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 on the Front Page of the site

Macro Thoughts

It was as if the FX markets had reached the conclusions that it is all
in the price now, maybe not an impeachment but pretty much everything
else is baked into the price of the dollar.
The dollar is the elephant in the room [financial markets].
This week we will need to study it closely for the signals that it emits.
I think the rebound will gather strength because just about everyone
has been lulled into a [false] sense of security.
And that the dollar which was deep in its end-zone has just thrown a
hail-mary pass, which is set to make up a lot of ground.

Home Thoughts

It is not down on any map; true places never are. Moby Dick

 ... the world was like a dream, like a phantom, like a bubble, like a
shadow, like a vanishing dew, like a lightning's flash @DailyKerouac

“She’ll laugh. She’ll tell our kids.”
“I didn’t think of that.”
“Eight years old, six years old. Imagine their response.”
“Zaum.”
“You remember. Good for you.”
“Transrational poetry.”
“Shapes and sounds. The futurists. Zaum. You remember. A shape, a sound.”
“Tell your kids. Zaum. Let them say the word.”
They went back to their desks and bent into the screens, scrolling
through their messages.

More comfortable online than out partying, post-Millennials are safer,
physically, than adolescents have ever been. But they’re on the brink
of a mental-health crisis.

“But it is a curve each of them feels, unmistakably. It is the
parabola. They must have guessed, once or twice -- guessed and refused
to believe -- that everything, always, collectively, had been moving
toward that purified shape latent in the sky, that shape of no
surprise, no second chance, no return. Yet they do move forever under
it, reserved for its own black-and-white bad news certainly as if it
were the rainbow, and they its children. . . .” ― Thomas Pynchon
Gravity's Rainbow

FAR away in distant lands lies the Hermit Kingdom. This land is ruled
by The House of Kim and its capital is Pyongyang. The first and
‘Eternal’ President was Kim Il-sung and his successor Kim Jong-il
whose designated successor is Kim Jung-un. They all have had tiny
little hands like the Elves in the Elves and the Shoemaker.And this
country has nuclear weapons and on its border with its neighbour South
Korea sit 25,000 American soldiers. Last week the North shelled the
South and issued all kinds of threats. “The DPRK (North Korea) will
deal a merciless military counter-attack at any provocative act of
intruding into its territorial waters in the future.’’ President Obama
sent the USS George Washington to the Yellow Sea and now here we sit
watching developments and trying to model what is happening and what
might happen? In reality, we are actually navigating in uncharted
waters. The media keeps chanting like a mantra, China will rein North
Korea in. It is not in their Interests to have a mad dog like North
Korea as an ally. And whether its the BBC, The New York Times or Radio
France. I venture this is an embedded narrative fallacy and that most
Western commentators are apparently popping Qaaludes. Let me tell you
why. China is taking a much more forward position and particularly in
Asia, its near abroad. I believe North Korea is the perfect instrument
[the Attack Dog] for China to show those who choose to operate outside
their sphere of influence [and by extension, in the US’] that there
will be a very heavy price to pay.I venture that the Chinese are quite
happy to see those 25,000 US soldiers run right into the sea and we
need to grow up [as does the media] and see it for what it is. North
Korea and China see a weak and tottering President Obama and this
flashpoint represents the beginning of a roll back of US Power. And
you know the battlefield is not just the military one. Its a financial
one as well. Did you know the South Korean President has a military
war room and an economic war room and they say he spends more time in
the economic war room. Think about that for a moment. By this time,
you know I consider one of the finest books about trading and
economics one written by Edwin Lefevre called Reminiscences of a Stock
Market Operator and in that book he says ‘The Tape is your Telescope’
and it is. And I follow all kinds of tapes and one of the tapes is the
South Korean Stock Market called the KOSPI. About 5 working days
before this blew, someone sold more than $1b worth of South Korean
equities seconds before the close. Who was that? Not one commentator
has connected those dots. Just because China does not flex its ability
does not mean it cannot. If you have the power to do something and
have not that does not make you less powerful.

Kenyans waiting since 2am to vote but u25's in UK applauded for
voting when it takes five minutes ¯_(ツ)_/¯

The newly enfranchised youth vote is a big absolute number of first
time voters, and is a very big curve ball. Is this youth vote turned
on? Will it turn out? And how will it vote? My view is that this
demographic actually has the election in its hands. Will we see a
youthquake and if so how does it break?

“I am not falling for the ideas of politicians,” Kibaraza, 27, said as
he strolled along a dusty street near his home in Kawangware, a slum
in the capital, Nairobi. “We vote for them and they go there and
benefit themselves. Somebody driving a Toyota Corolla, we vote for
them and after one year you see him with a Range Rover, a
Mercedes-Benz.”

The average age in Kenya is just 19 and with more half of the 19.6
million registered voters aged under 35, Kibaraza and his
contemporaries have the power to determine the outcome of a
presidential contest that could go either way.

Ndung’u Wainaina, executive director at the Nairobi-based
International Center for Policy & Conflict, expects the opposition to
be the main beneficiary of young voters’ discontent over a dearth of
economic opportunities.

“Theirs’ will likely be a protest vote against the conservatives,” he
said. “If the youths want, they can become the actual determinants of
the vote if they choose to come out to vote en masse.”

