Pick n Pay has stopped bleeding. But has it started healing?
WorldWide Markets with Simon Brown
Pick n Pay has stopped bleeding customers, but it hasn't started healing. Simon Brown goes deep on the retailer's 20-week trading update, where group turnover rose 2.7% while core Pick n Pay SA supermarkets went backwards. He unpacks the so-called negative stub — a R14 billion market cap against an R18.8 billion stake in Boxer plus cash — and explains why capital gains tax makes those "free" 1,538 stores a lot less free. He also looks at the Section 189A labour consultation covering 22,000 employees, the base rates on retail turnarounds globally, and why Shoprite's ability to absorb...
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Mr Price and Clicks. End of an Era, or an Entry Point?
WorldWide Markets with Simon Brown
Mr Price and Clicks have both been hammered, and on a chart they look like the same trade. They are not. Simon Brown holds both and spends this episode pulling the two businesses apart to work out which one he actually wants to own. Clicks is on its cheapest P/E in a decade but is losing share in the high-margin categories that pay the bills, with Dis-Chem, Checkers Sixty60, SPAR Health and Woolworths all circling. Mr Price is on 12.2 times earnings with a 5.3% dividend yield and a German acquisition the market has already priced as a failure. Also covered: US earnings season running at 47%...
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Finding quality JSE dividends | Alphabet profits booms, stock falls
WorldWide Markets with Simon Brown
Vodacom has cut its dividend payout ratio from 75% to 65%, which pushes one of the JSE's dependable income names down the list. Simon Brown runs the Top 40 and the mid-cap screen to find where quality local yield actually sits, and shows how Growthpoint, Nedbank, Coronation and Standard Bank can be combined into a home-built income portfolio yielding roughly seven and a half to eight percent, growing ahead of inflation. He also unpacks Alphabet's record quarter, where two thirds of the profit was unrealised paper gains and free cash flow turned negative for the first time on record, and asks...
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Finding an edge in prediction markets | Netflix, market hate is an opportunity?
WorldWide Markets with Simon Brown
Can you find a real edge in prediction markets? Simon hunts the arbitrage — and calls Netflix cheap. In this week's WorldWideMarkets: • 🎲 Prediction markets: where's the edge, and where's the scam? • 🇧🇷 The Brazil election "two-horse arbitrage" explained • 📈 Betting SA's 2026 inflation print with a Bayesian model • 🎬 Netflix halved — Simon says it's now cheap • 📊 Stocks on the move: Bid Corp, Mr Price, OUTsurance, Vodacom, Absa, Gold Fields CHAPTERS: 0:00 Introduction 1:20 Prediction markets: where's the edge? 4:35 The Brazil election arbitrage 8:05 Betting SA...
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Purple Group goes all-in on AI | US 10-year at 4.63% is a crisis
WorldWide Markets with Simon Brown
A month after the year's most hyped listing, nearly everyone who bought SpaceX and held is underwater — and with the 180-day lock-up now gone, Simon Brown explains why insider selling is only getting started. He then tours the week's biggest moves: Apple's copyright lawsuit against OpenAI and what it means for hardware and an IPO, Purple Group buying Telescope AI to strengthen EasyEquities, oil climbing back into the 80s as Middle East peace talks stall, De Beers closing its last South African mine, and Sappi languishing at 1998 levels. He closes on a US 10-year yield near 4.6% and the...
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Defence Stocks and the Replacement Trade | Why Lockheed Martin Wins
WorldWide Markets with Simon Brown
Wars burn hardware, and rebuilding it takes years. This week Simon Brown works through the defence sector as a replacement thesis — the US fired roughly half its THAAD interceptor stockpile in twelve days against Iran — and settles on Lockheed Martin as his pick, with RTX as a second choice. He weighs the faster-growing but pricier European names (Leonardo, Thales, BAE Systems, Rheinmetall), runs through the main defence ETF options, and flags the risks: budgets are politics, and forward orders still have to convert. Also covered: a post-IPO look at Bending Spoons, SK Hynix's planned $28bn...
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Europe's Biggest Tech IPO: Bending Spoons
WorldWide Markets with Simon Brown
This week's WorldWideMarkets is a tour of cheap stocks that each come with a question mark. Simon Brown looks at Microsoft, where a forward PE of around 20 against a mean of 33 makes it look inexpensive — except free cash flow has slipped back to 2021 levels as AI and data-centre capex ramps. He revisits Afrimat, a high-quality cyclical now trading near 10-year lows, and digs into Bending Spoons, the Italian roll-up of legacy tech brands like Evernote, WeTransfer and AOL heading to the NASDAQ under code BSP. He also covers Naspers' latest results, the discount embedded in the...
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MercadoLibre is Amazon with a bank and it's cheapest in years
WorldWide Markets with Simon Brown
MercadoLibre is down 40% for the year, and Simon Brown argues the market is mispricing it as a retailer while ignoring the fintech engine — Mercado Pago — that is becoming Latin America's biggest digital bank. Total payment volume now exceeds gross merchandise volume, even as management deliberately halves operating margins to grab market share. This week also marks the death of former Fed chair Alan Greenspan at 100, a look at SpaceX's volatile listing that still sits above its IPO price, South African inflation cooling to 4.5% with petrol relief on the way, the first FOMC meeting with...
