WorldWideMarkets Episode 679

Date: 27 May 2026 Duration: 20:55 Host: Simon Brown

Worldwide Markets this week: SpaceX IPO — terms, conditions, and where to buy. The Dow Jones turns 130 years old, from 40 points to 50,000. Balwin is delisting — is Calgro M3 next? Plus a Moody’s upgrade (of sorts), terms and conditions, and stocks on the move.

This is Worldwide Markets episode 679 for 27 May, recorded Tuesday afternoon. Worldwide Markets is powered by Standard Bank Global Markets Retail and Shift — the global money app that puts travel, shopping, payments, and investments in the palm of your hand. Enjoy the cheapest forex rates anytime, anywhere. Shift, powered by Standard Bank.

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Dow Jones turns 130

Let us kick off with something I was completely unaware of — and there is no shame in that, I guess. The Dow Jones as an index is 130 years old. It started in 1896 at 40.94 points — the points on the right-hand side of the decimal mattered back then. We do not care about that anymore. And of course, now it is at 50,000.

You will find a great write-up at S&P Global with the details. Charles Dow, who designed the index, was actually a journalist — he was not a financial person at all. And this is a price-weighted index, which I have got to say is about the silliest thing I have ever heard.

Every other major index — Top 40, Nasdaq, S&P 500 — is market cap weighted. If you are a billion-rand company, you have twice the influence of a half-billion-rand company and half the influence of a two-billion-rand company. The bigger you are, the more you count. That makes sense.

Not in the Dow Jones. It is price-based. So if you are a $70 company, you have twice the impact of a $35 company — even if that $35 company is multiples larger by market cap. It also does not have regular rebalancing; it is kind of ad hoc. But it is a fun index.

Best and worst days — we are not interested in the points gains, just the percentages. Top daily gains: 1933, 1931, and 1929 — the first three are all the way back. Those are big gains: 15%, 14%, and 12%. Then 24 March 2020, which was pandemic. Top daily losses: 1914, 1987 (that horror — 22.6% down), 2020 again, and 1929 — in fact two consecutive days, 28 and 29 October.

A bit of fun nostalgia. It is not an index I ever look at. I look at the S&P, the Nasdaq, the Top 40, dozens of indices — but never the Dow Jones. It used to be my index 20-odd years ago, but no more.

SpaceX IPO — 12 June, $1.75 trillion

SpaceX is coming to market on 12 June, which is two Fridays away. The valuation is $1.75 trillion — but that is the IPO price. It is going to open way above that, comfortably north of $2 trillion in valuation.

Where can you get shares? Not easily. I have found three brokers who have shares: Robinhood, Charles Schwab, and Fidelity. There may be South African brokers who now have access to either the Robinhood, Charles Schwab, or Fidelity allocation. Elon Musk is going big — he is pouring a ton into private clients. Why? Because he is selling this at a massive valuation.

There are also indirect routes. Scottish Mortgage Trust holds about a quarter of its portfolio in SpaceX — they have owned it unlisted for some time. The ARK Venture Fund was about 17% SpaceX at the end of March. So there are ways to get it.

There are also a bunch of crypto sites selling “SpaceX tokens”. What are those? I have no idea. I tried to read the terms and conditions; I could not find any to read. So go and find them yourself.

Read my article in Financial Mail coming out this week. There is going to be a massive pop. But here is the thing: at $1.75 trillion — and to be clear, that is the low end of the target, we might come out higher — that puts SpaceX at 94 times sales. That is a lot.

For context: Amazon today has a valuation of $2.8 trillion and revenue of $742 billion, so it is trading at about four times sales. SpaceX is coming at about 94 times sales. The valuations are mind-boggling relative to what we have seen in the past.

So what do we have inside SpaceX? That is perhaps what matters. Well, there is space, of course. The first dozen pages of the 277-page prospectus were pictures of spaceships — and to be clear, cool pictures. I love a good spaceship.

Total addressable market for space-enabled solutions (launch services, satellite operations, other dedicated space industry solutions): $370 billion. Nice. But connectivity — Starlink, broadband, mobile services — is a $1.6 trillion total addressable market. Fun fact: the entire telco sector in America did revenue of about $1.2 trillion last year. So Starlink’s TAM is larger than the entire US telco market.

Then artificial intelligence: a $26.5 billion total addressable market. This is listing as an AI company — we have to be very clear about that. It is listing as an AI company, but their AI is deeply dodgy. Grok is rubbish. How do we know Grok is rubbish? Try using it.

But more than that, they are able to sell $1.2 billion of data centre capacity per month to Anthropic — call it $15 billion a year, because they have the capacity but just are not using it.

