The South African Reserve Bank increased the Repurchase Rate today by 50 basis points. As usual, all the talking heads are out explaining why this was exactly the right thing, exactly the wrong thing, exactly the right thing for the wrong reason and several other combinations. Historical levels of Repo updated graphs – Short memory…
Behavioural finance is no longer a “new idea”. It has entered mainstream finance education through CFA, Business Schools, even actuarial exams (ST5 for UK and South African actuaries). Some of the biggest lessons revolve around how bad we as a species are at making decisions in the face of uncertainty. Emotional biases, overconfidence, loss aversion,…
I guess this has crept up on me slightly. CPIX @ 8.8% for January 2008? Our inflation target range is 3% to 6%. That’s an acceptable gap of 3%, and now we’re nearly that far away from the top of the range? Meanwhile PPI figures have been delayed due to “rebalancing and reweighting”.
Official inflation in Zimbabwe now stands at over 100,000%. Â Jokes around Zim’s official stats aside, this isn’t even real hyperinflation by historical standards. Germany, in 1922, in the aftermath of Word War I and the Treaty of Versailles experienced inflation of over 200 billion percent. Goes to show how short our memories are (as a…
Business Report has an interesting article where Eskom recommends shelving new infrastructure projects due to lack of electricity until at least 2013. A few important quotes form the piece: Bongani Nqwababa, Eskom’s finance director, said yesterday that the parastatal had advised the government that it wanted South Africa marketed only from 2013 for both local…
South Africans have been lamenting the state of our power infrastructure and Eskom’s inability to keep infrastructure up with demand. Â Now there’s plenty of useful debate left there (so many of the points I hear made are irrelevant and serve to distract everyone from the real issues. Past sins For example, why are so few…
It’s peaceful around here this morning. I’m in Stellenbosch running a financial modelling course for the Faculty and Institute of Actuaries, in conjunction with the Actuarial Society of South Africa. The sun is shining, the skies are blue and although the wind is getting up, it is still a pleasant day. But that has nothing…
I was reading an article about the directors of Imperial and Steinhoff purchasing shares in their respective companies. Steinhoff directors made the news when the CEO originally used Single Stock Futures to gear his exposure to a significant position in the company. (This position has since been converted into a direct position with about the…
