| After a strong run, equity markets have turned around this week, with little comfort coming from US Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell at the conclusion of the Fed's two-day meeting on Wednesday. Powell said the world's biggest economy still faced a long road to recovery and warned about the massive uncertainty that Covid-19 has introduced to economic activity. Fears of a second wave of the virus have also caused jitters. With volatility returning with a vengeance to US and world markets, Ingham Analytics says this is fertile ground for traders seeking short-term in and out trades as pricing gets roiled by uncertainty and fear. It has issued a Trader entitled "What are volatility traders afraid of?", which you can access by following this link. One of the casualties of Covid-19 is Metrofile and its proposed takeover by a private equity consortium, which now wants to re-examine the document storage company's books once the virus has passed. If it still goes ahead with an offer, Metrofile will delist from the JSE. Grit Real Estate Income Group also plans to delist from the local market, where it barely trades. It is listed on three exchanges and says by consolidating this to two, it will save money and hopefully boost liquidity in its shares. Read on for more details, as well as Investec Property Fund's disposal of its remaining stake in its Australian namesake. And it's an end of an era as RMB Holdings unbundles its stake in FirstRand, the financial services giant it established back in 1998. In the latest digital edition of Today's Trustee, editorial director Allan Greenblo says confusion has become the hallmark of the Covid-19 crisis as result of the fright induced by a world turned upside down but also by a failure in consumer financial education that's supposed to provide context and comfort through historical and knowledgeable perspective. You can access the latest quarterly publication by following this link. Finally, all the latest mergers and acquisitions news from DealMakers too. I hope you have a good weekend. Stephen Gunnion Managing Editor, InceConnect
The latest from Ingham Analytics. "What do the currencies say?" by Ingham Analytics has been a popular download this week. With currencies all over the show it is understandable that people are looking for guidance. A treasurer at a company that is exposed to imports and exports too will be wondering if taking forward cover is a sensible thing to do. Trading in FX markets is an enormous $6.6 trillion per day - trade in the rand is $72 billion or R1 trillion alone, 20% of South Africa's GDP. The rand is the 18th most traded currency. In "What do the currencies say?" Ingham Analytics looks at current developments in FX and guides on where to continue finding profitable trading opportunities. On the topic of volatility, Sasol continued to gyrate wildly yesterday, trading within a range of 30% - an astonishing figure. Ingham Analytics have been advising over several months that Sasol is one for the traders to play on volatility, not for long only new money. On Monday they called it was time for profit taking and it has sunk sharply since. You can read the latest Sasol note "Henry sends a message" and other notes on their website. Other recent popular notes include "Illusory value", on Prosus/Naspers/Tencent, and "South African banks' balance sheets surge". | 