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

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Macro Thoughts

We are living in an unprecedented moment.

Home Thoughts

The Treasury Department cites human rights violations

“Issue all the sanctions you want, but the Venezuelan people have
decided to be free and I have decided to be the president of a free
people.”

Maduro is the fourth head of state sanctioned by the U.S., according
to Mnuchin. North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and
Syria’s Bashar al-Assad are also on Treasury’s list of “specially
designated nationals.”

Bets on a Venezuelan default are climbing. The implied probability of
the country missing a payment over the next year has risen to 62
percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg on credit-default
swaps. That’s the highest level since March 2016.

Other capitals are going to run out of options.

Conclusions

entirely rational - Saw what happened to Muammar and to Saddam.
Got himself a deterrent.

Currency Returns in 2017 via @jsblokland
@jsblokland  12h

Euro 1.1833
Dollar Index 92.88
Japan Yen 110.17
Swiss Franc 0.9665
Pound 1.3221
Aussie 0.8032
India Rupee 64.115
South Korea Won 1118.05
Brazil Real 3.1273
Egypt Pound 17.8960
South Africa Rand 13.1647

U.S. crude #oil futures settle at $50.17/bbl. ⬆$0.46. +0.93%.
@Lee_Saks 50.27

Emerging Markets

Frontier Markets

During a state banquet in Pretoria, South Africa, in April 2015, I had
a brief encounter with Grace Mugabe, the first lady of Zimbabwe. I was
asking her husband, Robert Mugabe, about the question of her
succeeding him as president. “She doesn’t have those ambitions,” began
Mugabe, the spectacles perched on his nose reminiscent of an elderly
librarian, a narrow moustache clinging to his upper lip like a
caterpillar. Suddenly he interrupted himself with mock alarm:
“Careful, there she comes!” The frail 91-year-old, who increasingly
resembles a hanger for his well-tailored suits, remained seated. I
rose and turned to behold his 49-year-old wife, with her cropped hair
and long black dress, lace hanging daintily at the wrist. Grace, who
had been the subject of persistent gossip about a serious illness, was
returning from an interlude on the dancefloor that delighted dinner
guests.

“Hello, David Smith of the Guardian. We were just talking about you.”

For two decades, she was a demure companion at her husband’s side. Now
she has taken the stage as a fearsome political figure in her own
right. Can Grace Mugabe seize power before it’s too late?• Click here
for text version

“Oh, really? You were talking about me? But I’m dead, I’m a corpse,”
she replied smiling. The reports about her ill-health had apparently
been exaggerated.

“I just wanted to ask you if it’s true you might like to be president
one day,” I asked.

Her hard features, which can resemble a mask with striking dark eyes
and sculpted cheekbones, dissolved into a laugh. She did not deny it.
“I don’t know, I don’t know.”

Just then a band struck up and I beat a retreat, past the glares of
South African protocol mandarins, one of whom ordered me to leave,
snarling: “I hope we never see you again.”

The bourse's performance - the All-share index rose 0.85 percent in
early trade on Monday to a new peak of 55,366.74 - has been driven by
foreign flows into equities and earnings garnered offshore.

Naspers, a newspaper publisher turned global e-commerce giant which
accounts for over 20 percent of the JSE's market capitalisation, was
largely responsible for the JSE's run, having risen sharply as
investors see it trading at a large discount to its one-third stake in
China's Tencent.

Naspers, trading close to an all-time high and up 42 percent so far
this year, has its primary listing on the JSE, and luxury goods group
Richemont, which has a secondary listings on the bourse, is up 21
percent.

55,207.41 +324.20 +0.59%

Dollar versus Rand Chart INO 13.1647


Nigeria All Share Bloomberg +33.39% 2017


Ghana Stock Exchange Composite Index Bloomberg +33.61% 2017

The IEBC has postponed a Monday test of its election
results-transmission system and will announce a new date soon,
Chebukati said. He vowed the IEBC will ensure all its employees’ lives
are “secured” before voting day.

The National Super Alliance, which is backing Odinga’s bid for the
presidency, condemned the killing. Addressing reporters in Nairobi,
coalition spokesman Musalia Mudavadi said Msando’s responsibilities
included systems dealing with voter identity verification, electronic
tallying and transmitting results.

