WorldWideMarkets — Episode 680 (3 June 2026)

Clean transcript for JustOneLap.com

Lightly edited for readability — false starts, repetition and filler removed; names, tickers and figures corrected. Meaning unchanged.

Simon Brown: WorldWideMarkets this week: the US savings rate is at its second-worst level in 60 years. Woe is SPAR, woe is food retail. Naspers and Prosus are flying on AI in WeChat. And we’ve got the Nersa green light for Afrimat, plus a Dell flyer.

I’m Simon Brown. This is episode 680 of WorldWideMarkets, for 3 June, and we’re recording on Tuesday mid-morning.

WorldWideMarkets is powered by Standard Bank Global Markets Retail and Shyft — the global money app that puts travel, shopping, payments and investments in the palm of your hand. Enjoy the cheapest forex rates anytime, anywhere. Shyft, powered by Standard Bank. Thanks to Standard Bank, and thanks to Shyft. Remember the migration is happening, but in the immediate term Standard Bank has a structured product on the MSCI World Index — guaranteeing your capital back after three and a half years, plus a minimum upside, in dollars. You’ll find more information at Standard Bank’s online share trading platform.

US savings rate at a 60-year low

So let’s get to what I suppose is the big story — I’m seeing it all over the place — and that’s the personal savings rate in the US. There are a couple of different data sets, so you might see the number presented different ways, but I’ve got a reading of 2.6% for April. The only time it was lower in my data is 2.2%, back in June/July 2005 — and we’re going all the way back to the 1950s. There are some resets in the data, one or two points where other data sets show a number at this level or perhaps lower, but here’s the key version: at 2.6%, it’s one of the lowest on record.

Why so low? Inflation is outpacing wages — inflation is running, wages are growing more slowly, so people are dipping into savings. The pandemic savings buffer is gone: you can see that giant spike when savings rates went up into the 30s during the pandemic, because they were basically doing helicopter money. That’s now gone. But people are also feeling richer — house prices are up, US stock markets are at record highs — so those who are invested feel wealthy and don’t think they need much of a buffer.

The worry is that thin buffer. Consumer spending is 70% of the US economy. If the job market cracks, households have nothing to absorb the shock. But here’s the interesting bit: the last time it was this low, in 2005, nothing bad happened for two and a half years — until the crisis of 2008. So this is really a fragility gauge. It isn’t telling you a crash is coming; it’s telling you that if a shock does happen, households have no cushion. That’s partly why 2008 was so bad. It’s worth keeping an eye on. It isn’t a bad-news indicator in itself, but if things get ugly, they get ugly fast.

Iran deal collapse, oil & SA fuel prices

Nine or ten days ago, Trump said a deal with Iran was coming shortly — that on Friday they were going to the situation room to thrash out the final details. Then on Monday it basically collapsed. Iran said no, they’re not interested. They’re back to threatening to block the Strait of Hormuz, and interestingly the strait into the Red Sea too — which isn’t theirs to block, but they have a satellite who would do it for them.

So it’s status quo on the peace deal. Gold didn’t like it and was lower; Brent oil was higher. It turns out Trump couldn’t negotiate his way out of a paper bag — remember, he didn’t write that book, he just put his face on it. So here we sit with no deal again and things looking messy. Key point, though: Brent rallied, but only into the mid-90s, not over 100.

We’ve got fuel price changes tomorrow. Both diesel and petrol are coming down at the margin, but because the buffer the government had — about three rand on petrol, three ninety-three on diesel — is being halved, petrol is actually up. Diesel, however, is coming down.

SARB hikes prime to 10.5%

And to stay with the bad news: the SARB raised the prime rate by a quarter percent on Thursday last week. Prime is now 10.5%. The SARB is wrong — sorry, guys, it’s just that simple. This is not demand-driven inflation. Putting interest rates up on people will stop them spending, but their spending isn’t what’s driving inflation. What’s driving inflation is the orange one in the White House — it links directly to the oil price, which links directly to why we’ve got no money in our pockets. That’s the challenge. I know inflation is around 4% and our target range is 3% with a 1% leeway either side, but the MPC got this wrong. Interestingly, two members voted for no change.

