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0930-1500 KENYA TIME
Normal Board - The Whole shebang
Prompt Board Next day settlement
Expert Board All you need re an Individual stock.

The Latest Daily PodCast can be found here
http://www.rich.co.ke/rctools/richpod.php

#Mindspeak Saturday 4th December 0930
Bob Collymore CEO Safaricom
We are hoping to be able to Live Stream This Event Direct to your Mobile Phone.
http://bit.ly/ecZZyP

We will stream onto this Page on www.rich.co.ke
http://www.rich.co.ke/rctools/mindlive.php

My Weekly Piece for The Star The Hermit Kingdom
http://bit.ly/gzglrT

A Photograph I took My Office yesterday Evening Twitpic
http://twitpic.com/3bn5yz

I found it a little Eerie but also re invigorating.

Macro Thoughts

We are teetering on a Precipice and performing a beautiful Ballet but
it all has a Fin De Siecle Feel about it.

Harbingers.

Home Thoughts

Well You might recall I advertised my House via this Missive. Plenty
of People came by but it appears the Rather Entrepreneurial
Nightwatchman has pulled the proverbial Rabbit out of the Hat. Rather
pleased for him because it is a BreakOut Trade. His Local Market
Intelligence was superior to all his Competition. Statistics in this
Neck of the Woods are notoriously difficult to source so here goes.
The return on this Purchase was 30% annualised and I saved My rent so
You can better understand why 5 out 11 were bought by the Diaspora.
Essentially The Yield for those who bought 3 Years ago is now 20% [on
the Purchase Price] or very close.

I bought a 1 Acre Lot facing the Golf Course at Windsor via my Friend
Francis who runs the Hotel. We were having a chat one Saturday and He
said

'What about this?' It was on the Golf Course and I had been pottering
around South Africa and Golf Side was very premium. I bought it on a
whim. My Wife said What have you done? Anyway, I want a House where my
Children will visit and My GrandChildren and I said to The Wife I
cannot handle more Stress, This is Your project and it is.

A Few weeks ago Martin O-O The CEO of KCB made an excellent
Presentation at #Mindspeak see here
http://www.rich.co.ke/rctools/richtv.php and we were chatting outside
and I said.

Martin, This Fellow of Yours turned up in My Office and said

'Aly-Khan I am the Fixer.'

And Nishet and I looked at him and both thought 'Really.'

And he sorted everything out in a Jiffy.

And I said to Martin, 'This Fellow of Yours is just Tip Top.'

Martin was just chuffed. And You know if You need a Mortgage in this
Region Go and Listen to his Presentation.

Political Reflections

There is a Moment in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy lifts the VEIL and
discovers the Wizard is a Pretend Wizard and not the Real Deal. And
Wikileaks has lifted the Veil. And Its very interesting.

Picture Ben Bernanke as a zombie in a horror film. Staggering
slack-jawed through the bullets, he groans a terrifying phrase:

“Great Moderation, Greeeeeeat Moderaaaaaation!”

Erroneous economic ideas resemble the living dead, writes John Quiggin
in his smart new book, “Zombie Economics.” They are dangerous yet
impossible to kill. Even after a financial crisis buries them, they
survive in our minds and can rise unbidden from the necropolis of
ideology.

Consider the undying notion that booms and busts can be tamed in a New
Era of endless prosperity. The latest incarnation of this zombie idea
-- the Great Moderation popularized by Federal Reserve Chairman
Bernanke -- died in a storm of bailouts and foreclosures. Yet the
Great Moderation endures in academia, says Quiggin, an economics
professor at the University of Queensland in Australia.

“Research projects based on explaining, measuring and projecting the
Great Moderation were not abandoned,” he writes. “The intellectual
commitments on which those projects are based have proved tenacious.”

Zombie ideas are legion, ranging from trickle-down economics to
Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium modeling, Quiggin says. Taken
together, they form a bundle of theories, policies and catchphrases
that he terms “market liberalism,” seeking a neutral name instead of
pejoratives such as Thatcherism and Reaganism.

“Unlike other monsters like werewolves and vampires, zombies always
come in mobs,” he writes. “Individually, they seem easy enough to
kill, but in a group their strength can be overwhelming.”

One of the more vulnerable zombies is the strong form of the Efficient
Markets Hypothesis, which postulates that it’s impossible to beat the
market because stock prices already incorporate all information held
by traders. Though this zombie should have perished in the dot-com
bust, its advocates “went on as if nothing had happened,” Quiggin
says. Only the Great Credit Crackup drove home the lesson that markets
can be mispriced and downright irrational.

A little humility wouldn’t hurt, as Quiggin writes. “The Global
Financial Crisis gives the economics profession the chance to bury the
zombie ideas that led the world into crisis, and to produce a more
realistic, humble and above all socially useful body of thought.”

Until then, expect endless reruns of “Night of the Living Dead.”

“Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us” is published by
Princeton.

Conclusions

The Star February 2010 Voodoo Economics
http://bit.ly/auVlOh

Euro 1.3008 - This might go all the way down to 1.1760 area again.
Pound 1.5580
Yen 83.52
Dollar Index 81.14
Aussie 0.9569
Rand 7.0950
South Korean Won 1153.90
India Rupee 45.735
Brazil Real 1.7136

The euro fell below the $1.30 mark on Tuesday for the first time since
Sept. 15 to trade as low as $1.2967. and slid against the yen to
levels last seen in mid-September, as investor confidence in the
economic health of the euro zone continues to crumble.
The single currency has lost 6.9% in November, its worst monthly
performance since May, when the Greek debt crisis was at the
forefront.The euro has declined 9.3% this year, on pace for the
second-worst annual performance since it was introduced.

The dollar index rose to 81.311 from 80.797 on Monday.The index has
advanced 5.2% this month and 4.4% this year.

The yield premium demanded by investors to hold Spanish 10-year
government bonds over German bunds hit 3 full percentage points on
Tuesday, the highest since the euro’s 1999 launch. Spanish, Italian
and Portuguese bond yields jumped, even before Standard & Poor’s
placed Portugal’s long-term sovereign rating on review for a possible
downgrade.

Conclusions

The Euro feels like the Little Dutch Boy and The Dyke.

Euro versus Dollar 1 Year Chart INO 1.30232 Last
http://bit.ly/9pP06c

A Great Deal depends on thinking at the the Peoples Bank of China.

When word got out that Thomas Keller, one of the world’s most
recognized chefs and owner of The French Laundry and Per Se
restaurants, would be visiting Hong Kong, a waiting list for dinner of
more than 1,000 people built up in days. That was six months ago.

But in recent weeks, the list has dwindled to 500. Why? Because the
Mandarin Oriental — which is footing the bill for Mr. Keller’s visit —
has confirmed the price of the 11-course dinner: 6,477 Hong Kong
dollars (US$835) a head, including wine and service.

That’s triple the going rate of the nine-course tasting menu at Mr.
Keller’s Per Se restaurant in New York, which comes in at US$275,
including tax but no wine.

China's securities regulators are allowing mainland Chinese to invest
in foreign exchange-traded gold funds for the first time, unleashing
the full buying power of the world's second-biggest economy on funds
that already own more gold than most central banks.

Conclusions

New All Time Highs are as inevitable as it ever gets in the Markets.

Up to 80% of London Metal Exchange's copper stocks are held by a
single trader, according to the exchange's daily warrant banding
report.The dominant position holder owns between 50% and 80% of the
355,750 metric tons currently held in LME listed warehouses. This
amounts to more than 177,875 metric tons of copper, worth about $1.5
billion.

"That's a big market, it's not too easy to get that kind of material,
that much tonnage," said a U.S.-based physical metal trader.

Copper Dec 2010 Chart INO
http://bit.ly/icMQVa

Last Price    3.8230
First Delivery    2010-12-31
Open Int.    8507
Contract High    4.047 Contract High Date    2010-11-11
Contract Low    2.3075 Contract Low Date    2009-07-02
Expiration    2010-12-29

COCOA
CC.Z10.E    Dec 2010 (E)    2772    +51    +1.85%   
CC.H11.E    Mar 2011 (E)    2823    +68    +2.44%   
CC.K11.E    May 2011 (E)    2844    +67    +2.39%   
COFFEE
KC.Z10.E    Dec 2010 (E)    200.95    -1.45    -0.72%   
COTTON
CT.Z10.E    Dec 2010 (E)    126.23    +3.72 +3.03%   
SUGAR
SB.H11.E    Mar 2011 (E)    27.48    -0.87    -3.07%   
SB.K11.E    May 2011 (E)    24.99    -0.79    -3.06%   
SB.N11.E    Jul 2011 (E)    22.32    -0.86    -3.71%   

Conclusions

Cotton has bounced hardest. Sugar seems unable for now to regain the
Higher Ground.

Naspers Ltd., Africa’s largest media company, said first-half core
headline earnings rose 33 percent on Internet business in China and
growth in African pay-television subscribers.Core headline earnings,
which exclude one-time items, climbed to 3.2 billion rand ($448
million) in the six months through September from 2.4 billion rand a
year earlier, the Cape Town-based company said in a statement today.
Sales rose 18 percent to 15.8 billion rand.Tencent, China’s most
valuable Internet company in which Naspers holds a 35 percent stake,
increased earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and
amortization by 61 percent to 1.79 billion rand as it added users and
expanded its QZone social networking platform. Naspers offers pay-TV
to about 50 African countries and increased revenue in this unit by 20
percent to 10.2 billion rand, adding 498,000 new subscribers.

