News and Insights

Download PDF Doves donning hawkish feathers The one thing markets do not like is uncertainty, or to be more precise, elevated uncertainty. The future is unknowable, so market pricing must always reflect a degree of uncertainty, and hence, a probability-weighted…
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Download PDF A confluence of malign reinforcements The modest rebound in risk appetite in March proved mere respite as April brought broad-based market weakness. Investors’ concern shifted from stagflation to recession as headwinds intensified. Tightening financial conditions leading to alternatives…
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Download PDF Watching the curve Stagflation remains the key macro theme for market participants, despite the improving economic surprises across the world. Even in South Africa, the data has been better than expected, with rising PMIs, stronger retail sales growth,…
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Download PDF Shifting the Lens to the Informal Economy Too few South Africans are employed. This was one of the findings of the National Planning Committee’s (NPC) diagnostic report[1] released in 2011, which aimed to identify the main challenges confronting…
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Download PDF Roiled by Russia Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has resulted in a humanitarian crisis, with an estimated 2.8 million refugees according to the United Nations Human Rights Council (as at 13 March 2022). Moreover, those that have remained in…
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Download PDF Budget 2022: Pragmatically cautious amid elevated uncertainty Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana’s maiden budget speech was generally seen as cautious, with a focus on debt stabilisation and social protection. There is modest further upside to tax revenues and reasonable…
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Download PDF A year of transition After two years in a global pandemic – with acknowledgement (rather than celebration) of the anniversary of the Wuhan lockdown on 23 January – the theme for 2022 is normalisation: the process of returning…
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Download PDF A solid last dash for 2021 December saw renewed impetus behind the hawkish shift in global monetary policy as Omicron fears receded and inflation pressures persisted. Yet risk assets were, for the most part, unperturbed by the repricing…
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Download PDF Monetary policy and mutations Turbulent is probably the best way to describe November. Reaccelerating growth, persistent bottlenecks, monetary policy flip-flopping, and the discovery of a new Covid-19 variant caused notable intra-month financial market volatility. “Black Friday” extended to…
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Download PDF COP26: A tale of progress and disappointment The two-week long COP26 conference has come and gone, but now the question remains whether it achieved all that it had set out to accomplish. At the conference, world leaders, climate…
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