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Thursday 21st of January 2016 |
Morning Africa |
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If you are tracking the NSE Do it via RICHLIVE and use Mozilla Firefox as your Browser. 0930-1500 KENYA TIME Normal Board - The Whole shebang Prompt Board Next day settlement Expert Board All you need re an Individual stock.
The Latest Daily PodCast can be found here on the Front Page of the site http://www.rich.co.ke |
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The Hot Springs Lake Magadi Africa |
“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” ― E.E. Cummings
“Trust your heart if the seas catch fire, live by love though the stars walk backward.” ― E.E. Cummings
“Trust your heart if the seas catch fire, live by love though the stars walk backward.” ― E.E. Cummings
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Planet of Fear Pepe Escobar Law & Politics |
The Davos annual talkfest is about to begin; that’s one of those occasions when the Masters of the Universe – who usually decide everything behind closed doors – send their minions to «debate» the future of their holdings. The current debate centers on whether we are still in the midst of the Third – digitalized – Industrial Revolution and the Internet of Things or whether we’re already entering the Fourth.
In the real world though all the cackle is about the age of old-fashioned oil. Which brings us to the myriad effects of the cheap oil strategy deployed by the House of Saud under Washington’s command.
Persian Gulf traders, off the record, are adamant that there is no longer any real global oil surplus of consequence as all shut-in oil has been dumped on the market based on that Washington command.
Petroleum Intelligence Weekly estimates the surplus is at a maximum 2.2 million a day, plus 600,000 barrels a day coming from Iran later this year. The US consumption of oil – at 19,840,000 barrels a day, 20% of world production – has not increased; it’s the other 80% that have been mostly absorbing the dumped oil.
Some key Persian Gulf traders are adamant that oil should be surging by the second half of 2016. That explains why Russia is not panicking with oil plunging towards $30 a barrel. Moscow is very much aware of the «partners» that are carrying oil market manipulation against Russia, and at the same time is anticipating this won’t last too long.
That explains why Russia’s Deputy Finance Minister Maxim Oreshkin issued a sort of «keep calm and carry on» message; he expects oil prices to remain in the $40-60 range for at least the next seven years, and Russia can live with that.
The Masters of the Universe – just like the Russians – have realized their oil manipulation cannot last. Hysteria, predictably, took over. That’s why they ordered major Wall Street firms to short oil using cash settlement. Compliant US corporate media was ordered to spin the shortfalls will last forever. The target is to drive down the price of a barrel of oil to $7 if possible.
The original Masters of the Universe strategy would eventually lead to regime change in Russia and the usual oligarch suspects back in the saddle re-conducting the massive looting operation Russia suffered during the 1990s.
A fearful House of Saud is a mere pawn in this strategy. Assuming the plan would work, the House of Saud under – virtually demented – King Salman, now confined to a room in his Riyadh palace, would also be regime-changed, via Saudi military officers trained in the West and recruited by Western agents. As a bonus, the Islamic Republic of Iran would also collapse, with «moderates» (rebels?) taking control.
So the Masters of the Universe strategy essentially boils down to regime-change in Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia, leading to Exceptionalistan-friendly elites/vassals; in sum, the ultimate chapter in the global Resource Wars. Yet what this is yielding so far is the House of Saud having absolutely no clue of what may happen to them; Riyadh royals may think that they are undermining both Iran and Russia, but in the end they may be only accelerating their own demise.
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Saudi Arabia Said to Ban Betting Against Its Currency Emerging Markets |
With speculation mounting that the world’s biggest oil exporter won’t be able to maintain the riyal’s peg to the dollar as revenue plunges, the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency told lenders to halt the sale of options contracts on riyal forwards. The directive, issued at a Jan. 18 meeting in Riyadh, applies to local banks and the Saudi branches of international banks, the people said.
Saudi riyal forwards for the next 12 months rose as high as 906 points before paring the increase to 900 points as of 12:33 p.m. in Riyadh. The nation’s benchmark stock gauge, the Tadawul All Share Index, dropped 4.8 percent.
Volatility in the forwards market has been based on “misperception about Saudi Arabia’s overall economic backdrop,” Governor Fahad Al-Mubarak said in a statement on Jan. 11. The kingdom will “uphold its mandate" of maintaining the three-decade old peg at 3.7500 per dollar.