Core headline earnings “is a suitable measure of the group’s
sustainable operating performance,” Naspers said in the statement. The
figure excludes Naspers’s 1.5 billion-rand accounting profit from
swapping its stake in Russian social website Mail.ru for a holding in
Digital Sky Technologies. Naspers also bought more shares in DST,
which owns 2.4 percent of Facebook Inc.

Revenue at other Internet businesses, including Allegro and Ricardo,
e-commerce businesses in eastern and western Europe respectively, and
excluding Tencent, climbed 54 percent to 2.17 billion rand. Naspers
continued to acquire Internet businesses, the statement said.

In August, Naspers paid $144 million for 68 percent of OLX, which has
a classifieds business in Latin America. In September, it spent $44
million for 78 percent of Multiply Inc., a social networking and
online marketplace with users in South-East Asia, the statement said.
It spent 353 million rand on smaller acquisitions.

Net income rose to 3.45 billion rand from 1.58 billion rand a year
earlier.Naspers advanced 0.3 percent to 366 rand at 10:11 a.m. in
Johannesburg trading, giving the company a market value of 148.6
billion rand. The stock has risen 22 percent this year.

Naspers share Price Data Bloomberg
http://bit.ly/aZbpfb

Price35,861.000       
52-Wk High (11/05/10)38,145.000   
52-Wk Low (07/02/10)24,800.000
1-YrReturn30.305
Shares (Millions)406.085   
Market Cap (Millions)145,626.300   
Earnings8.730   
Price/Earnings40.567   
90-Day Volatility28.651   
Beta vs. JALSH0.851

Conclusions

This is a very interesting Company. DSTV Facebook TenCent.

Clearly correlated to the Euro to some degree but near 7.15 It looks a
very optimal Entry Point.

Kenya has “no option” other than to cooperate fully with the
International Criminal Court’s probe into post-election violence
almost three years ago that left 1,500 people dead, Prime Minister
Raila Odinga said.

Attempts to set up local courts to try perpetrators of the violence,
sparked by a disputed presidential election in 2007, failed after
members of parliament voted against proposed legislation, Odinga said
today in a meeting with U.S. Under Secretary of State for Democracy
and Global Affairs Maria Otero in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, according
to an e-mailed statement from the premier’s office.

“We tried to set up a local tribunal, but members of parliament
rejected it,” Odinga said, according to the statement. “That is how
the envelope ended up with The Hague and we have no option but to
cooperate with the ICC process.”

Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the Hague-based court’s chief prosecutor, said he
plans to present charges next month against as many as six Kenyans who
allegedly instigated the clashes.

Former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who helped mediate
Kenya’s power-sharing agreement, gave the ICC a secret list with the
names of alleged ringleaders in addition to boxes of evidence in July
last year.

The government still plans to set up a domestic tribunal to try
suspects, Odinga said. Changes to Kenya’s courts and the attorney
general’s office, promised in a new constitution enacted in August,
will help “win the confidence of the people of Kenya and the
international community and handle suspects,” according to the
statement.

Kenya is a signatory to the Rome Statute that created the global war
crimes court.

Kenya's year-on-year inflation rate rose to 3.84 percent in November
from 3.09 percent in October due to higher fuel prices, the statistics
office said on Tuesday.

Conclusions

All about Fuel.

Low Fuel Prices in the National Interest The Star
http://bit.ly/bDKBwv

Kenya aims to sell a stake in National Bank (NBK.NR: Quote) to an
international investor by June next year mainly because competition
laws would block a sale to a local bank, a senior Treasury official
said on Tuesday.The government owns a 22.5 percent stake in Kenya's
ninth biggest bank, plus a further 48 percent through the state-run
National Social Security Fund (NSSF), with which it is discussing the
proposed sale of the National Bank stake.

The government's intention is to offload a 51 percent shareholding
through a sale to a strategic partner and another 10 percent to the
public.

"We prefer a strategic investor coming from not within Kenya because
we would not want another (local) bank buying into NBK because that
... may not be allowed," Joseph Kinyua, permanent secretary at the
finance ministry told Reuters.

"We would want this to happen in the course of this financial year...
We really would want the transaction to be done by the time this
financial year is finished," Kinyua said.

National Bank share price data www.rich.co.ke
http://bit.ly/8U8iAv

Two pairs of large aluminum tusks cross above Moi Avenue in Mombasa;
they were erected to commemorate the 1956 visit of Britain’s Princess
Margaret.

Samburu Wedding

Photograph by Michael Nichols

In keeping with tradition, Samburu families arrange marriages for
their daughters when they’re as young as ten. The entire community
celebrates during several days of elaborate ceremonies designed to
counteract superstitions and bring the new couple good luck.

The EAC is no longer a project on paper but a reality and with a
market size of 126 million people. The opportunities for business,
employment, growth and development of the region and politics are
exciting.  As Aly-Khan Satchu said “The most valuable currency is not
in your pocket but in your head!”