Ghost Bites

• Motus has finally spilled the beans (most of them, at least) on the offshore acquisition
• Pick n Pay has delivered strong revenue growth and the market loved it
• Prosus has walked away from the BillDesk deal
• Sibanye-Stillwater has increased its stake in Keliber, the Finnish lithium group

To get all the details on these stories, read Ghost Bites this morning>>>

We knew this already: the party is over in venture capital

The news of Prosus walking away from the BillDesk deal is just another blow to a venture capital market that has collapsed this year. It all comes down to the time value of money.

Venture capital investing is about believing in the future and finding the businesses that you believe will build that future. This is why tech companies tend to be the area of focus for venture capitalists, as they have the ability to scale quickly.

The trouble comes in when interest rates are on the rise. As money becomes more expensive (literally), the future starts to feel a lot further away. Burning millions a year on expensive developers becomes harder to justify, especially when the monetisation of that product is still a diagram on a whiteboard rather than cash in the bank .

With a share price that is down 28% this year, Prosus has taken a lot of pain. Among its tech peers though, it's by no means that worst place that you could've had your money this year. Still, shareholders are clearly putting the group under pressure and pushing back against some of the frothy investments that Prosus is well known for.

The decision to walk away from the BillDesk deal is a big one. The full details are in Ghost Bites this morning. In summary, the Indian competition authorities approved the deal in early September and there must have been a few celebrations on the go already. As not all the conditions were met by the deadline though (and Prosus doesn't disclose which conditions those are), the group could walk away from this deal and take a breather, perhaps to reassess the valuations of some of thes e assets.

The deal value was $4.7 billion. Just imagine how the sellers must feel right now.

The UK U-turn

There's a new government in place in the UK and they really aren't off to a good start. As TreasuryONE highlights, they made a massive U-turn on the proposed tax deal to cut taxes for higher earners, a decision which had sent the pound to its weakest-ever levels against the dollar. The change in approach gave some support to the pound.

With the dollar softening based on September manufacturing data, the euro was also given a breather and the rand traded in the low R17.80s. Although riskier assets had a better day, there is still a lot of uncertainty around the financial stability of certain major European banks.

Be fore you feel too excited about this news, we must note that Brent Crude traded over 4% higher after the Opec+ announcement to lower output.

Trading in a bear market

In Episode 95 of Magic Markets, Petri Redelinghuys of Herenya Capital Advisors joined us to talk about some of the strategies that traders and investors can think about in a bear market. We also talked about views on oil and Europe. As always, there's much to learn in this episode>>>

To those of you who registered for Unlock the Stock with Growthpoint at 12pm, I'll see you there.

Have a lovely day!