Market scorecard
The unexpected decision by the Bank of Canada to restart its rate-hiking campaign had a huge impact across global markets. This spurred traders to increase their wagers on further Fed rate increases, with swaps now pricing in a 0.25% hike for the July meeting. The S&P 500 fell for a second day this week, while the Nasdaq 100 suffered its worse day since April as tech bore the brunt of the rates jitters.
In company news, TikTok aims to more than quadruple the size of its global e-commerce business to as much as $20 billion in sales this year. Elsewhere, Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) closed up 1.5% in its ride to a ninth consecutive daily gain, its longest winning streak since January 2021 and closing at its highest level since October last year.
In summary, the JSE All-share closed up 0.37%, the S&P 500 fell 0.38%, and the Nasdaq was 1.29% lower.
One thing, from Paul
James Clear, the guy who wrote the book "Atomic Habits", made a great point in a recent post:
"Just because improvements aren't visible doesn't mean they aren't happening. You're not going to see the number change each time you step on the scale. You're not going to finish a chapter each time you sit down to write. Early wins come easy. Lasting wins require a lifestyle."
This resonated with me because it's the same with a share portfolio. On a day-to-day basis, stocks go up and down. You have good days and bad days, with incremental value moves up and down. Sometimes stocks that you own fly higher soon after you buy them, and sometimes they plummet, before eventually recovering.
You put some new money in, you earn some dividends and that gets invested too. Maybe you make a few tweaks here and there. Months go by, then years. Over time, the overall value of the account goes up. Wait long enough and you've made some real money!
Byron's beats
Ben Evans said the following in his latest newsletter about self-driving cars. "There was a period five years ago when it looked like machine learning might mean we could have fully autonomous cars pretty soon, but the last 20% turned out to be 80% of the work and we're in something of a winter now."
Mobility has huge potential. At the beginning of the year, Elon Musk said that if Tesla cracks the self-driving conundrum, they will be able to do an overnight software update which will convert most of the existing fleet into self-driving vehicles. He said if that happens, it could result in the biggest increase in value for an asset in history.
But as Ben says above, it has been very tough to perfect. Of course, Tesla is not the only one working on this. Uber recently announced a partnership with Waymo (Google-funded) to bring their self-driving technology to the Uber network.
I do believe the code will be cracked soon and our grandchildren will be baffled when we tell them stories of how we used to drive our own cars around. Times were tough!
Michael's musings
On Tuesday Bidcorp (JO:BIDJ) released a strong trading update but it disappointed the market. One of the groups biggest challenges was high food inflation in their operating countries. Australasia had food inflation of 9%, Europe of 16%, and the UK at 19%! Rapidly rising prices makes is difficult to pass on the increases to clients.
Reading results from a food supplier is a great way to gauge the health of different economies. The UK and Europe are strong, and well-placed to accelerate as they enter their busy summer months. No surprise, South Africa is limping a bit with loadshedding making the food chain challenging. Surprisingly, China hasn't rebounded as quickly as the rest of the world after Covid restrictions were lifted.
Bidcorp is a good way to get international exposure in our local portfolios. The company continues to look for small bolt-on acquisitions to grow its international footprint. As a result, management keep billions on hand so that the can pounce when the right opportunity presents itself.
Bidcorp is a quality company, even though food isn't a sexy like the tech industry.
Bright's banter
The Forbes Billionaires List for 2023 reveals that out of the 100 wealthiest people in the world, only 14 are women. The majority of these women have acquired their wealth through inheritance or divorce settlements from wealthy husbands.
French L'Oreal heiress Francoise Bettencourt Meyers holds the top position as the world's richest woman, followed by Walmart (NYSE:WMT) heiress Alice Walton. MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos, ranks sixth on the list.
Other women who have joined the list include Julia Koch, who inherited her wealth from her late husband David Koch, and Miriam Adelson, who inherited a fortune from her late husband Sheldon Adelson.
While the representation of women among the world's richest individuals is still relatively low, there are notable examples of women who have built their fortunes through their own entrepreneurial efforts.
These self-made female billionaires include as Rafaela Aponte-Diamant, who founded the shipping company MSC with her husband, Diane Hendricks of ABC Supply and Judy Love of Love's Travel Stops.
Before I get cancelled, tomorrow I will write about a list of the richest women in the world who are self-made.
Signing off
Asian markets are down this morning. Benchmarks showed notable weakness in Hong Kong and Japan, while mainland China and South Korea declined slightly. Japan reported GDP numbers that showed a 2.7% expansion in the economy in the first quarter versus projections of 1.9%. The Yen strengthened on the news.
Today, Eurozone GDP will be released, and South Africa's current account data.
US equity futures edged lower in early trade. The Rand has an 18 in front of it again, it is currently at R18.95 to the greenback.
It is already Thursday, stay young.