The Money Shot

Friday saw a retracement of Thursday's gains and Lonmin did a 98:1 share consolidation, but the share was still lower. ISIS pharmaceuticals changed their name to Ionis Pharma on the Nasdaq, and Disney broke previous box office records. Anthea considers Bitcoin to be an innovation, not a currency; and a volatile investment exposed to liquidity and credit risk.

Watching the Rand with bated breath as President Zuma reappoints Pravin Gordhan to the position of Finance Minister... good news, because he is the man who steered us through the first recession in 17 years. The Rand has strengthened a bit this morning, but long term, Anthea says it is still a buy and hold. Expect a bounce in Discovery, RMI and the banks.

The Top40 had the worst week in four years last week as a perfect storm formed: Fitch downgraded SA inc. to BBB-, the Rand traded down to 14.37 vs US Dollar and 15.61 against the Euro.The average wage is R16,796 vs the record low of R6,742 in 2005; while productivity has fallen to its lowest level in 46yrs to R4,924 a year per worker.

Black Friday wasn't nearly as big as everyone thought it was going to be. US retail sales were only $12.1bn vs last year's $12.3bn. The Alsi (-1.13%) was dragged down by Naspers which fell 3.7% after reporting results and announcing that they were doing a capital raise $2.5bn and expanding Showmax to four continents.

The Rand finally strengthened below R15.00 to the Euro, which proves that the MPC rate hike was successful. The team also speculates about where Peter Maltase (CEO of TigerBrands) is going to reappear as the share continues to rally.

Markets had a shocking week, falling 3.3% in 5 trading days. Mr Price (MRP) bucked the trend (+6%) after releasing high level earnings ahead of Wednesday's results, meanwhile Gareth is horrified that a company selling corned meat can do so well on the exchange.

Friday saw the ALSI fall over 2% mostly dragged lower by resources and indiscriminate selling after the US non-farm payrolls number printed at 271,000...

Listen to our behavioural finance analysis on Friday or Monday trading. The MTN ex Finance Minister was kidnapped in September and the kidnappers used an unregistered MTN sim card...

Anthea explains fractional share ownership through the use of CFDs. Naspers is now trading above R2000 per share, and Google reported a good set of results...

ALSI closed flat on Friday, but Net1 UEPS was up 11% - the company has been in the news for both good and bad recently...