The Preamble
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. Because why not.
In general, I thought that the week past felt like one of rationalisation. The SARB kept interest rates constant. It was announced that South Africa’s GDP grew by 1.4%, which was slightly better than expected. And I know this because the big stories in the news weren’t about Japan, or quantitative easing, or Mr Draghi – the big news was an Uber executive declaring that he wanted to dig up dirt on journalists. It was meant to be an off the record comment.
Seems that everything is on the record.
A look at the week everyone had:
Once-Off Investors
In numbers:
All fairly flat.
In pictures:
Monthly Investors
In numbers:
In pictures:
Indicators
The stock market also stayed pretty flat:
And slightly less flat in real terms:
The exchange rate pulled back (probably on the news of the repo rate staying unchanged):
The 10 Year Government Bond yield dropped as people bought up bonds (also on the rate news?):
Oil recovered a bit!
Gold and Platinum also recovered – and the gold price crossed upwards to above that of platinum:
Which is strange – unless you consider that investors stockpiled platinum in the waves of strikes. And now that production has recovered, why stockpile? So a sell-off maybe?
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.
