated the idea of phasing out medical aid tax credits to fund NHI in South Africa. The ‘extra’ money amounts to R33bn – they need R800bn. The plan included the phased removal of tax credits, which would start with the wealthiest third of medical aid members.
In a Parliamentary question and answer, DA MP Dr Karl Le Roux asked Motsoaledi to explain the impact of these plans further.
He asked whether the Health Department has assessed the total number of South Africans who would be forced to abandon their medical aids and access medical care through the public health sector following the removal of such subsidies and tax credits.
He further asked whether the department had assessed the impact of the specified total number of individuals on the public health system and how this would increase cost pressures on the already stretched public sector.
In response, Motsoaledi explained that, according to the NHI Act, the phasing out of tax credits will be done through a Money Bill to be published by the Finance Minister, where all the relevant factors will be determined and taken into consideration.
“The NHI Act has no section stating that people would be ‘forced to abandon their medical aids’,” he said. That is technically true – if you want a medical aid to cover your cosmetic surgery.
“The attention of the Honourable Member is drawn to the facts of the NHI Act that nobody without a medical tax credit will be forced to ‘access medical care through the public health sector’.”
“Scheme members and their beneficiaries will continue to choose between accessing private or public providers as they do now.” (This is only because the original wording that forced all medical practitioners to work under the NHI was challenged, and continues to be challenged, in court.)
President Cyril Ramaphosa after signing the NHI Bill into law
Motsoaledi further explained that, currently, medical aid tax credits “cost” the fiscus around R33 billion each year.
He said this money would have gone a long way to help the poor in the public health sector, but is being moved from the fiscus to subsidise well-off parts of the population.
“If that amount of money were made available to the public healthcare system, then the poor would benefit immensely,” he said.
“We wish to remind the Honourable Member that the public sector caters for 86% of the population, whereas the private sector, where this R33 billion is headed to, caters for only 14% of the population.”
Momentum Health previously estimated that the private sector spends an average of R1,750 a month, or R21,000 a year, on each of the country’s 9 million medical scheme beneficiaries.
If the NHI plans to offer the same care to all 63 million South Africans, this would translate into a cost of R1.3 trillion annually.
Many industry stakeholders have warned that the NHI Act, in its current form, may be unconstitutional, as it could be interpreted as limiting South Africans’ freedom of choice.
This is because, under the legislation, private medical providers will be limited to only providing services not already offered by the public sector, and these will now be determined by a ‘benefits committee’. Obfuscation at its best.
Make no mistake, the NHI Act risks causing significant and lasting harm to healthcare services, while driving thousands of skilled medical practitioners overseas. Some of those medical professionals are not going to ‘wait and see’ what happens, so if this is just window dressing to try and gain votes, the ANC is playing a dangerous game.
Realistically, it is going to take decades for the NHI to be implemented, the government has yet to publish even a semblance of a budget and all the projections have come from the private sector. RSA Inc cannot afford it – to put it in perspective, if we peg the cost at circa R1Tn, the net sum of all our taxes from all sources last year was R1.8tn. Net personal income tax was only R722bn!
Don’t panic, but don’t be complacent either. If you have a voice to push back or get involved in the legal objections, use it.
Central banks having a rethink?
Central banks have been embarking on the contentious climb down from their high post-pandemic rates for two years now, and so far, so good. Emerging markets seem to be emerging in the best shape. With the last central bank meetings of 2025 now imminent.
For developed markets, led by the US, the descent has been anything but smooth. Their belated reaction to inflation has been further complicated this year by the economic uncertainty provoked by Washington’s new tariff policy. That made judging a route for the Federal Reserve uniquely difficult.
In contrast, emerging markets’ proactive response to the price surge continues to pay off. Remarkably, and counter to decades of prior experience, the average inflation rate in emerging economies is now slightly lower than in the developed world, where price rises have started to accelerate again.
On the back of this, EM currencies have scored an impressive run against a dollar that has been weak all year. Using JPMorgan’s standard benchmark, they are at their strongest against the dollar since June 2024. That makes dollar-denominated debts less costly to finance:
This respite gives them space to pursue fiscal consolidation, further enhancing the appeal of these markets that historically demanded a premium. Perhaps more importantly, that strengthening happened as the seismic Trump 2.0 policy changes prompted investors to seek credible alternatives to the US. To be fair, one month in the Trump Fiefdom feels like a year.
