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 $1.1 trillion a year to service, and a bond market that no finance minister can push around.

Finally, why a lifelong gold sceptic now holds gold.

Topics: Brent crude, Strait of Hormuz, China's strategic reserves, Taiwan, USD/ZAR, SA local government elections, US midterms, G7 bond yields, US debt, AngloGold Ashanti, gold ETFs.

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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 closes with two JSE stocks moving the wrong way: Naspers and Clicks.

Topics: US Treasury yields, gold price, rand gold price, JSE gold miners, all-in sustaining costs, hedging and collars, Ghana mining leases, Naspers, Clicks.

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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 bond yields back at 2008 levels, a major upgrade to the JustOneLap ETF database, and stocks on the move.

Topics: Absa results, Nedbank results, return on equity, cost to income, bank valuations, Iran and oil, the rand, global bond yields, sovereign debt, ETF database, Mr Price, Shoprite, Clicks, Woolworths.

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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 inflation and grow Sixty60 gives it weapons Pick n Pay cannot afford. His call: stay in Shoprite.

Topics include Pick n Pay, Boxer, Shoprite, Checkers Sixty60, Woolworths, retail turnarounds, Section 189A, and the OST to Shyft migration.

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Mr Price and Clicks have both been hammered, and on a chart they look like the same trade. They are not.

Simon Brown holds both and spends this episode pulling the two businesses apart to work out which one he actually wants to own. Clicks is on its cheapest P/E in a decade but is losing share in the high-margin categories that pay the bills, with Dis-Chem, Checkers Sixty60, SPAR Health and Woolworths all circling. Mr Price is on 12.2 times earnings with a 5.3% dividend yield and a German acquisition the market has already priced as a failure.

Also covered: US earnings season running at 47% growth, why the South African consumer squeeze is worst at the top end, and Saudi Aramco's warning that rebuilding oil inventories could take 18 months.

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Vodacom has cut its dividend payout ratio from 75% to 65%, which pushes one of the JSE's dependable income names down the list. Simon Brown runs the Top 40 and the mid-cap screen to find where quality local yield actually sits, and shows how Growthpoint, Nedbank, Coronation and Standard Bank can be combined into a home-built income portfolio yielding roughly seven and a half to eight percent, growing ahead of inflation. He also unpacks Alphabet's record quarter, where two thirds of the profit was unrealised paper gains and free cash flow turned negative for the first time on record, and asks how any investor values Tesla when the CEO has promised self-driving cars every year for a decade.

Topics: Alphabet results, AI capex, circular AI revenue, Vodacom dividend policy, JSE dividend yields, income ETFs, Tesla valuation, Elon Musk, Bid Corp, Clicks, Absa.

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Can you find a real edge in prediction markets? Simon hunts the arbitrage — and calls Netflix cheap.

In this week's WorldWideMarkets: • 🎲 Prediction markets: where's the edge, and where's the scam? • 🇧🇷 The Brazil election "two-horse arbitrage" explained • 📈 Betting SA's 2026 inflation print with a Bayesian model • 🎬 Netflix halved — Simon says it's now cheap • 📊 Stocks on the move: Bid Corp, Mr Price, OUTsurance, Vodacom, Absa, Gold Fields

CHAPTERS: 0:00 Introduction 1:20 Prediction markets: where's the edge? 4:35 The Brazil election arbitrage 8:05 Betting SA inflation with a Bayesian model 13:30 Upcoming events 14:25 Oil, Iran & Canada tariffs 16:45 Netflix: cheap for the first time in years 19:50 Stocks on the move

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A month after the year's most hyped listing, nearly everyone who bought SpaceX and held is underwater — and with the 180-day lock-up now gone, Simon Brown explains why insider selling is only getting started.

He then tours the week's biggest moves: Apple's copyright lawsuit against OpenAI and what it means for hardware and an IPO, Purple Group buying Telescope AI to strengthen EasyEquities, oil climbing back into the 80s as Middle East peace talks stall, De Beers closing its last South African mine, and Sappi languishing at 1998 levels.

He closes on a US 10-year yield near 4.6% and the start of a US earnings season priced for 23–24% EPS growth. Topics: SpaceX, OpenAI, Apple, Purple Group, Telescope AI, Brent oil, De Beers, Sappi, Mpact, US Treasuries, bank earnings.

WorldWideMarkets is part of JustOneLap.com.

Wars burn hardware, and rebuilding it takes years.

This week Simon Brown works through the defence sector as a replacement thesis — the US fired roughly half its THAAD interceptor stockpile in twelve days against Iran — and settles on Lockheed Martin as his pick, with RTX as a second choice.

He weighs the faster-growing but pricier European names (Leonardo, Thales, BAE Systems, Rheinmetall), runs through the main defence ETF options, and flags the risks: budgets are politics, and forward orders still have to convert.

Also covered: a post-IPO look at Bending Spoons, SK Hynix's planned $28bn Nasdaq listing and the memory trade, and the Q2 review of the Equity Coverage AI project — 26 names, 22 buys and one sell.

WorldWideMarkets is part of JustOneLap.com.

This week's WorldWideMarkets is a tour of cheap stocks that each come with a question mark.

Simon Brown looks at Microsoft, where a forward PE of around 20 against a mean of 33 makes it look inexpensive — except free cash flow has slipped back to 2021 levels as AI and data-centre capex ramps. He revisits Afrimat, a high-quality cyclical now trading near 10-year lows, and digs into Bending Spoons, the Italian roll-up of legacy tech brands like Evernote, WeTransfer and AOL heading to the NASDAQ under code BSP.

He also covers Naspers' latest results, the discount embedded in the Naspers-Prosus-Tencent chain, and why petrol gets a sizeable cut as Brent drops into the low 70s. Topics: Microsoft, Afrimat, Brent oil, Bending Spoons IPO, Naspers, Prosus, Tencent, Takealot.

WorldWideMarkets is part of JustOneLap.com.