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Monday 02nd of October 2017 |
Morning Africa |
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The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot Africa |
Mistah Kurtz - he dead.
A penny for the Old Guy
I
We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass or rats' feet over broken glass In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death's other kingdom Remember us - if at all - not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams In death's dream kingdom These do not appear: There, the eyes are Sunlight on a broken column There, is a tree swinging And voices are In the wind's singing More distant and more solemn Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer In death's dream kingdom Let me also wear Such deliberate disguises Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves In a field Behaving as the wind behaves No nearer -
Not that final meeting In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land This is cactus land Here the stone images Are raised, here they receive The supplication of a dead man's hand Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this In death's other kingdom Waking alone At the hour when we are Trembling with tenderness Lips that would kiss Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here There are no eyes here In this valley of dying stars In this hollow valley This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places We grope together And avoid speech Gathered on this beach of this tumid river
Sightless, unless The eyes reappear As the perpetual star Multifoliate rose Of death's twilight kingdom The hope only Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear prickly pear Here we go round the prickly pear At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is Life is For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but with a whimper.
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02-OCT-2017 :: Living in a Populist World Africa |
''Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds'' is an early study of crowd psychology by Charles Mackay, first published in 1841.
"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one."
Populism, Populists, Populist policy making and extraordinary popular delusions have in fact been around a very long time. Among the bubbles or financial manias described by Mackay are the South Sea Company bubble of 1711–1720, the Mississippi Company bubble of 1719–1720, and the Dutch tulip mania of the early seventeenth century. According to Mackay, during this bubble, speculators from all walks of life bought and sold tulip bulbs and even futures contracts on them. Allegedly, some tulip bulb varieties briefly became the most expensive objects in the world during 1637.
A wave of Populism has criss-crossed the World. As we scan the World today, we can confirm a Populist has captured the White House. In the United Kingdom, Populism saw BREXIT win its referendum and was best described by David Osler thus
''I'm going to cancel Netflix and negotiate with each film producer separately, to get the best deal for me and my family #Brexit''
President Putin is of course the arch Populist but Erdogan, Duterte, Narendra Modi are all Mini-Mes to Vladimir. Populist Policy-Making reminded me of a Passage from T.S Eliot's The Hollow Men
Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
The Shadow to which T.S Eliot is referring is this; President Trump's Tax Cut is presented as good for the average American Tax Payer but it patently is skewed in favour of the 1%. Narendra Modi's attempt to cleanse the black-market Economy via the extinguishing of Bank Notes was an abject failure. Duterte's ''red in tooth and claw'' assassination program against Drug Dealing has trampled over any human rights. The King of Saudi Arabia has generously allowed Women to drive themselves around from 2018. 2018 just let that sink in.
President Trump in his mind-boggling speech said this of Venezuela
''The problem in Venezuela is not that socialism has been poorly implemented, but that socialism has been faithfully implemented'' Change the Word ''socialism'' for ''Populism'' and in fact Caracas is the Harbinger of the direction in which the World is headed.
I will leave the last words to Charles Mackay
"Of all the offspring of Time, Error is the most ancient, and is so old and familiar an acquaintance, that Truth, when discovered, comes upon most of us like an intruder, and meets the intruder's welcome."
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'Would you like to talk?' We have lines of communications to Pyongyang. We're not in a dark situation, a blackout." Law & Politics |
The disclosure by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson during a trip to China represented the first time he has spoken to such an extent about U.S. outreach to North Korea over its pursuit of a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile.
“We are probing so stay tuned,” Tillerson told a group of reporters in Beijing.
“We ask: ‘Would you like to talk?’ We have lines of communications to Pyongyang. We’re not in a dark situation, a blackout.”
He said that communication was happening directly and cited two or three U.S. channels open to Pyongyang.
“We can talk to them. We do talk to them,” he said, without elaborating about which Americans were involved in those contacts or how frequent or substantive they were.
