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Macro Thoughts

Conclusions

The Challenge is preventing an implosion of the Parliamentary Party
and holding on to the DUP

The next big move in oil prices lies in the hands of three
unpredictable strongmen: US President Donald Trump, Russian President
Vladimir Putin, and Saudi Arabia’s crown prince and day-to-day ruler,
Mohammed bin Salman.
All three lead countries whose oil industries are now capable of
producing at least 11m barrels a day each, putting them in an elite
group of nations who are responsible for more than a third of global
supply combined, or more than the entire Opec cartel.
But that is largely where the similarities end. All three have
different motivations for what happens next in an oil market that has
already spent much of 2018 being roiled by international politics. How
they play their cards will determine what happens next.
Saudi Arabia wants higher oil prices following a 25 per cent slump in
crude since early October to below $64 a barrel, and has indicated it
is willing to cut crude production to achieve its aim.
Its oil-dependent budget requires roughly $80 a barrel just to break
even, let alone to fund the grand plans of the crown prince — widely
known as MBS — to modernise and transform its economy.
But the murder of US-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi has severely
weakened its position internationally and could now limit its options
in the oil market.
The US, Saudi Arabia’s main western ally, wants exactly the opposite
outcome for oil prices, with Mr Trump relentlessly banging the drum
for crude to go lower, heaping pressure on Riyadh to keep prices down.
He has made clear that lower oil prices are an economic priority for
his administration, to the point of soft-pedalling the reintroduction
of sanctions against Iran’s energy industry this month, granting
limited waivers to many of its main customers.
That is despite pushing Saudi Arabia this summer to raise output in
the first place to help replace Iran’s barrels, one of a series of
events that has left most analysts predicting the oil market will now
be oversupplied in 2019. If Saudi Arabia feels aggrieved by this, Mr
Trump probably does not care.
Lower prices at the pump are a fillip to his base and a clear economic
policy win he can claim, regardless of the fact that most economists
believe that the shale boom — which has turned the US back into a big
producer within a decade — means weaker oil is no longer a
straightforward positive for the macro US economy.
Mr Trump may have little direct control over the short-term actions of
the myriad private producers that make up the US oil industry, but
with US output growing even faster than anticipated he may feel they
can weather a lower price. The fact the oil industry is largely
centred in traditionally Republican states such as Texas and North
Dakota means he does not need to spend too long worrying about their
votes.
Having unsubtly indicated he is prepared to overlook the likely
involvement of MBS in sanctioning the murder of Khashoggi, Mr Trump
should hold the whip hand over Riyadh at this stage.
Many may feel it weakens Washington’s standing in the world, but cheap
oil and continued arms purchases are the price tag Mr Trump has, in
tweet after tweet, attached to the alliance. Saudi Arabia has so far
stuck to its guns on plans to reduce oil output, but the pressure it
is facing from the US may prove too much.
Russia, under Mr Putin, sits somewhere in between, but as ever will
have one eye on the broader ramifications for Moscow’s position in the
world.
Few doubt Russia would like slightly higher prices to help an economy
still dominated by natural resources. But Moscow is less dependent
than Riyadh on oil, and Mr Putin has expressed concerns about pushing
prices too high, believing it could bring on rival supplies —
especially US shale — too quickly.
With Russia’s oil industry made up of both state-backed and private
enterprises, there is also some wariness about demanding companies
rein in production aggressively, having only let them run free in June
after 18 months of output restraint.
Its two-year old oil-alliance with Riyadh is, however, of great
importance to Moscow and its aim of taking on a bigger role in the
Middle East.
The opportunity to drive a thicker wedge between Washington and Riyadh
may help Mr Putin overcome some of his doubts, and Russia may find
itself supporting an oil production cut. It too has one eye on arms
sales to Riyadh, including of its highly advanced S-400 air defence
system, which has created consternation in Washington.
All three leaders are expected to attend the G20 summit in Argentina
next week, just days before the energy ministers of Saudi Arabia and
Russia lead meetings of the expanded Opec+ group in Vienna on oil
production policy.
It is highly possible that the messages conveyed between the three
leaders in Argentina decide oil’s fortunes long before the ministers
sit down in Vienna.

Conclusions

The selloff is tangible. Foreign investor exposure to shares on the
Saudi Tadawul exchange fell almost a quarter in October from the
previous month. The Tadawul All Share Index is 5 percent below its
October high. Meantime, the cost of insuring Saudi senior debt for
five years has jumped over 20 basis points since October 5 while that
of regional rival Qatar has barely budged. And the spread of a Saudi
Eurobond maturing in 2028 over U.S. Treasuries has spiked up over 35
basis points to 144 basis points, near 10-year highs, Refinitiv data
shows.

