War, Fuel & Fertilizer: The Inflation Pipeline
WorldWide Markets with Simon Brown
Release Date: 03/17/2026
Boxer Earns More Per Rand. So Why Can't It Catch Shoprite?
WorldWide Markets with Simon Brown
Boxer earns slightly more per rand of sales than Shoprite, yet the maths says it will never catch the bigger grocer. Simon Brown compares the two side by side on margins, store economics, growth and valuation, and explains why Pick n Pay's stake in Boxer remains an overhang. He also unpacks why France's 10-year yield has doubled since January 2025 and how higher yields feed a negative debt loop. The trade of the week is Amazon, funded by half of a Dell position that has more than quadrupled. Topics: French 10-year yields, debt feedback loops, actively managed ETFs, Boxer vs Shoprite, Pick n...
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Naspers & Prosus: down 50% in a year; half price, or half the story?
WorldWide Markets with Simon Brown
Naspers and Prosus have roughly halved over the past year. Simon Brown unpacks why: three-quarters of the fall is Tencent, the rest is a stronger rand, while the holdco discount has barely budged at around 40%. At R664 Prosus offers about R1,135 of value, but billions in buybacks haven't closed the gap, and Tencent's capex surge has spooked the market. Topics: Top 40 chart of the week, actively managed ETFs at the Standard Bank Power Hour, the new JustOneLap ETF dividends page, Naspers and Prosus discount maths, the buyback loop, Tencent capex and AI, Just Eat Takeaway and iFood, bull and...
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Record car sales, falling motor stocks: Motus, CMH, WeBuyCars and Zeda
WorldWide Markets with Simon Brown
South Africa sold 61,645 new cars in September, the most in almost 20 years, yet the listed motor stocks are falling. Simon Brown explains why: cheap, well-specced Chinese cars are driving the volume while crushing pricing power across new cars, used cars and rental fleets. He digs into the naamsa numbers, what flatters the headline, and why the market is pricing a cyclical peak, then ranks the six JSE motor stocks. Topics: US unemployment chart of the week, actively managed ETFs Power Hour, naamsa September sales, rental fleets and demos, Chinese brands, used car deflation, WeBuyCars, Zeda,...
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Two Education Stocks. Both Expensive. Which is the Smart One to Own?
WorldWide Markets with Simon Brown
Curro has delisted, leaving ADvTECH and Stadio as the only listed education stocks on the JSE, and both screen as expensive. Simon Brown compares their valuations, looks at the structural shortage of school and university seats in South Africa, and weighs the pending university-status catalyst to find the smart bet. He also covers the MPC's rate hike and a global bond yield sell-off pushing the SA ten-year back towards 9%. Topics: MPC rate hike, global bond yields, Stadio index inclusion, ADvTECH vs Stadio valuations, private schooling in South Africa, the university seat shortage, UNISA,...
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PGMs: the white metal, the dynamics, and the miners
WorldWide Markets with Simon Brown
Platinum smashed its 2008 record in January, then fell almost 50%. Simon Brown works through what actually happened to the platinum group metals and why the JSE-listed miners are still generating enormous cash at the lower price. A 1.5 million ounce deficit became a 265,000 ounce surplus in a year, almost entirely because investment demand and Chinese jewellery buying walked away above 3,000 dollars. Electric vehicles were never the real threat. The growth story nobody is pricing is the AI build-out, with ruthenium up 151 percent and iridium up 30 percent on data centre and hard drive demand....
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Is there value in Shoprite at all-time highs?
WorldWide Markets with Simon Brown
Shoprite is trading at all-time highs and has still de-rated 23% in two years. Simon Brown works through the FY26 numbers — 7% revenue growth, a 6% trading margin, HEPS up 12.2% and internal selling price inflation of just 0.8% against national food inflation of 3.9% — and asks whether a business generating a 19.8% return on invested capital against an 11.5% cost of capital is still offering value at 314c. Sixty60 gets the closest look: R25.5bn of sales, 11.1% of South African supermarket sales, and a super app strategy reaching into coffee, cellular, pets, pharmacy and financial...
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Oil, elections, rates and gold: the four things that matter
WorldWide Markets with Simon Brown
This week WorldWideMarkets runs Simon Brown's keynote from a corporate event: four slides on the four issues facing global markets right now, with AI deliberately left off the list. The world lost roughly 20% of its oil supply when the Strait of Hormuz closed, and Brent still only reached $120 — Simon explains why the oil market had far more slack than anyone realised, and why $80 rather than $60 is the level to plan around. He then covers the rand at R15.92, the two elections falling on 3 and 4 November, and the story he thinks matters most: $40 trillion of US government debt now costing...