Looked at in broader context, in terms of the number of standard deviations by which current levels of inflation and interest rates differ from their norm, it grows clearer that EM governments have handled the situation well (with some notable exceptions), while the jolt delivered by the pandemic has been severe indeed for developed markets that had been lulled into a sense of stability. Countries are slowly reverting to their ‘norm’ post-pandemic. In some cases, like RSA, there might just be a ‘new norm’ of a lower inflation average emerging.
(Frontier markets are wannabe emerging markets like Kenya, Nigeria and Bangladesh)
Two consecutive quarters in which consumer prices in emerging economies have risen more slowly than in developed nations, a rare reversal outside the pandemic era.
Local-EM-currency bonds have returned roughly 7% this year, outperforming US Treasuries, with markets like Hungary, Brazil, and Egypt delivering gains above 20%. With inflation cooling and expectations of sizable rate cuts already driving the rally, the latest readings strengthen the case for even deeper and faster easing. The list below gives an interesting snapshot of interest rate movements recently.
As has been the norm, Argentina, which barely survived a currency selloff that necessitated a rate hike, remains an outlier. Tariffs and their effects on inflation show as key factors as central banks paused their easing cycles. Of course, tariffs and prices remain relevant, but other issues are beginning to garner more attention from central bankers.
Many idiosyncratic factors might yet justify further easing. That’s most obviously the case in the UK, where Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves has tried to shore up revenues with a series of piecemeal tax hikes that satisfied nobody, while the Office of Budget Responsibility slashed productivity and growth forecasts. The one way that Chancellor Reeves can ease the pain of the tax hikes is by putting more cash in the taxpayers’ pockets – cutting interest rates is one way to do that.
The stage is set for potentially significant BOE rate cuts next year. That would sow the seeds for a cyclical recovery in the UK housing market, which would boost wealth effects and underpin a phase of stronger consumption, economic growth, and earnings growth.
While the Andrew Bailey-led Monetary Policy Committee may look to cut as a matter of necessity, the same urgency hardly applies to emerging markets. After all, they have proved much more effective in curbing inflation over the last few years. A dovish Fed should mean a weaker dollar and make their job that much easier.
Jay Powell and the Federal Open Market Committee look as if they’ve been caught in a storm of tariffs and are missing their sherpas (the new (and probably better) buzz word alternative to compass), the reliable economic data (as a result of the government shutdown), that typically guide their path down the mountain.
In that scenario, optimists like the Fed’s new governor, Stephen Miran, are increasingly eager to press ahead with cuts, convinced that staying put would pose a greater risk to the ‘climbing party’.
What’s driving this easing tilt?
The doves argue that while growth may be holding up, policymakers can’t ignore clear signs of a softening labour market, fading AI-driven optimism, and the drag from tariff-related inflation, all of which threaten the durability of the expansion. As Powell’s tenure draws to a close in May, his successor (expected, at the moment, to be National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett) is advertising that he will be more dovish.
Powell, ever the pragmatist, prefers to move only with clear visibility.
That probably means that he’ll take another step downward at the FOMC’s meeting next week and cut the fed funds rate by another 25 basis points. Last Wednesday’s estimate of private sector jobs from the management services group ADP, showing that payrolls actually contracted last month, seems to have ensured that.
Concerns over price stability haven’t gone away, and the possibility of pass-through effects from tariffs remains. But the message from FOMC officials over the last two weeks that they’re focused on the labour market means a cut next week. Investors now treat a cut as almost a certainty.
Make no mistake, historically this easing cycle is still considered aggressive (as was inflation’s sudden and sticky emergence, to be fair) and is likely to prolong the dollar’s weakness, giving emerging-market currencies some breathing room and, more importantly, allowing their central banks the space to recalibrate policy to address domestic economic strains while keeping external pressures in check.
Japan: Still Different
In contrast to the clear easing trajectory across emerging markets, the rate outlook in Japan is anything but settled. Last week, we also saw the reemergence of a Japanese Carry-Trade issue. Expectations for the chance of a hike by the Bank of Japan this month have swung sharply — to 80% from 15% — since its last policy meeting.
The arrival of Sanae Takaichi as prime minister with an expansionist agenda, continuing signs of higher Japanese inflation, and a startling run on the yen over the last few months all build pressure for tighter money, even though the economy remains becalmed.
Meanwhile, China sits on the opposite end of the spectrum, with deflation remaining stubborn. October’s marginal uptick in consumer prices, alongside a softer decline in producer prices, appears more technical than fundamental.
