The Confidential Report - December 2020
We have come to the end of a tumultuous and unique year marked by the “black swan” event of COVID-19, various Trump excesses and, finally, his vanquishing. The long-term progress of the S&P500 as outlined in “our Background Approach” on our web site remains in tact. In that scenario, the world economy is moving into a strong boom phase stimulated by unprecedented
Hyprop
Property shares on the JSE have had a torrid time over the last few years. It began with the melt-down which resulted from the Resilient crisis, now substantially behind us, and continued with the eventual failure of the Edcon Group and the effects of the COVID-19 lockdown. These events have combined with a generally negative economy to reduce the value of property shares significantly.
Hyprop
Market Overview
Now that the uncertainty of the US election is essentially over, it is perhaps a good time to step back and consider where we are and what is likely to happen next.
The S&P500 index, which is an excellent benchmark for trends in the international markets, appears to be breaking to a new record high – above the resistance at 3580. Consider the chart:
Insider Trading
The JSE has just witnessed one of the most blatant examples of insider trading in many decades. It involved a small real estate investment trust (REIT) called Texton. This company owns 53 properties, 56% of which are in South Africa and the balance in the UK. After it listed on the JSE in August 2011, the share rose to a high of 1235c on 6th March 2015 before beginning a steady
The Confidential Report - November 2020
America
At the close of trade on Friday (30-10-20), the S&P500 index was down 7,5% from its cycle high of 3534 made on the 12th October 2020 – and this puts the market on a knife-edge. Consider the chart:
EOH
Enterprise Outsourcing Holdings (EOH) offers the private investor a very instructive example of a quality share that gave a clear signal of its impending troubles. It shows that, just because a share is an institutional favourite, does not mean that it is immune to the vagaries of the market. Any share can fall on hard times – and the secret is to watch the technical signals as
Balwin
The JSE property index (J253) has fallen over 68% since December 2018, firstly because of the adverse report about the Resilience group in January 2018 and then because of the pandemic in March 2020. This has left the index trading at a fraction of its underlying value – which represents an opportunity for private investors.
Among the property shares there are some which we believe represent bargains,
The Great Bull
We have often stressed the importance of understanding the long-term context within which the share market is moving. It is very difficult to see what is likely to happen in the future unless you go back in history and study how we arrived at this point. In this context, it is important to understand that, these days, the major markets of the world generally move together – and they all follow Wall Street.
The Confidential Report - October 2020
America
Technically, September 2020 was a correction month on Wall Street, with the S&P500 falling about 9,3%. The market was certainly due for some sort of correction following its record high of 3580 on 2nd September. Consider the chart:
The Relationship between Fundamental and Technical Analysis
There are generally two approaches to share assessment – fundamental and technical analysis. The fundamentalist is trying to answer the question, “How good will the company be as a generator of dividends in the future?” while the technician is looking for patterns in the share’s price and volume charts to improve his predictions of where the share