“We are struggling,” he said. “We are living on hope, that one day
they will care about us.”

Euro 1.1735
Dollar Index 93.66
Japan Yen 109.93
Swiss Franc 0.9674
Pound 1.2983
Aussie 0.7873
India Rupee 63.775
South Korea Won 1137.20
Brazil Real 3.1278
Egypt Pound 17.7670
South Africa Rand 13.3919

It's enough to give any treasurer a smoker's cough: launching the
third-biggest fundraising ever during the August lull, in an industry
that's been roiled by regulators, by a company that's just suffered a
two-step rating downgrade.COMPANY MAY RAISE$25 billionNot a problem
for British American Tobacco Plc.It's in the process of raising $25
billion in what may be the largest corporate bond offering of the
year. The maker of Lucky Strikes wants to refinance its 42
billion-pound ($55 billion) buyout of Reynolds American -- a deal
which will give it No. 1 position in tobacco-related products
globally.

U.S. crude #oil futures settle at $49.17/bbl. ⬇$0.22. -0.45%.
@Lee_Saks 49.14 [40.00 then 32,00]

Pala New Energy Metals will invest in cobalt, lithium, vanadium, rare
earths, nickel and tin. Pala Investments Ltd. started the fund with
its own money and cash from other investors. The firm previously
snapped up cobalt, anticipating surging demand from automakers that
more than doubled prices in the past year.

“We have been focused on the evolution of the battery chemistries and
this has allowed us to invest early in different components of the
battery," Stephen Gill, managing partner at Zug, Switzerland-based
Pala Investments, said in an interview. "We hope to continue to be
ahead of the curve as technologies evolve."

The company was among investors to buy up physical cobalt before
selling it for cash and shares in Cobalt 27 Capital Corp., listed in
Canada this year to offer equity investors a way to take a stake in
the market. In June, Pala said it had swapped 626 metric tons of
cobalt for shares in Cobalt 27, making it the largest shareholder with
19.5 percent.

In total, the Toronto-listed firm, run by Pala Managing Director
Anthony Milewski, bought 2,158.6 tons of cobalt for cash and shares,
or about 2.5 percent of annual global demand. Spot prices have jumped
almost 120 percent in the past year to $57,500 a ton.

Cobalt is essential for lithium-ion batteries powering anything from
Tesla Inc.’s cars to Apple Inc.’s iPhones and iPads. Heath Jansen, a
mining analyst at Citigroup Inc., recently called cobalt a "wonder
metal" riding the boom in electric vehicles. The metal, mined in
places like the Democratic Republic of Congo, is more efficient than
the minerals used in earlier-generation batteries.

Pala may invest through debt and equity stakes in mining projects or
buy and store physical metal to benefit from rising prices.

Plans to hoard base metals, including a scheme promoted by JPMorgan
Chase & Co. for copper in 2012, have previously prompted concerns
among consumers that prices would be pushed artificially high. The
cobalt market was mired in surplus for years after the global
financial crisis before battery demand tightened the market.

Pala is looking beyond its early focus on cobalt, with battery
technology starting to shift toward other metals. "What’s cobalt today
may also be nickel tomorrow," Gill said.

Emerging Markets

Frontier Markets

Nigeria’s foreign-exchange market is starting to see the unification
that bond and stock investors have been calling for. The naira
weakened 13 percent against the dollar last week on the main interbank
market after monetary officials told lenders to start quoting trades
made in the so-called Nafex currency window that was opened for
investors in April. The drop in the naira has almost wiped out the
spread with the black-market rate.

Ghana Stock Exchange Composite Index Bloomberg +34.25% 2017

At stake is Kenya’s hard-won stability and standing as a dynamic
regional hub for enterprise and a destination for local and
international businesses. The result and conduct of the vote will
reverberate across Kenya’s borders, from war-torn Somalia where Kenyan
troops are fighting the Islamist insurgency al-Shabaab, to the
faster-growing economies of Ethiopia, Rwanda and Tanzania, where
democracy is in retreat.

“There is a tsunami of money that would flood into Kenya if this
election can be pulled off well,” said Aly Khan Satchu, an investment
expert in Nairobi. “From an economic perspective, this is a pivot
election...it could produce a very bifurcated outcome.”

The largest and most sophisticated economy in East Africa, Kenya
avoided the economic slowdown that hit many of its mineral-exporting
neighbors when prices for oil and ores plunged in 2014.

Kenyan gross domestic product grew 6% last year, dramatically
outperforming the sub-Saharan average rate of 1.4%.

Lured by stability and an open market, international capital has
poured into Kenya, cementing the country’s position as a hub for
finance and technology. Hundreds of tech companies have set up in a
district of the capital renamed “Silicon Savannah.”

“Elections matter because of Kenya’s importance for global and
regional businesses. It’s simply a sign of how critical Kenya is,”
said Charles Murito, country director for Alphabet Inc.’s Google,
which arrived in Nairobi a decade ago and now employs 55 staff here.

Nairobi All Share Bloomberg +19.12% 2017


The NSE closed firm ahead of tomorrow's General Election. A win for
President Kenyatta would translate into a further and sharp rerating
higher


Nairobi ^NSE20 Bloomberg +19.84% 2017


Every Listed Share can be interrogated here