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Ranking JSE gold miners as the yellow metal is on the move
WorldWide Markets with Simon Brown
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is selling short-dated paper and buying long in an attempt to force the 10 and 30-year yields lower. Simon Brown explains why fighting a market rarely ends well, and what that trade has already done to gold and the rand. With gold back at $4,630 and the rand at R16, he then works through all five JSE-listed gold miners — Pan African, DRDGOLD, Harmony, Gold Fields and AngloGold Ashanti — comparing production, all-in sustaining costs, balance sheets and analyst price targets, before ranking them and setting out the specific red flag attached to each. He...
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Cheap for a Reason: ABSA versus Nedbank. Which to buy?
WorldWide Markets with Simon Brown
Absa and Nedbank are the two cheap banks on the JSE, both trading near 1.2 times tangible book while Standard Bank and FirstRand sit close to two. Simon Brown puts them side by side after both reported and finds numbers so similar that valuation stops being the question: the same fifteen percent return on equity, the same credit loss ratio near zero point nine percent, the same capital. What separates them is that Nedbank has committed to seventeen percent return on equity by 2028 and Absa has not. He also covers the expiry of the sixty-day Iran accord with Brent above ninety dollars, long...
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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...
info_outlineWorldwide Markets — Episode 680 | 18 March 2026 Powered by Standard Bank, Global Markets, Retail and Shyft
⛽ Fuel Price Pain Coming Petrol 95 up ~R4.50/litre and diesel up ~R7.50/litre from the first Wednesday in April. On a 50-litre tank that's R200+ for petrol and close to R400 for diesel. Fill up before April if you can.
🛢️ Oil & The Iran War Brent holding above $100/barrel (currently ~$103.50) — briefly dipping to $99.80 on Monday before recovering. Markets are pricing in a short war. Some vessels — largely Iranian-linked ships — are still moving through the Strait of Hormuz. Saudi Arabia, Iraq, UAE and Kuwait have cut production. Strategic oil reserves are being released globally.
📉 Market Reactions Drops from the start of the war's close: China -1%, US -4%, UK -5%, Europe -6%, India -8%, Japan -9%, South Korea -12%, UAE -15%, SA -~10%. The rand at R16.72, SA 10-year bond yield has surged from below 8% to 8.9% — a massive move.
🌍 Emerging Market Risks A deep dive into countries with high USD-denominated debt and heavy oil imports. The most vulnerable: Mozambique (38% USD debt), Ghana (28%), Egypt (27%), Sri Lanka (26%), Pakistan (22%). Egypt is the only one in the MSCI EM Index — at a 0.03% weighting — so the direct ETF risk is limited. But Egypt and Pakistan carry real standalone risk.
🌱 Fertilizer & Food Prices Urea (a byproduct of LNG) is largely sourced from the UAE — and it's not moving right now. Fertilizer prices are spiking. Combined with diesel costs, food price inflation is coming — just with a lag. Casey Sprake (AG Capital) maps the timeline: transport 1–3 months, food 1–3 months, broader CPI 4 months, electricity up to a year.
🛒 Mr. Price* Update The investor presentation on the German fashion retailer acquisition landed today. Stock was up ~2.5% earlier but has since retreated into the red — not an aggressive selloff, with support just below R170.
📊 Results Roundup
- AVI — solid numbers, strong margin protection, fashion had a surprisingly good December
- Weaver Fintech (formerly HomeChoice) — buy-now-pay-later funnel leading into unsecured credit and insurance; majority female customer base; a neat business model
- Absa — not bad
- Standard Bank — exceptional cost discipline
- Optasia* — maiden results, trading around listing price of ~R19, P/E ~30x but expected to grow at ~30%, PEG ~1
💻 SaaS Check-in The "SaaS is dead" debate continues. Mass layoffs (e.g. Block shedding ~4,000 staff) mean lost per-seat licences and potential revenue pressure. Worth watching, but tech hiring data still skews net positive for now.
🏦 Fed Chair Watch Trump's nominee Kevin Walsh hasn't been sent to the Senate yet — possibly compliance issues (Walsh's spouse is a billionaire). Senator Tillis (R) says he won't vote for any Fed chair nominee until charges against Jerome Powell are dropped. Jerome Powell's term ends end of May. Outcome unclear.
🧺 UK CPI Basket Changes Non-alcoholic beer, hummus, croissants, motorhomes and international rail fares are being added. Wine categories merged. Vegetables better represented. February data drops 25 March.
🤖 AI in the Wild Simon shares a cautionary Claude Opus 4.6 experience — building a detailed initiation report on ADvTech* worked well in parts, but the final consolidation hit rate limits, produced a corrupted document, and then delivered a garbled output with wrong JSE codes and incorrect founder attribution. A reminder that very long context windows can degrade LLM output quality.
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