Despite recent lurches in emerging markets and oil prices, a good
chunk of this looks Khashoggi-related. In the short term, the bond
market worries complicate efforts to finance oil giant Aramco’s$70
billion purchase of chemicals group SABIC. Attempting a bond that
large right now might require Aramco to pay a coupon more in line with
a high-yield issuer.

Achieving emerging market status in the MSCI and other indices means
up to $70 billion of global money could still flow into Riyadh next
year, assuming the Khashoggi incident doesn’t compel investors wary of
violating so-called ESG concerns to carve the kingdom out of their
portfolios. Trump clearly has MbS’s back. Even though the CIA had
linked the crown prince to the murder, on Nov. 20 the president
wavered that he “maybe had and maybe hadn’t” been involved.

Yet Trump isn’t the only U.S. constituency. A two-thirds vote in
Congress could bring sanctions at any time. More troubling for MbS,
some Saudi royals are agitating to prevent him becoming king, Reuters
reported on November 19. If true, that could provoke more erratic
behaviour from the 33-year-old prince. It certainly puts an asterisk
over his accession, and with it his vision to transform the economy
away from hydrocarbons. That alone merits a bigger MbS discount.

 Victor Niederhoffer was one of the most successful money managers in
the country. He lived and worked out of a thirteen-acre compound in
Fairfield County, Connecticut, and when Taleb drove up that day from
his home in Larchmont he had to give his name at the gate, and then
make his way down a long, curving driveway. Niederhoffer had a squash
court and a tennis court and a swimming pool and a colossal,
faux-alpine mansion in which virtually every square inch of space was
covered with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American folk art. In
those days, he played tennis regularly with the billionaire financier
George Soros. He had just written a best-selling book, "The Education
of a Speculator," dedicated to his father, Artie Niederhoffer, a
police officer from Coney Island. He had a huge and eclectic library
and a seemingly insatiable desire for knowledge. When Niederhoffer
went to Harvard as an undergraduate, he showed up for the very first
squash practice and announced that he would someday be the best in
that sport; and, sure enough, he soon beat the legendary Shariff Khan
to win the U.S. Open squash championship. That was the kind of man
Niederhoffer was. He had heard of Taleb's growing reputation in the
esoteric field of options trading, and summoned him to Connecticut.
Taleb was in awe.

George Soros seemed to be successful for a reason, too. He used to say
that he followed something called "the theory of reflexivity." But
then, later, Soros wrote that in most situations his theory "is so
feeble that it can be safely ignored." An old trading partner of
Taleb's, a man named Jean-Manuel Rozan, once spent an entire afternoon
arguing about the stock market with Soros. Soros was vehemently
bearish, and he had an elaborate theory to explain why, which turned
out to be entirely wrong. The stock market boomed. Two years later,
Rozan ran into Soros at a tennis tournament. "Do you remember our
conversation?" Rozan asked. "I recall it very well," Soros replied. "I
changed my mind, and made an absolute fortune." He changed his mind!
The truest thing about Soros seemed to be what his son Robert had once
said:

My father will sit down and give you theories to explain why he does
this or that. But I remember seeing it as a kid and thinking, Jesus
Christ, at least half of this is bullshit. I mean, you know the reason
he changes his position on the market or whatever is because his back
starts killing him. It has nothing to do with reason. He literally
goes into a spasm, and it?s this early warning sign.

"Everything that can be tested must be tested," and so when Taleb
started his own hedge fund, a few years later, he called it Empirica.

Taleb runs Empirica Capital out of an anonymous, concrete office park
somewhere in the woods outside Greenwich, Connecticut. His offices
consist, principally, of a trading floor about the size of a Manhattan
studio apartment. Taleb sits in one corner, in front of a laptop,
surrounded by the rest of his team -- Mark Spitznagel, the chief
trader, another trader named Danny Tosto, a programmer named Winn
Martin, and a graduate student named Pallop Angsupun. Mark Spitznagel
is perhaps thirty. Win, Danny, and Pallop look as if they belonged in
high school. The room has an overstuffed bookshelf in one corner, and
a television muted and tuned to CNBC. There are two ancient Greek
heads, one next to Taleb's computer and the other, somewhat
bafflingly, on the floor, next to the door, as if it were being set
out for the trash. There is almost nothing on the walls, except for a
slightly battered poster for an exhibition of Greek artifacts, the
snapshot of the mullah, and a small pen-and-ink drawing of the patron
saint of Empirica Capital, the philosopher Karl Popper.

