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Wednesday 16th of May 2018 |
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
Looking forward to hosting @EliudKipchoge at #Mindspeak |
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Life Lessons Learned From @EliudKipchoge's Speech At @OxfordUnion #mindspeak Saturday 19th 0930 @ICNairobi Africa |
“The world is actually full of challenges and we need to challenge ourselves. I took a challenge to run that fast. It consumes a lot of energy especially mentally. But I took myself and accepted to be challenged and I challenged the time.” “I had a friend in India who told me that – the guys is 50 years now – and he told me he will die before we see a human being run two hours flat. I met him one month ago in New York and I joked ‘You will never die again because you have seen me run two hours.’” “Self-discipline starts with you. It’s no other person. It starts with you. Start to examine yourself…Self discipline is doing what’s right instead of doing what you feel like doing. That’s the meaning of self-discipline.” “After accommodating self discipline in your mind, self-discipline can help you to actually get three things. It can save your feelings. Get you back on the course when you try to think otherwise, self discipline can help easily come back and think positively. It helps you do the right thing in the moment for long-term benefits.” “You should stick to your priorities.” “Don’t make excuses. When you have decided to do something, do it. No excuses. Then you are self-disciplined.” “Make discipline your lifestyle. Discipline is not a one-time event. Self-discipline is like building your muscle. It’s like going to the gym. You can not go to the gym today and build your muscle. You should get a program and go slowly by slowly. That’s the way to build your muscle and that’s the way you can have discipline.” “Only the disciplined ones are free in life. If you aren’t disciplined, you are a slave to your moods. You are a slave to your passions. That’s a fact.” “There is a sign in one of the nicer schools in Canada. It [says] the best time to plant a tree was 25 years ago. That was the best time to plant a tree. The second-best time is today. Plant the tree of self-discipline.” “I believe in a philosophy that says to win is actually not important. To be successful is not even important. How to plan and prepare is critical and crucial. When you plan very well, then success can come on your way. Then winning can come on your way. “In any profession, you should think positively. That’s the driver of your mind. If your mind is really thinking positive then you are on the right track. ‘Pleasure in what you’re doing puts perfection in your work.’ That was a quote by Aristotle.” “I am here because of teamwork. I am here because sport is a mutual interest. I am here to talk about my success because I am really about teamwork. Teamwork actually helps a lot. Remember in sport, what you have is Hero’s Formula. If you are a hero, then you have a formula and that says 100% of myself is nothing compared to one percent of the whole team. And vice versa. 1% percent of the teams is nothing compared to 100% of myself. And that’s the meaning of teamwork.” “The law of consistency says you should get motivated. Motivation makes you move. Motivation makes you to go forward.” “When you bring motivation and discipline (together), then you can be consistent. When you combine it all together, they say if you want to grow, consistency is the key. I’m confident in saying that consistency is key if you want to grow in a new profession. Be it sport. Be it law. Be it all sorts of professions. If you are not consistent, you can not go anywhere. Consistency makes you to grow.” “Accept change…I know it is not really comfortable to adopt change but change in life of a human being or life of any profession is really important. But change can not be forced.” “Personally, I believe in what I am doing. To run a big marathon and win, it takes five months. When I am on the starting line, my mind starts to think of what I have been doing for the last five months. I believe in my training. I treat myself as the best one on that line because my mind is telling me that I am the best and I believe in what I am doing in the last five months. I can run free. I can run free and that’s what actually has helped me to be successful.”
Macro Thoughts
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05-FEB-2018 :: Halcyon Days @TheStarKenya Law & Politics |
Wikipedia has an article on: halcyon days and it reads thus,
From Latin Alcyone, daughter of Aeolus and wife of Ceyx. When her husband died in a shipwreck, Alcyone threw herself into the sea whereupon the gods transformed them both into halcyon birds (kingfishers). When Alcyone made her nest on the beach, waves threatened to destroy it. Aeolus restrained his winds and kept them calm during seven days in each year, so she could lay her eggs. These became known as the “halcyon days,” when storms do not occur. Today, the term is used to denote a past period that is being remembered for being happy and/or successfuL
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12-SEP-2016 :: Mirrors on the ceiling, The pink champagne on ice Africa |
If volatility spikes, positions are going to be reduced en masse. Or to put it another way and to borrow the lyrics from the Eagles Hotel California:
Mirrors on the ceiling, The pink champagne on ice And she said “We are all just prisoners here, of our own device” Last thing I remember, I was Running for the door I had to find the passage back To the place I was before “Relax,” said the night man, “We are programmed to receive. You can check-out any time you like, But you can never leave! “ What is clear is that we are at the fag-end of this party.