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Peace in Our Time | Are We Just Going Back to February?
WorldWide Markets with Simon Brown
A US–Iran cessation of hostilities, due to be signed Friday, has collapsed the oil price, firmed the rand back toward 16.00 and let gold hold key support — and Simon Brown argues markets are heading back to where they sat in late February, just with fewer rate cuts on the table. This episode also unpacks the most hyped IPO in history opening softer than expected, South African inflation surprising lower at 4.5% with chunky petrol and diesel cuts due in July, a no-change FOMC meeting, and a busy stocks-on-the-move list. Topics: US–Iran ceasefire, oil, rand, gold, emerging markets, SA...
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Stocks for your Soccer World Cup
WorldWide Markets with Simon Brown
The World Cup kicks off Thursday — so which stocks actually win? Simon Brown ran a data-driven hunt and the answer is counter-intuitive: skip the obvious bets. His own scrape of stadium-adjacent hotels found accommodation available everywhere, with 84 of 104 games unsold, so hoteliers have no pricing power and the retail uplift is marginal. The real edge sits with the kit makers — Adidas and Nike both screen cheap against analyst targets — and the betting operators, Sun International and NYSE-listed Super Group. He also looks at JSE newcomer Canal+ and the free-streaming threat from...
info_outline🌍 Worldwide Markets – Episode 664
📅 Recorded: Tuesday midday | 🎙️ Host: Simon Brown
This week on Worldwide Markets, we unpack a wild ride across commodities, central banks, tech titans, and global trade — with gold stealing the spotlight once again.
🟡 Has Gold Bottomed?
Gold went vertical — and then snapped back hard.
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📈 Ran from around $4,300 → $5,600, before a brutal sell-off
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📉 Dropped to $4,600, now stabilising near $4,900
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🕯️ That giant red “kangaroo tail” candle looks ugly — but…
The bigger picture hasn’t changed:
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💵 Debasement trade still intact
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🌍 Central banks bought ~800 tonnes last year
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🏦 ETF investors were big buyers again after selling in 2024
➡️ Verdict: Likely consolidation, not collapse. Sideways is the base case.
Gold |Weekly | 03 February 2026
🧱 Commodities Ran Too Hot
It wasn’t just gold:
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🔩 Copper, silver, platinum, palladium all surged
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🛢️ Brent crude nearly hit $70
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🪨 Aluminium hit US record prices, creating transatlantic arbitrage
Nothing goes straight up forever — profit-taking was inevitable.
🪙 What About Silver?
Simon stays honest here:
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❓ Industrial demand and price dislocations matter
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⚠️ But silver remains complex and opaque
💡 Portfolio stance:
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✅ Holding gold miners
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✅ Holding gold ETFs (local & offshore)
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❌ No silver exposure — and comfortable with that
🏦 Fed Drama: Enter Steve Walsh
Trump’s Fed chair nominee spooked markets — but context matters:
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🔄 Walsh is not a hawk, more a rate flip-flopper
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🗳️ Previously opposed rate cuts… until Trump won
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📉 Trump wants lower rates — Walsh says he’ll deliver
The challenge?
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🧠 Convincing the rest of the FOMC
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🪑 Jerome Powell still has influence for now
➡️ Expect noise, not an instant policy pivot.
🚀 SpaceX + xAI = Trillion-Dollar IPO?
Big Elon energy this week:
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🛰️ SpaceX acquires xAI
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🧠 Grok + data + power + space = big ambitions
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📊 IPO rumoured for mid-2026
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💰 Valuation likely north of $1 trillion
Simon likes SpaceX… less excited by the social-media side.
🚗 SA Vehicle Sales: Still Strong
January numbers surprised again:
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📊 Sales near levels last seen in 2019 / early 2022
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🏆 Toyota leads, but Chinese brands keep climbing
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🇨🇳 Chery, GWM, JAC & friends reshaping the market
Consumers are still buying — despite high rates.
🤝 US–India Trade “Peace”… Sort Of
A deal was announced, but details are fuzzy:
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📉 Tariffs reduced (somewhat)
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🛢️ India supposedly to stop buying Russian oil (👀)
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💸 India to buy $500bn of US goods (timeline unclear)
History lesson:
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🌮 Trump tariff threats turn real only ~20% of the time
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⚖️ Supreme Court still deciding if Trump even has the authority
➡️ Lots of headlines, fewer guarantees.
🎓 Upcoming Event: Power Hour
📅 19 February
📍 Rosebank (in-person) + webcast
💡 Topic: Tax-Free Investing & ETFs
👉 Book at justonelap.com/events
👋 Closing Thoughts
Markets are noisy, emotional, and fast — but the big-picture trends still matter more than the candles.
Until next week:
🤍 Look after yourself
🤍 And if you can, look after someone else too
Cheers! 🍻