“He was at the nerve center,” Mudavadi said. “He was supposed to lead
the results transmission trial run today. It’s telling that the key
person has been eliminated at this delicate time.”

The killing is “an attempt to drive a dagger into the heart of the
forthcoming election, and indeed a dagger into the heart of Kenyan
democracy,” he said. “But we are totally confident that this terrible
crime will accomplish the opposite and strengthen all Kenyans’ will to
demand a free, fair and credible election.”

I learnt last week that Nearly half of the atoms that make up our
bodies may have formed beyond the milky way and travelled to the solar
system on intergalactic winds driven by giant exploding stars.

“Science is very useful for finding our place in the universe,” said
Daniel Anglés-Alcázar, an astronomer at Northwestern University “In
some sense we are extragalactic visitors or immigrants in what we
think of as our galaxy.”

Rumi said “We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like
dust.” I have digressed but the tangential point is that our politics
has been driven largely by a narrow ethnicity when we are all in fact
inter-galactic citizens.

The eighth of August now looms real close, and as it gets closer the
cacophony outside my window overlooking Waiyaki way gets louder and
louder. Most polls show this election as too close to call but
pollsters the world over have been getting it wrong from Brexit to
Trump. If you look at the United Kingdom, the youth vote slept in
during Brexit then woke up for the UK snap election and nearly carried
Jeremy Corbyn into 10 Downing Street. 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?

The next key issue is turn-out. Are voters on both sides motivated in
the same way as they were last time, when the ICC proved a lightning
rod in motivating voters in Jubilee strongholds? I was listening to
Shaffie Weru on his morning show on Kiss FM, and he was regaling his
listeners with a tale about how a group of women were withdrawing
conjugal rights from their menfolk as a way of compelling turn-out and
its direction. Whilst Shaffie was being ''tongue in cheek'' as is his
wont, he was touching on a key issue. This election can surely be won
or lost on turn-out. I recall a US Congressman-a Hillary Clinton
partisan-who described to me how the Democrats never saw the Trump
campaign on the ground. He said, we would see US Flags but nothing
more. And yet, Cambridge Analytica and Jared Kushner, with help from
the Russians and Wikileaks, seriously motivated their core base via
digital micro-targeting. Are Cambridge Analytica deploying a similar
micro-targeting strategy and will it work? Moving the dial a few
percentage points might make all the difference.

Beyond those two big macro trends, we know there has been some erosion
in what was a monolithic Rift Valley vote last time around. The amount
of that erosion is key. How will Maasailand break? And it seems
Ukambani is considered all to play for.

LVMH's Hennessy Cognac CEO Peillon was in town last week and he said
“Kenya is a boost market, the next emerging market frontier for us.
Our role is to figure out what might happen in the world, to have a
vision of what could become of Kenya, and we are positive.” I agree
with Peillon but the next few days are a pivot moment.

Nairobi (AFP) - A strikingly toxic campaign ad was unleashed online in
Kenya just weeks before national elections -- a potentially explosive
move in a country where politics and ethnicity are closely aligned.

The 90-second video, shot in moody monochrome, presented a dystopia in
which Raila Odinga, the leading opposition candidate, wins the August
vote and plunges the nation into a violent and inept dictatorship.

Under this scenario, tribes would be set against one another while
terrorists run riot. "Stop Raila, Save Kenya. The Future of Kenya is
in Your Hands," the video said.

East Africa's largest economy holds its general election on August 8,
a decade after disputed poll results fuelled violence that left more
than 1,100 dead and hundreds of thousands displaced.

It is unclear who is behind last week's slick video or "The Real
Raila", the shadowy pro-government outfit that disseminated it.

But some on Kenya's vibrant social media networks were quick to blame
Cambridge Analytica (CA), a company credited with using its data
mining and psychological profiling techniques to help swing recent
votes in the United States and Britain.

In May, local press reported President Uhuru Kenyatta's Jubilee
campaign had hired CA. A spokesman, Nick Fievet, declined to comment
on CA's possible work in Kenya but said it had "no connection" with
the attack video.

