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Happy Holidays




We wish you and your family the all the best during the festive season, one of the greatest joys of this season is the opportunity to say THANK YOU and to wish you the very best for the New Year.



Regards, 
Gray Capital

Into a Brave New World

As the year draws to a close, we take the opportunity to reflect on the year past and to offer some thoughts about our expectations for the new year and beyond.
 
The year 2020 has been a difficult and traumatic year for many. Apart from the persistent concerns about personal health brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic and the financial strain from locked-down economies, investors had to contend with seeing their investment values collapse in dramatic fashion and then climb a nerve-wrecking wall of worry as they recovered over the remainder of the year, in what can only be called a remarkable recovery engineered by swift global government and central bank action as they opened the floodgates of monetary and fiscal support to economies and households.
 
Despite the challenges and uncertainties that remain as we enter the new year, we are optimistic about what the future might hold for investors’ investments and share our thoughts about this here.
Magic Markets and the Finance Ghost

Gray Capital combines the Art of Financial Planning with the Science of Investing.

We are also pretty good at spotting talent, and finding value. We have sponsored a few of the Magic Markets podcasts through our partnership with the The Finance Ghost over the last few months. Moe-Knows and The Finance Ghost have a great way of breaking down complex economic and investment themes that are generally hard to understand.

Have a listen to an episode of breaking down GDP numbers- Listen Here

They also unseated Bruce Whitfield as the podcast kings this week. It is currently #1 in South Africa on the Apple Podcasts chart in the Investing category.

South African Fives:

  1. Sygnia is achieving margin growth with scale, posting nearly 64% growth in profit before tax, despite assets under management only growing 5.6% 
  2. City Lodge's occupancy level has improved to 28%, but is still some way off the 2019 performance of 58% - the company certainly isn't out the woods
  3. Sanlam's earnings have taken a knock from additional claim provisions raised in Santam, who the courts are giving a hiding Good and Proper
  4. Delta Property Fund is a complete mess and the latest South African corporate scandal after forensic auditors uncovered alleged fraud - even Nedbank's share price is under pressure from its exposure to the fund
  5. MTN's agony in Nigeria may not be over, after the share price tanked in response to news that authorities will once again audit sim card compliance - the share price bounced back hard on Monday though

Global Fives:
  1. Tesla raised another $5bn, the company's third raise in 10 months, with Musk reportedly giving staff the hurry-up to try and meet the target of 500,000 deliveries this year
  2. US antitrust authorities want to break up Facebook by splitting out Instagram and WhatsApp, a landmark case with far-reaching consequences if successful
  3. AstraZeneca is chasing margin with its latest acquisition of rare diseases specialist Alexion Pharmaceuticals for $39bn
  4. Shareholder voices around climate change continue to gather momentum, with international giant Unilever putting its plans to cut emissions to a shareholder vote
  5. Chinese authorities have levied weirdly immaterial fines ($77k each) against Alibaba and Tencent for failing to disclose prior acquisitions 
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