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The specialist is monitoring data on his mission console when a voice breaks in, "a voice that carried with it a strange and unspecifiable poignancy". Africa |
The specialist is monitoring data on his mission console when a voice breaks in, “a voice that carried with it a strange and unspecifiable poignancy”. He checks in with his flight-dynamics and conceptual- paradigm officers at Colorado Command: “We have a deviate, Tomahawk.” “We copy. There’s a voice.” “We have gross oscillation here.” “There’s some interference. I have gone redundant but I’m not sure it’s helping.” “We are clearing an outframe to locate source.” “Thank you, Colorado.” “It is probably just selective noise. You are negative red on the step-function quad.” “It was a voice,” I told them. “We have just received an affirm on selective noise... We will correct, Tomahawk. In the meantime, advise you to stay redundant.” The voice, in contrast to Colorado’s metallic pidgin, is a melange of repartee, laughter, and song, with a “quality of purest, sweetest sadness”.
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Law & Politics |
Yep. That’s the way I read it: “Sure, come to Singapore, @realDonaldTrump - and bring me the head of John Bolton.” Then, like the Walrus told the oysters in the Lewis Carroll poem, “we’ll talk of many things ...”
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North Korea casts doubt on Trump summit, suspends talks with South @Reuters Law & Politics |
North Korea threw into question next month’s unprecedented summit between Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump, denouncing on Wednesday U.S.-South Korean military exercises as a provocation and calling off high-level talks with Seoul.
A report on North Korea’s official KCNA angrily attacked the “Max Thunder” air combat drills, which it said involved U.S. stealth fighters and B-52 bombers, and appeared to mark a break in months of warming ties between North and South Korea and between Pyongyang and Washington.
The “Max Thunder” drills, aimed at “boosting the capability of pilots”, would go on as planned and were not aimed at attacking a third party, the South’s defence ministry said.
Any cancellation of the June 12 summit in Singapore, the first meeting between a serving U.S. president and a North Korean leader, would deal a major blow to Trump’s efforts to score the biggest diplomatic achievement of his presidency.
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30-APR-2018 :: "A new history starts now. An age of peace, from the starting point of history." Law & Politics |
The Events that took place on Friday at the truce village of Panmunjom and during the Inter-Korean Summit were breathtaking for the Hollywood Optics. The Opening Shot of Kim Jong Un surrounded by a Phalanx of North Korean Officials [later replayed as Chairman Kim sat in his Presidential Vehicle surrounded by his Ninja bodyguards] was almost as good as the opening Sequence in PT Anderson's Boogie Nights [Steadicam operator Andy Shuttleworth]. This was Cinema of the highest level which is no surprise when You consider that Kim Jong-Il the Father was obsessed with Cinema and amassed arguably the world’s largest personal film collection: over 20,000 bootlegged 35mm screening copies. Kim Jong-Il also had a penchant for Hennessy Paradis cognac and for two years in the mid-1990s, he was the world's largest buyer of Hennessy Paradis cognac, importing up to $800,000 of the stuff a year. Kim Jong-Il began his career as the head of the state’s propaganda and agitation department and its clear that Kim Jong-Un's sister Kim Yo Jong who holds the same role and evidently handles all the optics, is a chip off the old Block. Friday was tip-top Geopolitical Optics. Mike Pompeo, the newly minted US Secretary of State [His predecessor was fired via Twitter] had visited Pyongyang the previous week and pronounced; that the young North Korean leader was "a smart guy who's doing his homework"
Marwan Bishara was a little jaded by the Optics tweeted
''When pictures are the news and symbols are the facts, cliches become truths and media turns into propaganda or BS''
''For now, We are short on facts long on images and hence any perspective is likely to be speculative. Globally, we are being played in a ‘game of nations’ which could produce more of the same or different ...''
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12-FEB-2018 :: he is the buffer state between China and more than 30,000 US soldiers parked on their doorstep in South Korea. Law & Politics |
“Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: What is soft is strong,” Lao Tzu
South Korea is set to be peeled off and going by his puppy dog smiles President Moonriver will be in PyongYang before you can pronounce Kim Yo Jong correctly. Russia always had their back. China was never interested in bringing him to heel. After all, he is the buffer state between China and more than 30,000 US soldiers parked on their doorstep in South Korea.
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18 SEP 17 :: "A screaming comes across the sky" North Korea. @TheStarKenya Law & Politics |
Gravity’s Rainbow is a 1973 novel by Thomas Pynchon which is about the design, production and dispatch of V-2 rockets by the German military. In particular, it features the quest undertaken by several characters to uncover the secret of a mysterious device named the “Schwarzgerät” (black device), slated to be installed in a rocket with the serial number “00000”. As the world watches PyongYang, I cannot help wondering if Kim Jong-Un has read Pynchon which speaks of “A screaming comes across the sky” and North Korea.