On a recent spring morning, the staff of Empirica were concerned with
solving a thorny problem, having to do with the square root of n,
where n is a given number of random set of observations, and what
relation n might have to a speculator's confidence in his estimations.
Taleb was up at a whiteboard by the door, his marker squeaking
furiously as he scribbled possible solutions. Spitznagel and Pallop
looked on intently. Spitznagel is blond and from the Midwest and does
yoga: in contrast to Taleb, he exudes a certain laconic
levelheadedness. In a bar, Taleb would pick a fight. Spitznagel would
break it up. Pallop is of Thai extraction and is doing a Ph.D. in
financial mathematics at Princeton. He has longish black hair, and a
slightly quizzical air. "Pallop is very lazy," Taleb will remark, to
no one in particular, several times over the course of the day,
although this is said with such affection that it suggests that
"laziness," in the Talebian nomenclature, is a synonym for genius.
Pallop's computer was untouched and he often turned his chair around,
so that he faced completely away from his desk. He was reading a book
by the cognitive psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, whose
arguments, he said a bit disappointedly, were "not really
quantifiable." The three argued back and forth about the solution. It
appeared that Taleb might be wrong, but before the matter could be
resolved the markets opened. Taleb returned to his desk and began to
bicker with Spitznagel about what exactly would be put on the company
boom box. Spitznagel plays the piano and the French horn and has
appointed himself the Empirica d.j. He wanted to play Mahler, and
Taleb does not like Mahler. "Mahler is not good for volatility," Taleb
complained. "Bach is good. St. Matthew's Passion!" Taleb gestured
toward Spitznagel, who was wearing a gray woollen turtleneck. "Look at
him. He wants to be like von Karajan, like someone who wants to live
in a castle. Technically superior to the rest of us. No chitchatting.
Top skier. That's Mark!" As Spitznagel rolled his eyes, a man whom
Taleb refers to, somewhat mysteriously, as Dr. Wu wandered in. Dr. Wu
works for another hedge fund, down the hall, and is said to be
brilliant. He is thin and squints through black-rimmed glasses. He was
asked his opinion on the square root of n but declined to answer. "Dr.
Wu comes here for intellectual kicks and to borrow books and to talk
music with Mark," Taleb explained after their visitor had drifted
away. He added darkly, "Dr. Wu is a Mahlerian."

Nassim Taleb and his team at Empirica are quants. But they reject the
quant orthodoxy, because they don't believe that things like the stock
market behave in the way that physical phenomena like mortality
statistics do. Physical events, whether death rates or poker games,
are the predictable function of a limited and stable set of factors,
and tend to follow what statisticians call a "normal distribution," a
bell curve. But do the ups and downs of the market follow a bell
curve? The economist Eugene Fama once studied stock prices and pointed
out that if they followed a normal distribution you'd expect a really
big jump, what he specified as a movement five standard deviations
from the mean, once every seven thousand years. In fact, jumps of that
magnitude happen in the stock market every three or four years,
because investors don't behave with any kind of statistical
orderliness. They change their mind. They do stupid things. They copy
each other. They panic. Fama concluded that if you charted the ups and
downs of the stock market the graph would have a "fat tail,"meaning
that at the upper and lower ends of the distribution there would be
many more outlying events than statisticians used to modelling the
physical world would have imagined.

In the summer of 1997, Taleb predicted that hedge funds like Long Term
Capital Management were headed for trouble, because they did not
understand this notion of fat tails. Just a year later, L.T.C.M. sold
an extraordinary number of options, because its computer models told
it that the markets ought to be calming down. And what happened? The
Russian government defaulted on its bonds; the markets went crazy; and
in a matter of weeks L.T.C.M. was finished. Spitznagel, Taleb's head
trader, says that he recently heard one of the former top executives
of L.T.C.M. give a lecture in which he defended the gamble that the
fund had made. "What he said was, Look, when I drive home every night
in the fall I see all these leaves scattered around the base of the
trees,?" Spitznagel recounts.

In other words, the Russians, by defaulting on their bonds, did
something that they were not supposed to do, a once-in-a-lifetime,
rule-breaking event. But this, to Taleb, is just the point: in the
markets, unlike in the physical universe, the rules of the game can be
changed. Central banks can decide to default on government-backed
securities.