With 7.1 million Facebook users and an estimated two-thirds of Kenya's
45 million people able to access the internet, there is a critical
mass of people leaving an increasingly detailed trail of information
about their fears and preferences -- a rich resource for those seeking
to influence voting choices.

"Here it can lead to war," said John Githongo, a veteran
anti-corruption campaigner. "The wrong video, the wrong information,
it can go out of control."

Githongo believes both government and opposition seek to use the new
techniques, only the ruling party is more effective. "Jubilee has been
way ahead from the very beginning."

CA worked on Kenyatta's last campaign in 2013 -- devised by PR company
BTP Advisers -- to paint Kenyatta and his running mate William Ruto as
victims of a Western imperialist plot to try them at the International
Criminal Court for politically motivated tribal violence.

"We made the election a choice about whether Kenyans would decide
their own future or have it dictated to them by others," said a
statement by London-based BTP, which is reportedly working with
Kenyatta and Ruto again this year.

According to its website, CA "designed and implemented the largest
political research project ever conducted in East Africa" ahead of the
2013 vote to hone a campaign based on voters' desires for jobs and
fears of "tribal violence".

It also "segmented the Kenyan population into key target audiences".

Now there are fears data will be swept up and used to create
psychological profiles of voters so that specific messages can be
tailored to specific voters.

Frederike Kaltheuner, a policy officer at data advocacy group Privacy
International, is worried by the "lack of any kind of data protection
framework" in Kenya.

"There are concerns about the integrity of data in Kenya. Who would
have access to it? Who is storing it? Do people even know what is
being collected about them? None of these questions are being
answered," she said.

Others are concerned about what happens when you seek to segment a
society for electoral purposes where already politicians' primary
appeals are to their ethnic constituents.

"There are very strong communities in Kenya and that's exactly the
kind of situation present where you can start to drive different
conversations about the election in different sub-communities," said
Paul-Olivier Dehaye, a Swiss mathematician and data activist who has
studied CA's techniques.

"We've seen it with Brexit and the US election, and the same can be
done in Kenya, or elsewhere that there's a lot of fragmentation
already."

- Fake news, trolls and bots -

"Fake news", a term that dominates political discourse in the United
States, has already made itself felt in Kenya's election

Jeffrey Smith, executive director of the US-based Vanguard Africa, an
organisation promoting free and fair elections, has been under attack
since he invited Odinga to the United States in March to meet
policymakers.

Nairobi (AFP) - Elections in Kenya are a fraught business, with polls
beset with claims of rigging and intimidation, some subtle, some not,
and this year's vote on August 8 is no different.

A decade after a disputed election led to the country's worst
electoral violence with over 1,100 killed, fear of irregularities is
growing.

"In Kenya, people say the dead come back to vote, and then return to
their graves," said George Morara, chairman of the Kenyan National
Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR).

The fraudulent inclusion of the deceased on the voters' register is
just one way to cheat your way to victory in Kenya.

Recent months' violence which has displaced citizens in Laikipia and
Baringo counties has worried observers who fear ostensible banditry
and land struggles as masking efforts to push people from their place
of registration.

Advocacy group Human Rights Watch in early July documented incidents
of intimidation in the Naivasha region, a hotspot of violence in
2007-08.

Another strategy is to "rent" voters' identity cards during elections,
essentially paying someone not to turn out. "When you have someone's
ID, this is the guarantee he will not be able to vote," said Morara,
adding that some in Kenya will sell their ID and therefore their vote
for 1,000 shillings ($10; 8 euros).

Kenya's electoral law allows voters to choose where they register,
opening up the possibility of manipulating the polls by bussing in
supporters to stack the odds in a particular constituency.

"In some constituencies, we notice that the registration levels are
higher than normal," said Kelly Lusuli of the Kenya Human Rights
Commission (KHRC). "We fear that some are paying others to come and
register in a constituency in which they don't live so as to favour a
candidate."

- Dodgy technology -

In 2013, Kenya introduced an electronic system that included biometric
voter registration intended to ensure only those registered could
vote.

It also provided for the electronic transmission of results from
polling stations across the country to the national tally centre in
the capital, reducing opportunities for tampering with result sheets
en route.

But technology is neither fool-proof nor tamper-resistant with hackers
able to modify results or render the entire system unuseable.