Conclusions
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Catalans Signal They May Declare Independence Within a Week Law & Politics |
Catalan separatist leaders signaled they may be moving toward a unilateral declaration of independence as early as this week after hundreds of activists were injured on Sunday as they sought to stop Spanish police from shutting down an illegal referendum.
Catalan President Carles Puigdemont appealed to the European Union for support as he pledged to inform the regional parliament of the result of the vote in the coming days. The assembly will then act in line with the referendum law, Puigdemont said -- and that could lead to a unilateral declaration of independence within 48 hours of the notification.
“The citizens of Catalonia have won the right to have an independent state,” Puigdemont said in a televised statement, flanked by members of his regional administration.
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The Massive Hedge Fund Betting on AI International Trade |
As chief executive officer of one of the world’s largest hedge funds, Luke Ellis prides himself on a healthy appetite for risk. “My job,” he says, “is to not blink.” About five years ago, he did, though—in a big way. What spooked him was an experiment at his firm, Man Group Plc. Engineers at the company’s technology-centric AHL unit had been dabbling with artificial intelligence—a buzzy, albeit not widely used, technology at the time. The system they built evolved autonomously, finding moneymaking strategies humans had missed. The results were startlingly good, and now Ellis and fellow executives needed to figure out their next move.
Man Group, which has about $96 billion under management, typically takes its most promising ideas from testing to trading real money within weeks. In the fast-moving world of modern finance, an edge today can be gone tomorrow. The catch here was that, even as the new software produced encouraging returns in simulations, the engineers couldn’t explain why the AI was executing the trades it was making. The creation was such a black box that even its creators didn’t fully understand how it worked.
For the uninitiated—most of us—watching an artificial intelligence system at work is like trying to decipher an impenetrable language. Slavi Marinov, a 31-year-old Bulgarian computer scientist hired by Man two years ago, is attempting to translate the code into understandable terms for a pair of visiting journalists. In what he insists is an elementary demonstration at Man’s London headquarters, Marinov types commands onto a black screen. The keystrokes tell the machine to find patterns in futures market returns.
He’s making a bet on whether the market will rise or fall. With a few more keystrokes, he’s telling the machine to scour millions of data points, including granular trading information on companies around the world. He hits enter and a stream of numbers rains down the screen, like those Hollywood graphics that run behind the opening credits of a techno-thriller:
0.3426383 0.237250642 0.53534377
The cascading numbers show the computer “thinking,” crunching data at speeds a human could never achieve. “The element that makes the decision is these layers of numbers,” says Marinov, who made education software at a startup before joining Man. As seconds pass, the system is adjusting what data to give more importance. It’s coming up with a probability for what’s going to happen next. Once the machine determines an optimal position to hold based on that information, it takes stock of broader market trends and the cost of making a trade before deciding whether to go forward. All in a few moments.
An estimated 90 percent of all the data in existence today were created in the past two years. Man Group stores thousands of terabytes of data, equivalent to more than 10,000 standard office PCs—from stock ticker information to weather forecasts to the movements of container ships. Meanwhile, the price of stockpiling information has plummeted—a gigabyte of storage cost $300,000 in 1981, compared with 10¢ today. “The data is cheaper than it used to be, the availability of data is enormous, the cost of storage is essentially irrelevant,” says Sandy Rattray, Man Group’s chief investment officer. “How to use it? That’s hard.”
Fear of technology is overwrought, Granger says. He thinks back to one of his favorite books, Robert Harris’s The Fear Index, a beach-read thriller about a brilliant mathematician who builds an AI-based hedge fund in Geneva. His system works perfectly. It makes him insanely rich. Then it tries to kill him.
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Stock Picker Who Snared a 7,000% Hong Kong Return Eyes His Next Win International Trade |
Money manager Andrew Neville barely blinks when asked to pick his portfolio’s crown jewel.