Taleb likes to quote David Hume: "No amount of observations of white
swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the
observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that
conclusion." Because L.T.C.M. had never seen a black swan in Russia,
it thought no Russian black swans existed. Taleb, by contrast, has
constructed a trading philosophy predicated entirely on the existence
of black swans. on the. possibility of some random, unexpected event
sweeping the markets. He never sells options, then. He only buys them.
He's never the one who can lose a great deal of money if G.M. stock
suddenly plunges. Nor does he ever bet on the market moving in one
direction or another. That would require Taleb to assume that he
understands the market, and he doesn't. He hasn't Warren Buffett's
confidence. So he buys options on both sides, on the possibility of
the market moving both up and down. And he doesn't bet on minor
fluctuations in the market. Why bother? If everyone else is vastly
underestimating the possibility of rare events, then an option on G.M.
at, say, forty dollars is going to be undervalued. So Taleb buys
out-of-the-money options by the truckload

Taleb's hero, on the other hand, is Karl Popper, who said that you
could not know with any certainty that a proposition was true; you
could only know that it was not true.

Empirica has done nothing but lose money since last April. "We cannot
blow up, we can only bleed to death," Taleb says, and bleeding to
death, absorbing the pain of steady losses, is precisely what human
beings are hardwired to avoid. "Say you've got a guy who is long on
Russian bonds," Savery says. "He's making money every day. One day,
lightning strikes and he loses five times what he made. Still, on
three hundred and sixty-four out of three hundred and sixty-five days
he was very happily making money. It's much harder to be the other
guy, the guy losing money three hundred and sixty-four days out of
three hundred and sixty- five, because you start questioning yourself.
Am I ever going to make it back? Am I really right? What if it takes
ten years? Will I even be sane ten years from now?" What the normal
trader gets from his daily winnings is feedback, the pleasing illusion
of progress. At Empirica, there is no feedback. "It's like you're
playing the piano for ten years and you still can't play chopsticks,"
Spitznagel say, "and the only thing you have to keep you going is the
belief that one day you'll wake up and play like Rachmaninoff."

Home Thoughts

All modern humans descended from a solitary pair who lived 100,000 to
200,000 years ago, scientists say.

Scientists surveyed the genetic 'bar codes' of five million animals -
including humans - from 100,000 different species and deduced that we
sprang from a single pair of adults after a catastrophic event almost
wiped out the human race.

These bar codes, or snippets of DNA that reside outside the nuclei of
living cells, suggest that it's not just people who came from a single
pair of beings, but nine out of every 10 animal species, too

Barcode variation in the modern human population is quantitatively
similar to that within other animal species. Several convergent lines
of evidence show that mitochondrial diversity in modern humans follows
from sequence uniformity followed by the accumulation of largely
neutral diversity during a population expansion that began
approximately 100,000 years ago. A straightforward hypothesis is that
the extant populations of almost all animal species have arrived at a
similar result consequent to a similar process of expan- sion from
mitochondrial uniformity within the last one to several hundred
thousand years.

Modern humans
More approaches have been brought to bear on the emergence and
outgrowth of Homo sapiens sapiens (i.e., modern humans) than any other
species including full ge- nome sequence analysis of thousands of
individuals and tens of thousands of mitochon- dria, paleontology,
anthropology, history and linguistics [61, 142-144]. The congruence of
these fields supports the view that modern human mitochondria and Y
chromosome originated from conditions that imposed a single sequence
on these genetic elements between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago
[145-147]. Contemporary sequence data cannot tell whether
mitochondrial and Y chromosomes clonality occurred at the same time,
i.e., consistent with the extreme bottleneck of a founding pair, or
via sorting within a found- ing population of thousands that was
stable for tens of thousands of years [116]. As Kuhn points out
unresolvable arguments tend toward rhetoric

The simple hypothesis is that the same explanation offered for the
sequence variation found among modern humans applies equally to the
modern populations of essentially all other animal species. Namely
that the extant population, no matter what its current size or
similarity to fossils of any age, has expanded from mitochondrial
uniformity within the past 200,000 years.