But simpler still, said Nic Cheeseman, a professor at Birmingham
University and a Kenya expert, is finding a way not to use the
electronic system.

"The head of the polling station can certainly find an excuse not to
use the biometric kit, he could say it is dysfunctional or that its
battery is empty," he said.

That happened in multiple cases in 2013 even before a major technical
failure meant the election commission abandoned the electronic system
altogether, reverting to manual tallying.

With the electronic system out of commission, several illegal avenues
open up to stuff ballot boxes.

Party loyalists can be tasked with casting ballots on behalf of the
deceased whose names are still on the voters' register.

An audit of the current, new electoral register, by accounting firm
KPMG, estimated there are over a million dead voters.

The last elections were close, with President Uhuru Kenyatta winning
by a margin of less than that: around 800,000.

"It is also possible to cast a ballot for the people who did not show
up to vote," said an African diplomat on condition of anonymity. "You
wait until the end of the day, you look at the results of other
polling stations and you adjust with subtlety depending on how many
votes you need."

Observers say that in the past a still less sophisticated method was
to stuff boxes with pre-ticked ballots, with little effort made to
disguise the fraud. In recent weeks the opposition has accused the
electoral commission of printing many more ballot papers than
necessary.

The elections will be monitored by thousands of observers, local and
foreign, but they cannot be present in each of the country's nearly
41,000 polling stations. "In the strongholds, there are polling
stations where all the agents are in favour of a candidate or a
party," said Lusuli.

As for the agents sent by the adverse parties to watch the elections
in these bastions, they can be bought to be silent or intimidated. In
2013, Lusuli said, the turnout was over 100 percent in some areas.

"You don't cancel an election just like that. Courts have to be
convinced that the will of the people has been outweighed by the
irregularities," Lusuli said.

The rate rose above the government's preferred band of 2.5 to 7.5 per
cent earlier in February after a regional drought caused food prices
to surge.

It peaked at 11.7 per cent in May before dropping to 9.21 in June
after rains boosted food supplies.

Par Value:
Closing Price:           12.00
Total Shares Issued:          180972300.00
Market Capitalization:        2,171,667,600
EPS:             0.59
PE:                 20.339

H1 Rental and related income 137.969452m vs. 120.855334m +14.161%
H1 Straight-lining of lease income [2.674906m] vs. 88.625294m -103.018%
H1 Other income 52.850748m vs. 87.346054m -39.493%
H1 Operating Expenses [112.546133m] vs. [160.844428m] -30.028%
H1 Increase/ [decrease] in fair value of investment property 2.674906m
vs. [88.625294m] +103.018%
H1 Operating profit 78.274067m vs. 47.356960m +65.285%
H1 Finance costs – vs. [22.955567m]
H1 Net profit for the period 78.274067m vs. 24.401393m +220.777%
Basic EPS 0.43 vs. 0.13 +230.769%
Headline EPS 0.42 vs. 0.49 -14.286%
Distributable EPS 0.43 vs. 0.13 +230.769%
Total Assets 3.694459035b vs. 3.677967790b +0.448%
Total Equity 3.573328950b vs. 3.515729819b +1.638%
Net Asset Value per share 19.75 vs. 19.43 +1.647%
Cash and cash equivalents at the end of the period 393.999343m vs.
363.138822m +8.498%
No interim dividend

Company Commentary

currently owns 3 properties [a shopping centre and two semi
office/light industrial buildings] valued at 2.4b.
The REIT as delivered growth of 221% in earnings for the 6 month
period ended 30th June 2017
currently ungeared

Par Value:                  1/25
Closing Price:           25.50
Total Shares Issued:          32157000.00
Market Capitalization:        820,003,500
EPS:             0.56
PE:               45.53

