News and Insights

Download PDF Transitory trick or transitional treat? The confluence of weather-related disruptions, geopolitics, and capacity constraints added fuel to the inflation fire in October. Energy prices surged with European natural gas prices and global coal prices reaching record highs, while…
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Download PDF What COP26 means for South Africa The 26th session of the Conference of Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), referred to as COP26, is scheduled to take place in Glasgow from 1…
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Download PDF Prevention is better than cure After a relatively benign second quarter, risks escalated during the third quarter. China’s regulatory tightening turned more aggressive, while last year’s “three red-lines” for developers came home to roost in the threat of…
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Download PDF The Ups and Downs of Commodities Economist John Kenneth Galbraith once quite appropriately stated: “We have two classes of forecasters: Those who don’t know and those who don’t know they don’t know”. While he was most likely referencing…
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Download PDF Monetary policy and statistical magic Uncertainty remains pervasive, whether it relates to the duration of “transitory” inflation in the US and now the Eurozone, the size and timing of US fiscal stimulus, the recovery in the US jobs…
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Download PDF Social unrest with potentially BIG consequences The second half of 2021 was off to a rocky start as markets faced a tougher policy and economic backdrop. Risk aversion over rising Covid-19 cases globally, driven by the Delta variant,…
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Download PDF The Basic Income Grant: Adding a BIG enough tool to the arsenal? More than a year since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, economies around the world have gradually recovered from the worst of this crisis, albeit at…
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Increased regulation of Chinese technology companies is something that has been taking place for a while. Tencent went through a similar regulatory scare in 2018 around its gaming business where new game approvals were halted for months while regulators imposed…
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Download PDF Yet another good crisis not to waste As calm steadily returns after the recent social unrest, analysts are hard at work tallying the cost of the looting and disruption to economic activity. So far, the damage to 2021…
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Download PDF All about the delta, and the dots Global risk appetite started the month on a positive note, supported by lessening lockdown restrictions in the US, UK, and Europe, as well as robust global trade activity – evident in…
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