Many wrongs make a rights offer

Good Morning Voornaam,

Are you ready to meet Trive? In the latest Ghost Stories episode, CEO Travis Robson joined me to explain why this multinational trading group is investing heavily in South Africa. Listen to the podcast here to find out more>>>

SENS is finally getting juicy this year

I was right about the EOH share price, which has tasted about as good for shareholders as De Ruyter's poisoned coffee at Eskom. Moving on from cyanide to happiness, there are investors who are keen to jump in and support the rights offer that will get EOH out of balance sheet jail.

This is where I was wrong. I wasn't sure that there would be much support for this raise. After many wrongs made a rights offer, EOH has another shot at survival. Will it flourish? I'm not putting my money in to find out.

Even against a backdrop of tigers on the loose in Gauteng and strong memories of watching Jumanji as a kid, SENS still managed to be exciting yesterday. Aside from Kibo Energy wanting to make synthetic oil, I also used Schroder as an excuse to explain why property values can go down during inflation. Ninety One's AUM was flat in the last quarter, so I used that as an excuse to explain why asset managers are high beta businesses.

But it was right at the end of the day when the most interesting bomb dropped: wholesale management changes at Spar and the appointment of a familiar name or two to the board.

It's all here for you to enjoy in Ghost Bites>>>

Morgan Stanley: IP-oh dear

Morgan Stanley has released its latest quarterly results. The US banks are always worth keeping an eye on, whether you are invested in that sector or not. They are a terrific barometer for activity in the US, particularly in the investment banking side of the businesses.

We focus there, where revenue in the fourth quarter has fallen by 49% year-on-year. This isn't because the bankers finally staged a coup and refused to work 16-hour days. No, this is beca use IPOs and fresh capital issuances have all but disappeared.

This is the crazy thing with financial markets: at the top of the cycle, companies raise money even when they don't need it. This is because when things turn for the worse, it almost doesn't matter whether there is a good reason for the capital raise or not. When investors are bearish, it becomes much harder to raise capital.

Does this make sense?

Not really, as investor demand should be higher when the share prices are lower.

Are markets rational?

No. We know this.

The rand is lagging

Lagging, not lagging in the Afrikaans context. Nobody is laughing. When emerging market currencies do well, we don't seem to be following. Treasury ONE thinks this is because of the electricity crisis, which certainly makes sense. This means that when emerging market currencies do badly, we will likely do even worse.

If you own an oil field, you'll be pleased to know that Brent Crude was up 2% in response to Chinese growth in Q4. It's more likely that you own a car, so I'll just stop there with the bad news.

If you still want to attend the TreasuryONE webinar this morning, you need to move quickly. It's scheduled for 9am and you can still register here>>>

Lend me your ears

Aside from the new Ghost Stories episode with Travis Robson of Trive, there are two other shows that you should make time for:

With that, I leave you to navigate the darkness and the wild tigers on this fine Wednesday.