Conclusions
Probably looking to get their shorts on 1st.
Frontier Markets
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A top Mozambican opposition official and lawmaker was shot and seriously wounded Wednesday in the central city of Beira, Renamo said Africa |
A top Mozambican opposition official and lawmaker was shot and seriously wounded Wednesday in the central city of Beira, Renamo said, raising fears the attack might heighten political tensions in the country.
Manuel Bissopo "had just come out of a press conference where he denounced the kidnapping and killing of three of our members when two military and security cars gave chase and then attacked him," Renamo spokesman Antonio Muchanga, told AFP.
"We would really like to know their motive," he said.
Bissopo is the secretary general of the former rebel movement turned opposition party Renamo and a member of the Pan African parliament, the legislative arm of the African Union (AU).
The attack comes amid renewed tensions between government and the party. Sporadic clashes between government forces and Renamo have occurred in recent months.
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Prehistoric massacre in Kenya called oldest evidence of warfare Kenyan Economy |
Man's inhumanity to man, as 18th century Scottish poet Robert Burns put it, is no recent development.
Scientists said on Wednesday they had found the oldest evidence of human warfare, fossils of a band of people massacred by a troop of attackers with weapons including arrows, clubs and stone blades on the shores of a lagoon in Kenya about 10,000 years ago.
The remains of 27 people from a Stone Age hunter-gatherer culture were unearthed at a site called Nataruk roughly 20 miles (30 km) west of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya.
One man's skeleton was found with a sharp blade made of a volcanic glass called obsidian still embedded in his skull. Another man had wounds from two blows to the head apparently with a club, crushing his skull. A woman in the last stages of pregnancy appeared to have been bound by her hands and feet.
Victims also had projectile wounds to the neck and broken skulls, hands, knees and ribs.
University of Cambridge paleoanthropologist Marta Mirazón Lahr said evidence indicates these people, who hunted animals, caught fish and gathered edible plants, were slain in a premeditated attack by raiders, perhaps from another region.
"It is a brutal, physical, lethal attack with the intention to kill those individuals who could put up a defense or mount a counter-attack, or who perhaps were of no use to them, whether it was a man or a very pregnant woman, too young or too old," Mirazón Lahr.
Our species arose 200,000 years ago in Africa. Many scholars had thought warfare first emerged long after the time of the Nataruk people when humans formed settled communities instead of a nomadic, hunter-gatherer existence.
The Nataruk fossils "raise the question of whether warfare has been part of the human experience for much longer than previously thought," Mirazón Lahr added.
A planned attack would suggest that resources the Nataruk people possessed, perhaps water, dried meat or fish, nuts or even women and children, were considered valuable, she said.
There were remains of 21 adults and six children, most under age 6. There were no older teenagers. "Whether they managed to escape, or were taken, we will never know," she said.
"At the end, all massacres are savage," Mirazón Lahr said. "How many examples do we have from our very recent, and current, history? But finding the remains of a massacre among the skeletons of hunter-gatherers of this period was totally surprising."
The research appeared in the journal Nature.
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Kenya Rattled as Shabab Turns Sights on Somalia Military Targets New York Times Kenyan Economy |
NAIROBI, Kenya — The attackers burst into the Kenyan military base in Somalia before dawn, blasting through the gate with a truckload of explosives.
Scores of Shabab militants then flooded through the flames, on foot and in trucks, firing heavy guns into the plastic-covered shelters where the Kenyan soldiers were sleeping.
“That battle was over before it started,” said one official in Nairobi with detailed knowledge of the attack. “The Shabab did their homework and completely wiped them out.”
Somali and Western officials now say that 80 to 100 Kenyan soldiers — and possibly more — were massacred during the attack, which took place on Friday at the El-Adde forward operating base. The Shabab overran the base, held it for several hours and made off with sensitive communications equipment, artillery pieces that can fire 10 miles and several American-made armored Humvees.
But since then, Kenya’s leaders have refused to disclose the number of dead or other details, trying to soften the blow of what may be the worst military disaster in this country’s history.
“This has been a shock,” said Yusuf Hassan, a member of Kenya’s Parliament. “We’re not Burundi, we’re not Ethiopia, we’re not Uganda. Our country does not have a history of war. We’ve never experienced anything like this.”