“But it is a curve each of them feels, unmistakably. It is the parabola. They must have guessed, once or twice -guessed and refused to believe -that everything, always, collectively, had been moving toward that purified shape latent in the sky, that shape of no surprise, no second chance, no return.’’
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"We wrestle on @Twitter. The battle is on @facebook . The war is on @WhatsApp ," he said. @nytimesworld Law & Politics |
WhatsApp has largely escaped that notice because it is used more heavily outside the United States, with people in countries like India, Brazil and Indonesia sending a total of 60 billion messages a day. And unlike Facebook and Instagram, where much of the activity is publicly visible online, WhatsApp’s messages are generally hidden because it began as a person-to-person communication tool.
Yet WhatsApp has several features that make it a potential tinderbox for misinformation and misuse. Users can remain anonymous, identified only by a phone number. Groups, which are capped at 256 members, are easy to set up by adding the phone numbers of contacts. People tend to belong to multiple groups, so they often get exposed to the same messages repeatedly. When messages are forwarded, there is no hint of where they originated. And everything is encrypted, making it impossible for law enforcement officials or even WhatsApp to view what’s being said without looking at the phone’s screen.
Govindraj Ethiraj, the founder of Boom and IndiaSpend, two sites that fact-check Indian political and governmental claims, called WhatsApp “insidious” for its role in spreading false information.
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.@realDonaldTrump has resumed using his personal cell phone for late-night calls to such confidants as @seanhannity of @FoxNews, who is known in the capital as his "unofficial chief of staff." @NewYorker Law & Politics |
In Washington, where only four per cent of residents voted for Trump, the President hews to a narrow patch of trusted terrain: he rarely ventures beyond his home, his hotel, his golf course, and his plane, taking Air Force One to Mar-a-Lago and to occasional appearances before devoted supporters. He has yet to attend a performance at the Kennedy Center or dine in a restaurant that is not on his own property. As a candidate, Trump rarely went a week without calling a news conference. But in office, as he contends with increasingly intense investigations, he has taken to answering only scattered questions, usually alongside visiting heads of state. He has now gone more than four hundred days without a solo press conference. (Obama held eleven in his first year.)
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Chinese investment in Africa could create national economies 'entirely dependent on China', say experts @Independent Africa |
Chinese investment in Africa could be accelerating debt on the continent and creating economies which are “entirely dependent on China”, according to financial experts.
Around $86bn (£64bn) in loans were issued by China between 2000 and 2014 to finance over 3,000 infrastructure projects in Africa.
But as leaders gather in Beijing for China’s Belt and Road Summit this week, under the banner of President Xi Jinping’s flagship policy, experts have warned that this level of investment may not be as rosy at it appears.
Zuneid Yousuf, from MBI Group, said: “The 10,000 state owned firms operating in China today arrive off the back of these mammoth investments, and there’s no doubting their significant positive impact in many areas.
“Infrastructure projects create jobs, provide an opportunity for skills development and the transfer of new technologies.
“However, these firms come under the guise of partnership, but this rhetoric, combined with genuine short term benefits masks longer term problems.”
One of the main issues around the Chinese approach is the dangerously high levels of debt that it brings, which could prove unsustainable for growing economies.
There is also a risk that the continent becomes overly dependent on one country, which could allow it to hold an uncomfortably high level of influence.
Mr Yousuf said: “China is seeking to present itself as the new face of globalisation, an image it will work hard to portray at this week’s Belt and Road summit.
“The problem with this is that the current model of their ‘globalisation’ doesn’t so much encourage increased interaction between nations on a worldwide scale, as increased interaction with China on a worldwide scale.
“The reality in Africa is a model of globalisation that works only in China’s interests.
“A far more effective model, one which would not lose the short-term benefits outlined above whilst simultaneously avoiding the pitfalls of unsustainable debt, would be to focus investment on partnerships with local businesses.
“This way there would be no need for vast government loans, and the job creation, skills development, and technology transfer would be ingrained at a local level and grow organically.”
Zambia is an interesting case study of Africa-China relations.
China is the largest foreign investor in the country, but it is often cited as an example of the limitations of Chinese investment.
The top-down, large government loan model has led to tensions.
One recent example is the problem of labour laws, and the news that Chinese investors in Zambia have been preventing labour representatives from being present at construction sites.
Yet Zambia is also a country with a wealth of successful local businesses and a thriving private sector.