Let us check the OpenRouter token counts. For 25 May — yesterday — Google was at 584 billion tokens. Anthropic was 726 billion. OpenAI, 417 billion. The Chinese: DeepSeek at 950 billion (DeepSeek is way ahead), then Qwen, Z.AI, MiniMax, Mistral at 47 billion. And xAI? 15 billion tokens. It is not that they are a billion miles behind — it is that nobody knows they are there. Anthropic is more than 60 times xAI’s usage.

AI is mentioned about 1,200 times across the 277-page prospectus.

There is also a ton of round-tripping. For example, SpaceX bought $131 million of Cybertrucks from Tesla. That is about 130 Cybertrucks at the top end. For what reason? I have no idea. I cannot figure it out.

Going back to valuation: Google IPO’d while growing at 240% a year and came at 10 times revenue. SpaceX is going to be a minimum of 96 times revenue. It is also going to get shoehorned into the Nasdaq ETFs and index — I will write about that in my Thursday blog.

And at some point, Musk is going to roll Tesla into SpaceX. Why? He did it with Solar City, he did it with xAI, he did it with X.com. There are a lot of people who want to invest in Musk’s brain — the richest man in the world. After this listing, he is going to be worth more than a trillion dollars. The next closest is maybe a quarter of a trillion. He is by a very long way the world’s richest man. People want to invest with him. At the moment, if you want to do that in the open market, it is Tesla. But now it is also going to be SpaceX. That creates confusion. So buy Tesla — issue shares for it.

Tesla has batteries. Do you need those in space? Maybe for data centres. It has the robots. It has electric vehicles. It has Solar City. But mark my words: within the next two to three years, Tesla will get rolled into SpaceX.

Starlink I really like — 10 million customers, adding 20,000 a day, 60% margins. Comcast and AT&T have margins of about half of that. That is the business I really like. I also like the space business. I do not like the AI, the Grok. I do not like the valuation. I do not like X. I do not want to own Tesla. I am not a buyer at all.

But if you want to hunt it out: Robinhood, Charles Schwab, Fidelity — speak to your broker. Most brokers, I suspect, are simply not going to have it to offer.

Moody’s outlook upgrade

We have got a Moody’s upgrade of sorts. Well, not quite. The outlook went from stable to positive.

Here is the fun fact: Moody’s is usually late to the party. If we look at the downgrades, Fitch and Standard & Poor’s had us at junk in 2017. It took Moody’s until 2020 to downgrade us to junk. And now they are second again to upgrade.

To be clear, they did not change the notch — just the outlook. But we will take it. Absolutely we will.

Balwin delisting — is Calgro M3 next?

We have also got a delisting, and in this case it is Balwin. The government pension fund is essentially buying them out. This is a company where my AI valuation tool has a fair value of around 455c one-year target. That is now moot, of course, because we are not going to get any of that — it is delisting.

The problem is it is long-term capital. To be clear, very much long-term capital. There is Balwin at 455c.

And I will tell you why this matters. Look at Calgro M3 — we have initiated coverage there as well, with a long-term target of 634c one-year. Disclaimer: I own Calgro. Calgro is busy doing the Banc Ndlovu deal, building roads and bridges, top stuff — and earning no money. No money at all. It is going to be another year and a half before they earn money. I do not think the market likes that. I think Calgro M3 is going to get delisted at some point as well.

The Balwin deal does not surprise me. Is it a cheeky offer? It is well below NAV, but that is land bank — and the trick with a land bank is always: who else is going to use that land? They could have come in a year ago at a buck or so cheaper. So I do not think it is necessarily end of the world.

Canal Plus listing

As one leaves, one arrives. Canal Plus — as apparently you pronounce it — is listing next Wednesday. They of course own Multichoice.

I have no interest in this listing. There is one country — Tonga, I think — where neither operator is present. Otherwise, pretty much every African country has either Canal Plus or Multichoice. The Francophone (French-speaking) countries are Canal Plus; the Anglophone are Multichoice. Those two now essentially own the continent.

You have Disney Plus and all the other options out there too. I do not think this is necessarily the big excitement many are talking about. And as a listing, it is coming very quietly to market. I have heard pretty much nothing about it.

Pope Leo XIV on AI

Here is a fun fact: the Pope has decided to put his oar in on AI. And kudos to the Pope — it is not a bad letter he has written.

A lot of background here. He called himself Pope Leo because of the Pope 130-odd years ago (when the Dow Jones was being born, maybe longer) — the previous Leo, Leo XIII, who was pushing back against the Luddites and the like. This one is Leo XIV.

It is actually not a bad read. It is available in multiple languages — I read the English version. It lays out a lot of fairly common-sense stuff, like this should not be used for killing people.