Naspers & Prosus fly on WeChat AI

Naspers and Prosus are flying today — and when I say flying, I mean with a capital F. The story is simple. Overnight, the FT reported that WeChat is finally going to put AI front and centre of its app. WeChat has around 1.4 billion users globally, most in China, and it’s owned by Tencent — which is Naspers and Prosus. Both stocks are up almost 10% on the day, and that’s pulling our market sharply higher — the overall market is up over 2% on the news. Resources are running too, helped by gold looking a bit better. Brent has slipped to 93.48, and the rand is at 16.19 against the US dollar. It’s all looking good for the market today, and they’re loving that flying price on Naspers and Prosus.

No surprises there. Now, Strategy — the folks who buy Bitcoin, and all they hold is Bitcoin — have been selling Bitcoin, which is weird. Only about 2.5 million worth, which in the big picture is relatively small, but I really thought Strategy was here to hold Bitcoin. At this point, anyway, they’re definitely selling.

A quick diary note: we’ve got a Power Hour coming up. Go and watch the one we did last week on Capitec — really good info, at justonelap.com/powerhour. Next week we’re doing one with one•invest, looking at yield and investing for income, obviously in the ETF space. It’s on 9 June at 11am — online and webcast. Visit justonelap.com/events to book.

SPAR’s horror update & SA food retail

What else? SPAR. An absolute horror story — a trading update that will put headline earnings per share around 50 to 60% lower. As they say in the classics, pretty, pretty ugly, and the chart looks totally ugly with it. After Pick n Pay, who’s really left to run the food retail space? It’s Shoprite and Boxer. Pick n Pay is absolutely struggling.

SPAR is trading around R50, on a PE of about 25 — so it’s not cheap — and it’s back at levels last seen in 2010. I have to zoom all the way out to the World Cup. Remember when Siphiwe Tshabalala scored that goal and we drew with Mexico? Déjà vu — we’re playing Mexico in the opening game again, and SPAR is back at the price it was when Tshabalala scored. It’s a complete and utter mess.

But here’s an interesting fact: Canal+ is listing on the JSE on Wednesday 3 June — the code will be CNP. I’ve no particular interest in it, but we’ll see how it does. That listing is part of the deal around taking out MultiChoice — they had to come to the party and list on the JSE. To their credit, they’re doing it.

Year-to-date scoreboard: Korea +123% & the SaaS rebound

Here’s my year-to-date screen — and the scariest number you’ll probably ever see. I’ve written about two things worth a look. The first is Korea. This is in rand terms, year to date: the South African market is down 1.7%, gold is up 4.8%, the S&P is up 11% — a big number — and the Nasdaq is up 21%, a giant number. South Korea is up 123%. It has more than doubled this year. We’re seeing crazy numbers out of Korea. I’ve written about it — go to justonelap.com/etfs and look for the article I wrote on South Korea. Some of it is about chips, but there’s a lot more to it than just chips.

The other one I wrote about was SaaS stocks — software as a service. The ETF was IGV. I remember saying, come on, we’re not going to have a complete “SaaS-pocalypse” where all these software companies vanish off the face of the earth. Pretty much since that article, the index is up from the mid-70s to around 108.

Back to SPAR, because my provider — Koyfin — is finally working again after a brief holiday. Koyfin has them on a forward PE of six and a half, which I disagree with; it shows earnings per share for the financial year only down 1.8%, but the trading update says 50 to 60% lower. It’s getting horror-slammed. This is a disaster of a business. Couple it with Pick n Pay and it leaves Boxer and Shoprite as the two clearly gaining market share. Fun fact: analyst ratings on SPAR are six holds and two buys; the low target is 52, the average 92, the high 146 — and SPAR closed sub-R50 on Monday.

