Data confirms South African consumers are losing purchasing power

Simon BrownJSE Direct, Latest



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I have been talking about a cracking (broken?) consumer for a few months now. Two recent surveys show exactly this data.

The pain here is SA retail (excluding food as we have to eat). Consumer broken and costs on the increase.


  • Rand trades at worst level ever on Friday, R19.5169/US$.

  • Transaction Capital (JSE code: TCP), last week I sad the worst may be behind them. Well with the ZAR collapsing equalling more inflaiton and rates and petrok increases. Maybe not for SA Taxi or WeBuyCar.
  • Purple Group* (JSE code: PPE) rights issue. Full details on 18 May. It will be R105m from Purple Shareholders and R45m from Sanlam at Easy Equities level. Total R150m
  • Local PGM production down 14% in Q1.
  • Calgro M3 (JSE code: CGR) results saw HEPS just above 150c while the stock trades at ±300x. Value or value trap?
  • Sold my Sun International (JSE code: SUI) as price go backwards and I protecting profits. Excluding dividends ±70% return since November 2021.
  • OpenAI Sam Altman goes before US Congress to propose licenses for AI.
    • Pulling the ladder up behind you to stop others.
      • I have been using ChatGPT via Bing and Google Bard. For investors they mostly useless.
  • Octodec (JSE code: OCT) results. Large discount to NAV and DY ±14%.
  • Investing in mega trends

* I hold ungeared positions.

Simon Brown



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Thursdays are all about hard-core investing and trading with Simon Brown’s famous JSE Direct podcast. JSE Direct started life on ClassicFM in July 2008 and became a podcast in 2011. Every week Simon shares his views on the state of global economies, individual shares and events moving markets.

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