What the Experts say

The effect of the global economic slowdown has been felt by fiscal finances this year. An expansionary fiscal policy framework was adopted to counter the recession in South Africa. Over the past year, there have been various infrastructure development projects with an eye on the 2010 Soccer World cup and beyond. There were also significant […]

Charles Snyman of the Efficient Groep says:  The current world equity market environment can be summarized as follows: The world is in a good news environment which will probably last through 2010 to somewhere in 2011. Company and economic news in all major world centers will continue to break news better than expected or better

I shall, amongst several other articles, be posting Stanlib’s Weekly Focus only periodically as one of several opinions available on the market.  In order to get a broad-based outlook, various opinions are obviously essential whilst avoiding unnecessary repetitive hollow-backed words.  Read on…….(For those who are not quite up to date with the everyday financial terminology

MPC Interest Rate Decision – ‘A Huge surprise’ – Report by Freddie Mitchell (Economist) The SARB lowered its main repo interest rate by 50 basis points to 7%, as effective from 14 August 2009. There are (also) encouraging signs that the global slowdown may have reached its lower turning point.  Read on….

More and more fundamental indicators are starting to show that the world economic recession is subsiding and the past week was no exception. Domestically, South African shares are continuing their upward rally notwithstanding the dark clouds of strikes across most economic sectors. Foreign investors remain positive on South African shares and bonds. Together with the

Though many analysts still hold the view that the recent increase in share markets are nothing but a temporary correction in a bear market, we are of the opinion that there is enough fundamental evidence suggesting that the turning point was 3 March 2009 and that the share markets already are in a bull run.

Despite negative prospects for international economies, there remains optimism that the South African economy will withstand recession woes. Key economic events over the next month may lead to a strong recovery on South African financial markets. Read on

Global growth cooled significantly during 2008, with the outlook for 2009 getting gloomier by the day. As growth eased, numerous central banks opted to drop interest rates significantly to stimulate financial markets and support investment sentiment. Lower global demand should (and have already) lead to lower inflationary pressure in the short term, but the worry

World financial markets started to recover last week. Negative sentiment makes way for some optimism, as some of the rescue money in the US is distributed via the banking sector. The Dow Jones on Wall Street ended higher on all four days last week (Thursday was a public holiday). The index had the biggest increase

The slowdown in consumer inflation from the peak reached in August is a very welcome development.  The Outlook of inflation depends on various factors.  Economist, Doret Els, briefly highlights “The Good”, “The Bad” and “The (not so) Ugly”. Read the rest of this entry…..

The weak third quarter GDP figure confirms that economic activity is slowing at a serious pace, but also indicates that, for now, this weakness is limited to certain sectors. The discrepancy between sub-sectors complicates forecasting but could help SA to not enter into a technical recession. What seems clear however is that 2009 is going

The question whether the JSE will recover during November is uppermost in our minds. Professor Chris Harmse and his research team at Dynamic Wealth have, among others, the following to say at this time: “Despite a slight recovery of almost 12% in the JSE ALSI (between its lowest level of 17 812 points on 24

The October 2008 World Financial Crisis – 4 November 2008 The October 2008 world financial crisis in a nutshell: Banks found themselves unwilling to lend because they had run out of capital as a result of bad loans, especially mortgages. This unwillingness to lend also included the unwillingness to lend to one another. As a

The recovery of share prices around the world was ignited last week Monday after the insignificant announcement that new home sales in the US has increased by 4000 to 464 000 during September 2008. Read on