Sunny Optical Technology Group Co. has returned about 7,000 percent to his team at Allianz Global Investors. They’ll soon have to part with the shares, which they’ve owned since 2010, because the Chinese lens maker with a $17 billion market capitalization has far outgrown their small-cap focus, he says.
The next big winner in his view? Deutsche Pfandbriefbank AG, the German property and public-sector lender that was once part of the failed Hypo Real Estate Holding AG, bailed out in 2008. He’s betting it will benefit from increasing demand for credit just as European bank stocks begin to shed the gloom that depressed valuations in the aftermath of the financial crisis.
A U.K. legal dispute hanging over Deutsche Pfandbriefbank’s stock isn’t a deterrent, he says.
“Some people won’t touch it because it’s got binary uncertainty,’’ said Neville, who runs Allianz GI’s $2.1 billion global small-cap funds from London. “We think that it’s more than in the price. Other people won’t look at it because it’s a small bank not in their country.”
The money manager is also keen on “digital derivatives,” stocks he defines as second and third-tier beneficiaries of the rise of e-commerce. Examples include Air Transport Services Group Inc., an aircraft-leasing company that counts Amazon.com Inc. as a customer, and companies involved in warehouse automation, such as Jungheinrich AG and Interroll Holding AG.
“They don’t sell you the stuff, you don’t see them online, but they make the infrastructure work,” Neville said. Each of the three stocks has climbed at least 25 percent this year.
Allianz GI’s main small-cap fund has returned some 18 percent in 2017, beating the 10 percent average gain for its peer group, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
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At Least Eight Killed in English-Speaking Cameroon Protests Africa |
At least eight people were killed during protests in towns across western Cameroon on Sunday as residents of the mainly English-speaking regions defied a ban on public gatherings and demanded independence from the rest of the largely Francophone nation.
The protests in the Southwest and Northwest regions have been called by a group known as Southern Cameroon/Ambazonia Governing Council. Four demonstrators were shot dead in the northwestern town of Kumbo as they marched to government buildings to hoist the blue and white Ambazonia flag, Mayor Donatus Njong Fonyuy said by phone.
Another three bodies were taken to the mortuary in southwestern Buea, while a person with gunshot wounds was declared dead at the Kumba Presbyterian Clinic in the same region, Mercy Ndum, a nurse at the facility, said by phone.
President Paul Biya, 84, ordered a wave of arrests earlier this year after lawyers and teachers in English-speaking areas protested the dominance of the French language in courts and schools throughout the Northwest and Southwest regions, which border Nigeria.
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Congo warlord seeks to unite rebel factions in anti-Kabila alliance Africa |
For years, William Yakutumba did what many militia leaders in eastern Congo do: he occupied a pocket of territory while running rackets based on gold smuggling, arms trafficking and taxing civilians abandoned by an absent state.
Since June, however, his men have engaged in a hit-and-run insurgency against the army. Last week, in a dramatic escalation, they attacked the lakeside town of Uvira from surrounding hills and by motorised pirogue from Lake Tanganyika.
United Nations peacekeepers helped beat them back with heavy machineguns after some government troops fled, with U.N. helicopters sinking several rebel boats.
Yakutumba, who fought alongside the army against Rwandan troops in earlier wars, is spearheading an attempt to unify disparate eastern rebel factions into a force that can oust President Joseph Kabila, who refused to step down when his second and final term in office expired last year.
The deputy commander of the U.N. force was dispatched to Uvira to rally U.N troops and encourage the army to stand and fight. Congo has also dispatched its top general, Didier Etumba, to the front.
During a stopover on Thursday in the eastern city of Goma, Etumba downplayed the rebel threat. “It’s a flash in the pan and we’re going to put it out,” he told reporters at the airport.