As someone who is not spiritual, not Catholic, and not in any way connected to the Pope, I thought it was a really good read. It raises a lot of questions that the AI companies are trying to raise but are not — because they have too much skin in the game. They pretend to be independent, but they are not. The Pope — His Holiness Pope Leo XIV — does not have skin in the game beyond what he thinks is the right thing.

It got me thinking. There were some really good points and good arguments. I think it is great the Pope got involved. We need more people getting involved, and when they do, we should give them some space to listen. I think it is not unimportant.

Market Pulse and the oil outlook

Market Pulse — the show with Adesh and Naidoo and Tom Gale from Standard Bank — you will find it on YouTube. Just search for Market Pulse. Their Wednesday offering looks at currencies, the war, and oil. Not a heck of a lot happening in those environments. Oil is looking a little better, but not much.

As I have been saying for a long time, the war is now in its 80th day, and Trump is trying to find a way out. Brent is at $97.25. I think Brent is now happy in the $90 to $95 range — that is probably where it settles, even if we get peace in our time, which is apparently 30 to 60 days away depending on which tweet and when.

There is a lot of broken trust, a lot of destroyed infrastructure. It is going to take time to get things fully back. There is a refinery that was using LNG and is now out of LNG. So even with peace, it has to sit and wait for LNG. And everybody wants LNG. There is a queue — where you sit in that queue is going to matter.

Stocks on the move

I want to do this most weeks — look at some stocks on the JSE that are on the move, good or bad, and that we can keep an eye on.

Anheuser-Busch InBev (ANH) is absolutely moving. It is beer, of course — and a lot of non-alcoholic these days as well. Certainly on the move, but again, probably quite expensive. Dividend yield of 1.6%, which is terrible. Forward PE of 18.5, which seems very expensive — although the market expects mid-teens growth in financial year 2026 dropping to 10%. On a standard deviation basis, this is not a cheap stock. Analyst price targets: four holds, 14 buys, seven strong buys. Average price target around 1,500c, high around 1,800c, low around 1,273c. Currently just under 1,400c, so approaching the average. Dying industry. Last week we had BTI — another dying industry, although much faster dying, but at least paying a sterling dividend.

Shoprite (SHP) on the move. I own Shoprite. It is basically getting back to where it was in October 2024 — about a year and a half ago. This is what Shoprite does: it goes nowhere for two to three years and then it runs. Dividend yield 2.6%, forward PE just under 19, which for Shoprite is a standard deviation below the 10-year average. Expected to grow longer-term around 10–12%. Analyst targets: low of 298c (where Shoprite closed on Monday), average 316c, high 348c. Shoprite is head and shoulders the best in the space. We just saw Pick n Pay numbers — they were a little horrid. Pick n Pay is a bit binary: either they are going bust, in which case Boxer is the underpin and you get about half your money back, or they are not — in which case I think they are worth double what they are right now. I am in Shoprite and I am happy there. It goes sideways and then runs, sideways and then runs.

Bearish setups worth a look:

Impala Platinum (IMP) is looking bearish, but platinum is starting to move again. So Implats might actually be worth a gander here. The dividend yield can’t be right — only 1.8% looks low. The chart has been selling off. If you like Implats and have been wishing to own a platinum stock, here we are — Implats at around R220.

Gold Fields (GFI) has some challenges. My preferred in the gold space is Anglo Gold Ashanti. Gold Fields has pulled back from over 900c to 650c — down about a third. Sitting at support. Dividend yield 5.5% — much better.

Anglo Gold Ashanti (ANG) — my preferred. Dividend yield of 3.9% and rising because they are paying out cash. The chart has also come back, but only about a quarter rather than a third. I just prefer the Gold Fields chart entry point right now.

If you feel you have missed gold, Implats is looking interesting and Gold Fields is looking interesting at the same time.

Sign-off

Worldwide Markets is powered by Standard Bank Global Markets Retail and Shift — the global money app that puts travel, shopping, payments, and investments in the palm of your hand. Enjoy the cheapest forex rates anytime, anywhere. Shift, powered by Standard Bank.

We have an event coming up on Thursday: Finding the Next Capitec. A big bite to chew on. I think I have got us some good-looking numbers and certainly some process — though the one trick is stocks are listing so much later these days. Thursday, 5:30pm, webcast or in person at the Standard Bank offices in Rosebank. Visit JustOneLap.com/events for more information and booking.

My name is Simon. We will be back again next week. Until then, look after yourself, and if you can, look after somebody else as well.

Quick note: I am now putting transcripts of these episodes in the show notes. Show notes at JustOneLap.com/wwm/