With Chinese demand still weak and firms locked in damaging price competition, more support is needed. Yet the recent stabilisation in price pressures reduces the urgency for action.
People’s Bank of China is likely to stay on hold through 2025 before delivering only modest easing in 2026 — around 20 basis points in rate cuts and a 50-basis-point reduction in reserve requirements. That restrained response, paired with subdued growth, should keep any rise in government bond yields firmly in check.
Altogether, central banks with the exception of the BOJ are at varying stages of their descent. Policymakers know they don’t have all the time in the world. But their patience to date has helped avoid any major crisis. With luck, they can maintain that.
Carry trade is one of those financial tricks that sounds fancy but is basically the adult version of borrowing your friend’s cheap toaster and renting it out for more.
Here’s the simple version:
You borrow money in a country where interest rates are low. Think Japan or Switzerland. Cheap money, like borrowing from a friend who never charges interest.
You take that money and invest it in a country where interest rates are high. Think places like Brazil or South Africa. These places pay more for holding their currency or bonds.
You pocket the difference. If you borrowed at 1% and earned 7%, that 6% gap is your “carry.”
It’s basically earning rent on money.
BUT — here’s the catch:
Currencies move. A lot. And they don’t care about your plans.
If the high-interest-rate currency suddenly weakens against the low-interest-rate one, your lovely profit can vanish like your willpower near a chocolate cake.
In one line:
Carry trade = borrow in a cheap currency → invest in an expensive one → hope the currencies don’t throw a tantrum.
It’s simple in theory, messy in practice — like assembling IKEA furniture, but with dollar signs.
Nvidia last Wednesday published new data showing that its latest artificial intelligence server can improve the performance of new models – including two popular ones from China – by 10 times. The data comes as the AI world has shifted its focus from training AI models, where Nvidia dominates the market, to putting them to use for millions of users, where Nvidia faces far more competition from rivals such as Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), and Cerebras.
Nvidia’s data focused on what are known as mixture-of-expert AI models. The technique is a way of making AI models more efficient by breaking up questions into pieces that are assigned to “experts” within the model. That exploded in popularity this year after China’s DeepSeek shocked the world with a high-performing open source model that took less training on Nvidia chips than rivals in early 2025.
Since then, the mixture-of-experts approach has been adopted by ChatGPT maker OpenAI, France’s Mistral and China’s Moonshoot AI, which in July released a highly-ranked open source model of its own.
Meanwhile, Nvidia has focused on making the case that while such models might require less training on its chips, its offerings can still be used to serve those models to users.
Nvidia’s latest AI server, which packs 72 of its leading chips into a single computer with speedy links between them, improved the performance of Moonshot’s Kimi K2 Thinking model by 10 times compared to the previous generation of Nvidia servers, a similar performance gain to what Nvidia has seen with DeepSeek’s models.
Nvidia said the gains primarily came from the sheer number of chips it can pack into servers and the fast links between them, an area where Nvidia still has advantages over its rivals.
Nvidia competitor AMD is working on a similar server packed with multiple powerful chips that it has said will come to market next year.
I am sure you’re familiar with the gas project off the Mozambique coastline, and probably more specifically the terror attacks that brought Islamic extremism uncomfortably close to our border. Here is a brief timeline:
This was billed as a game-changer for Mozambique’s economy and for global LNG supply when all went to plan, now the restart date is looking at 20 years since it was initially discovered.
The “force majeure” suspension has been lifted and the project is officially being reactivated. Financing has shifted: while some initial backers remain skittish, new or renewed commitments (e.g. from U.S. financiers) suggest the project still has legs — albeit more fragile than when first launched. There’s a renewed emphasis on local content, community integration, and ensuring (or at least signalling) that Mozambique itself benefits materially through jobs, supply-chain contracts, and eventually export revenues.
If Mozambique LNG succeeds, Mozambique could become one of Africa’s leading LNG exporters — shifting not just its economic prospects, but also regional energy dynamics, trade flows, and foreign investment patterns. But success depends on security, stability, and execution. The insurgent violence that stalled the project showed how vulnerable such mega-projects are when local conditions unravel. For investors, the project is a test case: can big capital and major global firms make large natural-resource investments in volatile regions — and deliver returns without destabilising communities or sparking fresh crises?
The UK government withdrew financing of more than $1 billion for TotalEnergies SE’s liquefied natural gas facility in Mozambique, just as the company looks to resume construction.