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Zimbabwe Inflates... Again Forbes Africa |
Under this dollarized regime, Zimbabwe’s fiscal authorities could no longer demand that the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe supply the government with credit (read: print money). This hard budget constraint became too onerous for the free spending government to abide by. In consequence, Zimbabwe’s government has employed Harry Houdini’s magic and circumvented the hard budget constraint imposed by dollarization. It has done so by creating a new fake dollar, which is referred to as the “New Zim Dollar.” Not surprisingly, this new Houdini creation is rapidly becoming worthless. This makes the methodology that I employed to measure inflation during Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation episode relevant again. Since Old Mutual’s price on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange is denominated in “New Zim Dollars” and Old Mutual’s price on the London Stock Exchange is denominated in British pound sterling, we can create a “New Zim Dollar”/sterling implied exchange rate. This exchange rate can be transformed using PPP to accurately measure Zimbabwe’s inflation. At present (09/29/17), Zimbabwe’s annual inflation rate has soared to 242.72%. This makes it the second highest inflation rate in the world after Venezuela (see chart below).
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Tanzania Says Newspaper Banned for Three Months for False Quotes Africa |
Tanzania banned a Swahili-language newspaper for three months after the weekly allegedly fabricated quotes and attributed them to President John Magufuli, the government said.
The newspaper known as Raia Mwema, which carried the front-page headline “Presidency Will Overwhelm John Magufuli’’ in its latest edition, is the third Tanzanian newspaper to be banned since June.
“The government maintains that the newspaper is entitled to fair comment,” according to a statement on the government spokesman’s Twitter account. “Unfortunately, and with bad intention, the newspaper published fake quotes attributed to President John Pombe Magufuli. The newspaper has been warned before about other mistakes.”
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IEBC chairman Wafula Chebukati said more legislation isn't necessary to hold the election on Oct. 26 and the proposed changes would place the commission in a "precarious situation." Kenyan Economy |
Kenyatta told a campaign rally Friday that the proposed electoral law changes will guarantee transparency by preventing malpractice. Deputy President William Ruto, speaking at the same event, said the vote will go ahead as planned.
“Kenyans will go to polls in October 26 whether Mr. Odinga participates or not,” he said.
“There is an attempt by Jubilee at changing the rules of the game midstream,” Samwel Mohochi, executive director at the Kenyan section of the International Commission of Jurists, said by phone Friday from Nairobi, the capital. “The effect of this grandstanding is further polarizing the country which may lead to violent confrontations.”
Kenya’s Eurobonds have lost investors 1.3 percent since the Sept. 1 court decision, making them the worst performers in Africa, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The Kenyan shilling has weakened 2 percent against the dollar in that period.
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Inflation dropped to 7.06 per cent in September on easing food and electricity prices. Kenyan Economy |
The cost of living measure is down from 8.04 per cent in August.
The rate has slid back to within government’s preferred band of 2.5 to 7.5 per cent.
“Between August and September, food and non-alcoholic drinks’ index decreased by 1.28 per cent,” the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) said in a statement.
Carrots dropped by the biggest margin of 32 per cent to an average price of Sh67 a kilo while a similar quantity of cabbages dipped 13 per cent to Sh46.
Tomatoes, however, continued to rise, crossing the Sh100 level for the first time this year with a kilo retailing at Sh103.
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Nakumatt Supermarket has closed its Junction branch in Nairobi Kenyan Economy |
Nakumatt Supermarket has closed its Junction branch in Nairobi, even as the retailer banks on cash injection from a new strategic investor to address its frequent stock outs at its outlets.
In a public notice released Sunday, the cash-strapped retailer said it had relinquished its rights over the premises pursuant to a surrender dated September 15, 2017.
“The premises will be closed to the public from October 1, 2017 and no trading will be permitted at the premises,” read the notice.
Conclusions
The Tuskys Nakumatt Merger is Alice in Wonderland.