Afrimat’s Nersa win & Dell’s four-bagger

The other one I’m interested in — I’ve talked about it on Stockwatch too — is Afrimat. They had a challenge with their anthracite: the smelters simply weren’t using it because they’d shut down, being unviable. Now Nersa has granted permission for roughly a 60-cent-per-kilowatt-hour tariff, about two-thirds down on normal — a significant discount. That’s good for Afrimat, because it means they can start selling anthracite into the local market. At the moment they’re exporting at bad pricing, so they’re basically not mining. This is good for them.

The stock didn’t seem to care — it was actually down on Monday on the news. Why do I like Afrimat? Three things. It’s at a cycle low — when does the cycle turn? I don’t know, but it’s closer to the bottom than the top. The Nersa decision went in their favour. And I think they’re going to sell Lafarge, which would give them a pile of cash. But right now the market is saying thanks, but no thanks.

I want to go back to Dell. Regulars will remember that back in February I was interested in Dell — I did an equity research report on it using my Claude AI, looking at servers. This was when all the hyperscalers were talking about 2026 spend budgets of seven to eight hundred billion dollars, and Alphabet was saying it’s not just inference and compute, it’s also replacing servers. I looked around and Dell was the one I liked. It was about $115 to $120 then. It’s now $465.96 — almost a four-bagger since February, fourfold in about four months. The results have been really good. Trump’s been doing crazy stuff and telling everyone to buy it, but I like the story, and yes, I’m still holding. It wasn’t a big position.

Here’s the fun fact: when that report was written, my computer had a high price target of $200 on Dell, a low of $111. Now the low is $170, the high is $700, and the average is $470. The stock runs, and what do the analysts do? They just change their numbers — “I thought it was worth 200, well now it’s 400, well then it must be 700.” It’s getting a little crazy. Is Dell expensive? Sure. Crazily expensive? Its multiples are higher than they’ve been for a while — a forward PE of 25 versus a decade mean of 20, with one standard deviation on the upside at 32. So it’s expensive, but not yet eye-wateringly so. I continue to hold.

Stocks on the move: Clicks, MTN, Gold Fields, Woolworths

Some stocks on the move. Every Saturday I get my Claude AI to look at weekly charts and tell me what’s moving and what to look for — I’ve told it to focus on breakouts, though it’s not particularly good at those.

We’ve discussed some of them. Shoprite, despite two down weeks, is at the top of its range. On the upside, MTN is on the move — I think the buy was closer to 170 and it’s breaking higher. It’s not a cheap stock anymore and not one I hold; I’m not a fan of telcos, but MTN is breaking higher. Implats — last week I said platinum looked weak but that it made no sense, and we saw a bit of a recovery. It’s weak again this week, but the PGMs are moving a little higher.

On the downside: Gold Fields. I mentioned last week that I think the sell-off is overdone, and if you like gold and want a stock, Gold Fields could be it — though it’s only gone weaker. Woolworths is breaking down again; it’s not quite a 52-week low, but it’s certainly breaking lower, now sub-R50. And then Clicks — which I do like and hold. It keeps trading lower; we’re back at October 2023 levels, two-year lows. Is it tough being a retailer right now? Sure. But on a forward PE of 15, against a mean of 30, it’s effectively half its usual price. Clicks always traded expensive — I’m not saying it should be a R470 share, but I think R235 is silly cheap. I hold Clicks and I’ve added more. Its target price low is 318, the high 396, the average 358 — and it’s trading at 230. Will it find this a tough environment? You bet. But Clicks are, in my mind, the out-and-out winners in this space.

We’ll leave it there for today. I know the show ran a bit shorter than usual, but we’ll be back next week. Thanks as always to our sponsors: WorldWideMarkets, powered by Standard Bank Global Markets Retail and Shyft — the global money app that puts travel, shopping, payments and investments in the palm of your hand. Enjoy the cheapest forex rates anytime, anywhere. Shyft, powered by Standard Bank. Thanks to Shyft, thanks to Standard Bank — and remember they’ve integrated their web trader into the Shyft platform, so you can now trade CFDs there too.

My name is Simon. As always, look after yourself, and if you can, look after somebody else as well. Cheers all.