Insurgents in Cabo Delgado province, where the project is located, haven’t launched a major attack since May 2024, but smaller-scale raids have accelerated in recent months. The UK government advises against travel in the region, citing Islamist extremist activity and clashes between insurgents, vigilante groups and security forces.
UKEF initially agreed to provide $1.15 billion of support for the TotalEnergies project, to use goods and services from a number of British companies. It was one of eight export credit agencies participating in Mozambique LNG’s project financing of $14.9 billion.
Separately, TotalEnergies informed the Netherlands’ provider of export credit insurance last month that it would make do without its share of the project financing, the Dutch Finance Ministry said in a statement Monday. As a result, the Netherlands will no longer be involved in financing the project, and the French company will close the resulting financing gap in another way.
Author: Dawn Ridler
A lot has happened in markets during the year, and I thought it might be a good idea to recap these.
The year started with the MSCI World Index producing a return of 3.6% in January and it looked like the market was going to build on a bumper year recorded in 2024 after the index recorded 19.2%. Remember that the ACWI recorded 24.4% in 2023 and much of this good news has lulled investors in thinking that market can only go up in value. The index lost -0.7% in February and then -4.4% in March after Donald Trump’s introduction of tariffs that the world, quite frankly, has not seen for decades.
The administration calls it a tax on foreign countries, but in reality, as the cost of goods goes up in the US, ultimately, the US citizen pays for this. The market sell-off quickly reverted in March after reprieves and negotiations started producing tariff results which could be likened to a tax hike.
The US has to find a way to reduce the level of debt outstanding at the federal level. This is going to require a momentous effort, and I have been writing about this quite extensively. No doubt 2026 will be a continuation of this again. The Dollar has weakened as the US Treasury reasserted itself as the dominant force ahead of the Federal Reserve. But the FED isn’t dead yet, as was proven towards the latter part of the year when their current cycle of Quantitative tightening led to stress in the money markets. The FED has stressed that it will again revert to easing by 1 December, showing its importance in maintaining the US financial system.
Much of the economic uncertainty has left non-tech companies faltering during the year and these arguably provide the best value going into 2026.
The top 10 shares by market cap contributed 9.23% of the S&P500 return year-to-date, whereas the rest of the market contributed 7.23% of the return.
One was either invested in technology, as the promise of a new AI dawn sent these stock prices higher, or one was attempting to pick winners elsewhere. Consider that picking winners elsewhere would have required sifting through 490 companies … no small task.
Counter-cyclical and contrarian managers would have battled for returns in the year, and no doubt significantly underperformed the indices. But the concentration that this has had to affect is large as the S&P500 has become the most concentrated in its history. The top 10 today make up 35.78% of the index, whereas in 2000 when the Dot-Com bubble was in full force, the top 10 companies made up 26% of the index. This time, though, much of the price appreciation has been backed up by actual increases in profits, something that was missing from the Dot-Com bubble
Next year is going to become a balancing act as investors look for evidence that AI can actually drive companies forward and thus their incomes. Failing this, these stocks will sell down in favour of better value elsewhere. Market liquidity in 2026 is going to require close monitoring. Yes, the FED has shown a willingness to provide a liquidity backstop where required, but this alone is probably not going to be enough. The Europeans, Japanese and the Chinese will have to play their part as well. And then there is the fear that all of this liquidity will invariably start showing up in inflation, which will force interest rates up again.
After three years of sterling global returns (MSCI ACWI: 2023: 24.4%, 2024: 19.2% and YTD: 20.6%), diversification and caution are more important than ever. That doesn’t mean that the market can’t continue to grow. The current P/E of 29x for the S&P 500, though, requires a lot to continue going right for markets to keep going up, especially the S&P 500.
To profit from markets requires optimism, but perhaps 2026 requires cautious optimism.
EXCHANGE RATES and other Indices:
The Rand/Dollar closed at R16.91 (R17.13, R17.36, R17.13, 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 R22.57 (R22.68, R22.74, R22.56, 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 R19.68 (R19.86, R19.99, R19.96, 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 $63.71 ($63.19, $62.42, $63.94, $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 $22.57 ( $90,809, $86,334, $94,990, $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:
Holiday checklist NEW
Next year – Action Plan NEW
Next year – Vision, Mission etc NEW
Medical Risk Mitigation
Next Year – Consolidation
Abdication or diversification?
Carbo-loading your retirement
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