Eaagads Limited FY 2017 results through 31st July 2017 vs. 31st July 2016

FY Sales 140.224m vs. 126.012m +11.278%
FY [Loss]/ gain arising from changes in fair value of biological
assets at fair value less costs to sell [1.279m] vs. 3.487m -136.679%
FY Cost of production [67.178m] vs. [89.082m] -24.589%
FY Gross profit 71.767m vs. 40.417m +77.566%
FY Administrative Expenses [41.746m] vs. [31.428m] +32.831%
FY Profit before tax 32.212m vs. 9.691m +232.391%
FY Profit for the year 18.107m vs. 0.477m +3,696.017%
EPS 0.56 vs. 0.01
Cash and cash equivalents at the end of the year 0.4m vs. 1.012m -60.474%
FY Total Assets 922.802m vs. 761.165m +21.235%
FY Total Equity 850.586m vs. 691.936m +22.928%

Company Commentary

Average price realised during the year increased to $4.218 per KG
versus 3.863 per KG
Production volumes increased from 326 tons in 2016 to 424 tons in the
current financial year
The other comprehensive income reflects the after tax revaluation
surplus of the company's freehold land measuring 44 hectares.
remaining land is 341 hectares is leasehold land and therefore not
subject to revaluation.
No Dividend

Conclusions

Stronger results off a low base, however.

Nairobi All Share Bloomberg +21.01% 2017 [25 month closing high]


161.35 +0.17 +0.11%

Nairobi ^NSE20 Bloomberg +19.19% 2017


3,797.53 -1.10 -0.03%

The Dollar remains under pressure. The Euro topped $1.18 for the first
time since January 2015
Crude Oil has staged quite a comeback Rally and is trading above
$50.00 a barrel in New York for the first time since May.
African Stock Indices have been on quite a Tear of late and that was
why I was saying that the Bull Market in Nairobi was a part of an
Africa wide bull Phenomenon and that this Phenomenon was in fact
externally generated.
The South African All Share is +8.99% in 2017 and at an all time High
lifted by Naspers [an old Apartheid Era Media Co. which re-invented
itself as a Go-Go Internet Co. via an early purchase of a slice of
Tencent].
The Nigeria All Share is +33.39% and the Ghana Composite Index +33.61% in 2017.
The Nairobi All Share had rallied +21.01% in 2017 through this morning
and yesterday closed at a 25 month closing high.
The All Share corrected -1.85% off that 25 month high to close at 158.35.
The Nairobi NSE20 retreated -1.449% to close at 3742.50.
The Equity Market woke up to the proximity of the General Election today.
Turnover was robust and registered 1.536b.

Safaricom corrected -3.06% off a record High to close at 23.75 and on
brisk volume action of 23.415m shares worth 559.101m. Safaricom will
resume its march towards 28.00 after this corrective, profit-taking
phase. Safaricom is +29.086% in 2017 and has underpinned the Rally at
the Bourse in 2017.

The Banks saw good volume action.
Equity Bank firmed +0.61% to close at 41.00 and traded 5.354m shares
worth 219.535m. Equity Bank is +43.33% through 2017 on a Total Return
Basis.
CFC StanBic Bank closed unchanged at 80.00 and traded 2.015m shares
worth 162.197m. CFC StanBic Bank is +20.92% on a Total return basis.
COOP Bank firmed 5cents to close at 15.70 and on robust volume action
of 7.505m. The Bonus shares have been credited and some of the recent
supply might be from some Long Investors doing some portfolio
rebalancing.
KCB Group retreated -3.07% to closed at 39.50 and traded 2.104m shares.
DTB Bank closed unchanged at 184.00 and traded 279,500 shares.

British American Tobacco said on Tuesday that Britain's Serious Fraud
Office has opened a formal investigation into possible historic
misconduct by the company in Africa. The maker of tobacco brands
including Dunhill and Lucky Strike said it has been investigating a
number of allegations of misconduct, that were originally made towards
the end of 2015, through its legal advisers and by liaising with the
SFO. The company said in a statement that it intends to co-operate
with the investigation. BAT traded a 1,000 shares at 800.00 -2.44%.

EABL which released its FY Earnings at the end of last week, firmed 1
shilling to close at 265.00 and traded 511,000 shares. The FY Results
are deserving of a higher share price, somewhere nearer 300.00.

KenolKobil eased -0.99% to close at 14.90 and traded 6.648m shares.

Unga ticked +4.098% to close at 31.75 and traded 5,500 shares.

BOC Kenya was marked down -8.08% on light volume to close at 91.00.

KenGen corrected -3.55% to close at 8.15 and traded 2.752m shares.