|
Wednesday 01st of December 2010 |
Morning Africa |
www.rich.co.ke Register and its all Free.
If you are tracking the NSE Do it via RICHLIVE and use Mozilla Firefox as your Browser. 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. |
read more |
|
‘Zombie Economics’ Stalks Planet Bloomberg World Of Finance |
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 |
read more |
|
Currency Markets at a Glance WSJ World Currencies |
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. |
read more |
|
Would You Pay $835 for Dinner? WSJ Food, Climate & Agriculture |
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. |
read more |
|
Live 24 Hour Spot Gold KITCO 1392.30 Last Commodities |
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. |
read more |
|
LME: Trader Holds Up To 80% Of Exchange Copper Stocks WSJ Commodities |
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 |
read more |
|
Soft Commodities at a Glance INO Commodities |
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. |
read more |
|
Naspers Core Earnings Rise 33% on Internet, Pay-TV Bloomberg Information & Communication Technology |
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. |
read more |
|
Kenya’s Odinga Backs Cooperation With ICC Probe Bloomberg Law & Politics |
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. |
read more |
|
Kenya eyes international investor for National Bank Reuters N.S.E Equities - Finance & Investment |
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 |
read more |
|
Kenya Photos National Geographic Africa |
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. |
read more |
|
|
|
|