A full half-year in!
For the background to this series of posts: here, here and here. And the summary:
- Small investors have some investing options.
- You can invest occasionally in lump sums (the once-off investors) or monthly through debit orders (the monthly investors).
- As for things to invest in, I’m a general fan of low-cost equity-index-tracker ETFs (as is Warren Buffett). But there are other possibilities as well.
- This series of posts is there to see which would work out well.
- Then there are some indicators at the end. Just to get a feel for what things are good to know.
The Once-Off Investors
Week 26:
In pictures:
You’ll see that Naspers isn’t having the best week (which is having an indirect impact on the Satrix). That’s mainly because of the build-up to the Alibaba IPO on Friday (I explained why last week – Alibaba: Open SesaNYSE).
The Monthly Investors
Their Week 26:
In pictures:
The Indicators
The exchange rate looks like it’s stabilising:
Although the daily movements in the last week would not have made you think that. Here’s the Yahoo graph of the last five days:
Clearly, the market had a prolonged moment about the bad current account numbers (tsk).
This had some impact on the stock market (although, to be honest, I feel like Naspers had a lot more to do with the dip – it fell by 7%ish in the last week, after all):
That said, I think that the current account/exchange rate story did have a lot to do with weakness in the bond market:
Oil prices continue to spelunk.
Which might feel like fuel prices could be on the drop. So I did a quickie graph to show the impact of the ZAR exchange rate offset:
Which is really saying that the oil price is not that different (in Rand terms) to where we were four months ago.
Gold and platinum:
Which has to be one of the dullest graphs ever – even slightly depressing. But then I realised that’s probably because the scale is set wrong.
So here they are, revised:
This obscure downward trend…
Until next week!
Rolling Alpha posts opinions on finance, economics, and the corporate life in general. Follow me on Twitter @RollingAlpha, and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/rollingalpha.