Chinese investment in Africa, particularly its effort to bridge the infrastructure gap, as part of President Xi’s Belt and Road programme, has the potential to transform the continent.
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The New Scramble for the Horn of Africa @martinplaut Africa |
The modern scramble for Africa is intensifying.
A sharp uptick in the expansion of foreign militaries in the Horn of Africa accompanied the growth of economic competition in the region in 2017. China, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates have opened military bases throughout the area in the past two years. The region is strategically important to these states for various reasons: securing shipping routes in the Bab al Mandab Strait, proximity to the ongoing conflict in Yemen, and the desire to array forces in the region alongside rivals including the United States.
The modern scramble for Africa is intensifying.
A sharp uptick in the expansion of foreign militaries in the Horn of Africa accompanied the growth of economic competition in the region in 2017. China, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates have opened military bases throughout the area in the past two years. The region is strategically important to these states for various reasons: securing shipping routes in the Bab al Mandab Strait, proximity to the ongoing conflict in Yemen, and the desire to array forces in the region alongside rivals including the United States.
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Kenyan Economy |
The strength of the Shilling has confounded everyone for eternity but it’s actually empirical and based on a surge in official remittances which are 50% of actual number @Haiyay @spectatorindex @ETFalpha
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N.S.E Today |
I have been writing about the risks for a while. September 2016 - I wrote ''Mirrors on the ceiling, The pink champagne on ice'' and warned ''If volatility spikes, positions are going to be reduced en masse.....What is clear is that we are at the fag-end of this party'' 05-FEB-2018 :: I wrote of ''Halcyon Days'' and how the markets were exiting its “halcyon days,” when storms do not occur. Today, the term is used to denote a past period that is being remembered for being happy and/or successfuL And this weekend 14-MAY-2018 :: The signal in the noise is the yield on 10 year US treasuries, which yield is around 3%. If we move to 3.5%, we could see a further round of blood letting. 14-MAY-2018 :: This has all the ingredients for baking a good old fashioned crisis. Well There is a lot of Blood in the Water. The Dollar is punching like Muhammed Ali in the Rumble in the Jungle - hard and clean. The Turkish Lira has crumbled, During the last couple of months, emerging currencies have dropped more than 7% against the USD These are testing times in EM and Frontier markets, WTI Crude Oil is hovering around $71.00 and Brent Crude has crossed $79.00 a barrel. @Haiyay asked me on Twitter How is it that KES-USD is so stable yet the Emerging market currencies are taking a hit ? Do we have above normal returns on equity and treasuries compared with rest of emerging and frontier markets? Nigeria Turkey, SA Rand..all on a losing streak @alykhansatchu @hervegogo I responded The strength of the Shilling has confounded everyone for eternity but it’s actually empirical and based on a surge in official remittances which are 50% of actual number. The closing Prices have not been received as i file this.
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N.S.E Equities - Commercial & Services |
Safaricom bucked the downdraft and rebounded +4.587% to close at 28.50 and was trading at close to session highs at 29.00 +6.42% at the finish Line. Equity Turnover clocked 5.022m shares worth 144.16m and Buyers outpaced Sellers by a factor of 8.5-1, which is an imbalance plain and simple. Citi issued an Update and I quote ''Results: Confident outlook may warrant small upgrade'' Investors will reap a handsome reward by Year End from these price levels.
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N.S.E Equities - Finance & Investment |
Equity Bank was voted the best lender by the Think Business banking awards “Equity and Citi Bank scored highly on financials,” said Ochieng Oloo, founder of Think Business Limited. “But Equity got better marks on customer satisfaction and deployment of technology.” As I said at the time of the FY Earnings release Dr. Mwangi made a very timely pivot after the Rate Cap was introduced and clearly has a war-chest with which to chase the Opportunity once the Rate Act is modified. Equity Bank corrected -1.96% to close at 50.00 and traded 2.372m shares.
StanBic Holdings had 24 Buyers for each Seller and rallied +3.37% to close at 92.00 on light trading as shares were in very short supply. StanBic Holdings reported some startlingly good Q1 2018 numbers and today StanBic Africa Holdings released a Tender Offer for the purchase of 59m shares at a price of 95.00.
KCB Group firmed +1.00% to close at 50.50 and traded 1.820m shares worth 92.57m.
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N.S.E Equities - Industrial & Allied |
EABL closed unchanged at 248.00 and traded 90,300 shares.
ARM Cement slumped -5.172% to close at a fresh 12+ year low of 5.50 [-57.69% in 2018 - Rick Ashley and Mr. Vora stepped aside last week].
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