They have killed scores of soldiers and stolen their arsenals. Their propaganda videos show alarming amounts of guns, vehicles and overflowing buckets of bullets now in their hands.
“This is going to end no time soon,” said David M. Anderson, a professor of African history at the University of Warwick and a renown expert on modern Kenya.
The Kenyan Army’s incursion simply brought the Shabab deeper into Kenya, setting off a string of increasingly devastating suicide missions that have killed hundreds of civilians and hurt the economy, especially the tourism industry. Kenyan soldiers have also been accused of smuggling sugar, as well as other illegal activities inside Somalia.
Mr. Mwangi also criticized President Uhuru Kenyatta for attending political rallies in the Mombasa area this past week. “It’s a national shame that our president is busy politicking while the dead bodies are coming home,” he said.
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N.S.E Today |
The MPC left rates unchanged yesterday. Standard Chartered's Chief Africa Economist Razia Khan struck an an upbeat Note for 2016 for Kenya's economy yesterday. In fact my view is that East Africa and Kenya in particular will out-perform in 2016. My improving Trajectory [I am looking for 6% GDP in 2016] is first informed by Meteorology. The El-Nino Weather System whilst scorching Farms south of Kenya [Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia, South Africa] and to the North [Ethiopia] has proven ''benign'' for Kenya as evidenced that we continue to have rain at this time of Year in Nairobi. So The first point to note is that Kenya is in a meteorological sweet spot. The sharply reduced Oil Price has meant a Trend Change in a perennial challenge for East African Economies - The Current Account Deficits. Government has snaffled up the benefit in order to improve its fiscal position but this is a dramatic development. The East African Shillings have for the most part stabilised [ex Uganda which is always defensive ahead of an Election and the attendant risks of pump-priming] and that is noteworthy development at a time when currency markets are being roiled. Kenya and East Africa will also look handsome in the comparison because the rest of Africa from Abuja to Luanda, from Lusaka to Johannesburg is taking a fearful beating. The Nairobi All Share was not able to snap its losing streak and closed 1.303% lower at 137.02. The All Share has closed at a 10 week Low. The Nairobi NSE20 retreated 0.96% and has closed at a 42 month Low. Equity Turnover was 500.27m.
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N.S.E Equities - Agricultural |
Sasini Tea and Coffee firmed +2.79% to close at 20.25 and traded 22,000 shares.
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N.S.E Equities - Commercial & Services |
Safaricom corrected -3.174% to close at 15.25 a 10 week closing Low and traded 2.931m shares. Safaricom has retreated 5.279% over two trading sessions. Safaricom and other Big Cap stocks have imported international Volatility because of the higher ratio of foreign Shareholders on their share register.
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N.S.E Equities - Finance & Investment |
Equity Bank was the busiest counter at the Securities Exchange to close -0.65% easier at 38.25 and traded 4.485m shares worth 172.222m. Equity is -4.375% in 2016. Kenya Commercial Bank closed unchanged at 37.50 but was trading at session highs of 39.00 +4.00% at the closing Bell, signalling we are headed back to the pivot price Level of 40.00 in short order. KCB traded 3.267m shares. Diamond Trust Bank rallied +2.74% to close at 187.00 making that a cumulative +5.64% 2 session rebound. DTB traded 112,200 shares.
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N.S.E Equities - Industrial & Allied |
EABL closed unchanged at 255.00 and traded 243,100 shares. EABL was trading at session highs of 260.00 +1.96% at the Closing Bell and might have been lifted by news out of SAB Miller, where according to SABMiller CEO Alan Clark Africa “performed well across the board.” EABL will reporting at Month-End and I expect a strong Earnings Release and expect the share price to lift from this closing level.
KenGen closed unchanged at 5.50 but traded shares as high as 6.00 +10.00% with 2.455m shares changing hands. We have seen sharpened volumes at 52 week Lows. The share price is currently dislocated and the PE Ratio is 1.04.
Eveready firmed +1.85% to close at 2.80 and was trading at the daily limit of 3.00 +9.09% at the Closing Bell.
Trans-Century which is seeking to redeem or at least roll-over a now ''deep out of the money'' convertible Bond, where the value of the Bond is 8.1b versus a market capitalisation of about 2.4b firmed +2.37% on light trading.
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