WorldWide Markets with Simon Brown

This week WorldWideMarkets runs Simon Brown's keynote from a corporate event: four slides on the four issues facing global markets right now, with AI deliberately left off the list.
The world lost roughly 20% of its oil supply when the Strait of Hormuz closed, and Brent still only reached $120 — Simon explains why the oil market had far more slack than anyone realised, and why $80 rather than $60 is the level to plan around.
He then covers the rand at R15.92, the two elections falling on 3 and 4 November, and the story he thinks matters most: $40 trillion of US government debt now costing $1.1 trillion a year to service, and a bond market that no finance minister can push around.
Finally, why a lifelong gold sceptic now holds gold.
Topics: Brent crude, Strait of Hormuz, China's strategic reserves, Taiwan, USD/ZAR, SA local government elections, US midterms, G7 bond yields, US debt, AngloGold Ashanti, gold ETFs.
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US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is selling short-dated paper and buying long in an attempt to force the 10 and 30-year yields lower.
Simon Brown explains why fighting a market rarely ends well, and what that trade has already done to gold and the rand.
With gold back at $4,630 and the rand at R16, he then works through all five JSE-listed gold miners — Pan African, DRDGOLD, Harmony, Gold Fields and AngloGold Ashanti — comparing production, all-in sustaining costs, balance sheets and analyst price targets, before ranking them and setting out the specific red flag attached to each.
He closes with two JSE stocks moving the wrong way: Naspers and Clicks.
Topics: US Treasury yields, gold price, rand gold price, JSE gold miners, all-in sustaining costs, hedging and collars, Ghana mining leases, Naspers, Clicks.
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Absa and Nedbank are the two cheap banks on the JSE, both trading near 1.2 times tangible book while Standard Bank and FirstRand sit close to two.
Simon Brown puts them side by side after both reported and finds numbers so similar that valuation stops being the question: the same fifteen percent return on equity, the same credit loss ratio near zero point nine percent, the same capital. What separates them is that Nedbank has committed to seventeen percent return on equity by 2028 and Absa has not.
He also covers the expiry of the sixty-day Iran accord with Brent above ninety dollars, long bond yields back at 2008 levels, a major upgrade to the JustOneLap ETF database, and stocks on the move.
Topics: Absa results, Nedbank results, return on equity, cost to income, bank valuations, Iran and oil, the rand, global bond yields, sovereign debt, ETF database, Mr Price, Shoprite, Clicks, Woolworths.
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Pick n Pay has stopped bleeding customers, but it hasn't started healing. Simon Brown goes deep on the retailer's 20-week trading update, where group turnover rose 2.7% while core Pick n Pay SA supermarkets went backwards.
He unpacks the so-called negative stub — a R14 billion market cap against an R18.8 billion stake in Boxer plus cash — and explains why capital gains tax makes those "free" 1,538 stores a lot less free. He also looks at the Section 189A labour consultation covering 22,000 employees, the base rates on retail turnarounds globally, and why Shoprite's ability to absorb inflation and grow Sixty60 gives it weapons Pick n Pay cannot afford. His call: stay in Shoprite.
Topics include Pick n Pay, Boxer, Shoprite, Checkers Sixty60, Woolworths, retail turnarounds, Section 189A, and the OST to Shyft migration.
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Mr Price and Clicks have both been hammered, and on a chart they look like the same trade. They are not.
Simon Brown holds both and spends this episode pulling the two businesses apart to work out which one he actually wants to own. Clicks is on its cheapest P/E in a decade but is losing share in the high-margin categories that pay the bills, with Dis-Chem, Checkers Sixty60, SPAR Health and Woolworths all circling. Mr Price is on 12.2 times earnings with a 5.3% dividend yield and a German acquisition the market has already priced as a failure.
Also covered: US earnings season running at 47% growth, why the South African consumer squeeze is worst at the top end, and Saudi Aramco's warning that rebuilding oil inventories could take 18 months.
WorldWideMarkets is part of JustOneLap.com.