The Markets Daily

South Africa has officially recorded 60,000 covid deaths. We are in the thick of the third wave, and this figure will only increase. The latest tally of new infections, at 12,222 people is down from recent highs, but remains elevated. 

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I started this weeks commentary speaking about an equity selloff, I followed that yesterday with a discussion about a return of risk appetite and now it would seem that we may be heading to the steady middle ground.

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US monetary policy remains in the spotlight and the major market mover today. Jerome Powell will be testifying at congress today, but his remarks for this appearance have already been released.

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Google told me that Southern Hemisphere winter officially begins today – I’m not sure Google has been here in SA – I’m fairly certain that winter has been with us for at least a month already – but scarier – if this is the official start of winter, it may indeed get colder still.

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Confronted by covid fear and fatigue, South Africans are being bombarded by statistics and reports about the severity of the third wave, particularly in the economic hub of Gauteng. While Thursday’s case rate subsided from Wednesday’s high, it still accounted for more than half of Africa’s total number of reported daily infections!

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Like yesterday’s South African public holiday, today’s commentary will be short and sweet. The 37th anniversary of the Soweto uprising afforded us a mid-week reprieve from the daily humdrum. The importance of the day itself cannot be underplayed. It was a significant event which fundamentally changed SA’s socio-economic landscape

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What goes up must come down, or at least that is what the law of gravity tells us… the question to what extent is this true in asset markets. We often speak about cycles in economics and in our text book world an economic or financial cycles looks a little like a sine curve (yes, there really are real world applications to our school room mathematics!). 

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