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N.S.E Today |
Lots going on in the World. The Catalan government said 90 percent voted to leave Spain and Puigdemont said in a televised statement “The citizens of Catalonia have won the right to have an independent state,” Rumours are now rife that Rajoy will impose direct rule. The Euro lurched lower as Investors factored in this Fissure. The euro fell 0.6 percent to $1.1738. In Spain, the IBEX stocks index fell 1.3 percent in early trade. The Las Vegas shooting is now the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history: More than 50 dead, 200 injured Nakumatt Supermarket has closed its Junction branch in Nairobi The Tuskys Nakumatt Merger is Alice in Wonderland. Kenya’s Eurobonds have lost investors 1.3 percent since the Sept. 1 court decision, making them the worst performers in Africa, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The Nairobi All Share retreated -0.64% and is -6.70% since August 28th. The Nairobi NSE20 Index eased 19.30 points to close at 3732.16 Trading remained lacklustre at 370.641m.
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N.S.E Equities - Commercial & Services |
Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) reported that Safaricom had 80.4 per cent share of voice traffic, up from 75.7 per cent the previous year. Safaricom was reported as denying market rumours which started out of Ethiopia that Safaricom was set to buy a 50% stake in Ethic-Telecom. Safaricom eased -1.01% to close at 24.50 and traded 6.224m shares worth 153.249m which represented 41.32% of the total volume traded. i expect Safaricom to announce a foray into Ethiopia in due course.
TPS Serena Hotels corrected -4.672% to close at 25.50 and traded 63,400 shares
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N.S.E Equities - Finance & Investment |
Kenyan authorities should take a closer look at the impact of a cap on lending rates imposed a year ago, to determine if its intended purposes are being met, the chief executive of Standard Chartered Kenya Lamin Manjang said. Lamin Manjang, the head of the Kenyan unit of Standard Chartered, said some borrowers, such as small and medium enterprises, had been locked out of the credit market, while overall lending growth had ground to a near halt.
“With the data that we have got over the last 12 months since the rate cap was implemented, it should give cause for a review,” Manjang told Reuters in a Friday interview.
He said the government needed to consider issues of credit availability to borrowers when it carries out a review of the cap.
“What the bank would like to see is a situation where rates are determined by market forces because that is what is going to be efficient and sustainable in the long run,” he said.
Jude Njomo, the legislator who sponsored the rate cap bill, has however warned any move to change the rate cap law will fail, stating there is no evidence banks would lower rates if not compelled to do so. Manjang said lenders had closed some branches, laid off staff and seen their loan book growth slow in response to the cap. The situation will become tougher under a new accounting standard due to come into force on January 1 which will require lenders to shift their loss models from incurred to expected.
“When an asset is booked we will anticipate what the loss would be and then take it up front. That change will clearly have an impact across the banking industry,” he said.
StanChart plans to use its reserves for the extra provisions, which will lower its core capital ratio slightly from the current 21 percent but the bank will not need to do extra capital raising, he said.
“We will still be comfortably within the limits that have been set,” Manjang said, referring to the minimum capital requirement of 14.5 percent.
That Interview affords us a deep granular insight into the Banking Sector. In particular The Rate Cap Bill is now going to be compounded by IFRS9, which will effectively haircut some limping Balance-sheets even further. Lamin is of course signalling StanChart's muscle.
StanChart eased -2.6% to close at 225.00 on just 200 shares worth of business. Shares are well held and this area around 225.00-230.00 looks exhausted from the Supply side. Equity Bank closed unchanged at 38.75 and traded 1.055m shares. KCB Group closed unchanged at 41.00 and traded 923,700 shares.
Pan Africa Insurance co was high ticked +5.36% to close at 29.50.
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N.S.E Equities - Industrial & Allied |
EABL closed unchanged at 250.00 and traded 159,700 shares.
KenGen eased -1.15% to close at 8.60 and traded 60,900 shares. The Low volume traded is signalling the price correction is complete.
KenolKobil closed unchanged at 16.00 and traded 2.053m shares.
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