Russia has seized three Ukrainian naval ships in a strait near
Moscow-annexed Crimea, raising fears of military escalation and
prompting an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on Monday.
In the unprecedented incident, Russia said it used weapons "in order
to stop the Ukrainian military," which it claims illegally entered its
waters, confirming "three Ukrainian navy ships were boarded and
searched."
Ukraine's navy said the incident took place on Sunday as two small
warships and a tugboat were heading through the Kerch Strait, a narrow
waterway that gives access to the Sea of Azov that is used by Ukraine
and Russia.

It will take two to tango in Buenos Aires next week. When trade talks
take place between United States President Donald Trump and China’s
head of state Xi Jinping, nimble footwork will be required in
Argentina’s capital, the spiritual home of the “dance of pulsating
passion.”

The omens, though, of sealing a seductive pact are looking decidedly remote.

Two reports by Greenpeace East Asia and Chinadialogue.net, an
independent, non-profit organization, have highlighted the risks that
President Xi Jinping’s administration faces because of climate change
and homegrown pollution.
Earlier this week, Greenpeace released research showing that glaciers
in the western China provinces of Qinghai and Gansu, as well as the
Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, are rapidly melting, causing natural
disasters and reducing the drinking-water supply.
“This is a wake-up call for China and the world,” Liu Junyan, a
climate and energy campaigner with Greenpeace East Asia, said. “It is
critical that we speed up the transition away from coal and other
fossil fuels.”
Glaciers in the country’s western regions are the source of a network
of rivers which supply drinking water to an estimated 1.8 billion
people.
Known as “Asia’s Water Tower,” Greenpeace pointed out, it is the
largest concentration of freshwater outside the polar regions.
“These glaciers are the source of many of Asia’s largest rivers, which
flow as far as Afghanistan, Vietnam and southern India. They comprise
more than half of ‘Asia’s Water Tower’”
“Almost one-fifth of glacier area in China is already gone,” the study
entitled “China Glacier and Climate Change Impact Project,” stated.
“These glaciers are the source of many of Asia’s largest rivers, which
flow as far as Afghanistan, Vietnam and southern India. They comprise
more than half of ‘Asia’s Water Tower’,’” it added.
In May, a Chinadialogue report, entitled “China’s Looming Water
Crisis,” illustrated the geographical hurdles in averting a full-blown
water shortage in parts of the dragon economy.
“The problem is that 80% of the water is in southern China, meaning
that eight northern provinces suffer from acute water scarcity, four
from scarcity, and a further two [Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia] are
largely desert,” the study said. “These 12 provinces account for 38%
of China’s agriculture, 46% of its industry, 50% of its power
generation [coal and nuclear use a lot of water] and 41% of its
population.”
Efforts to ease the chronic shortage go back as far as 1952, when one
of the largest canal pipelines was proposed by the ruling Communist
Party.
It eventually came online in 2014. Stretching more than 1,400
kilometers, the US$100 billion “South-North Water Transfer Project”
ships water from the Yangtze to the country’s arid northern regions,
including Beijing, China Daily reported.
But since then, demand for water has outstripped supply.
Describing the situation in blunt terms, former Chinese Premier Wen
Jiabao has warned that the lack of water threatens the “very survival
of the Chinese nation itself” in the Chinadialogue report.

For Beijing, this is a watershed moment.

Euro 1.1340
Dollar Index 96.94
Japan Yen 113.24
Swiss Franc 0.9983
Pound 1.2817
Aussie 0.7245
India Rupee 70.385
South Korea Won 1128.58
Brazil Real 3.8272
Egypt Pound 17.8950
South Africa Rand 13.8205

It was an in an article on Dec 30th 2016 that I wrote that my
conviction Trade for 2017 was  1. Long BITCOIN. BITCOIN was trading at
levels around $1,000.00 going into 2017. My Thesis was that BITCOIN
and the entire crypto-currency World which had been very esoteric and
something of a closed World of ''bug-eyed'' Gamers and the Off-Grid
Folks who wanted throw the Yoke of Government off their backs, would
''mainstream'' And it ''mainstreamed'' beyond my wildest dreams
through 2017. By November 2017 BITCOIN was knocking on the door of
$10,0000.00 and on the 27th November 2017, I wrote an article
captioned  Bitcoin "Wow! What a Ride!" and advised booking the profits
on the Trade. A more than 9.7x Price Inflation was getting
uncomfortably close to outpacing the Tulip Mania [see Graph] BITCOIN's
parabolic price rally had spawned thousands of other crypto currencies
which were sold on the same grounds as the greatest South Sea Bubble
prospectus: “For carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but
nobody to know what it is.” It had become a ''Voodoo'' world where the
Promoters were like WB Yeats' The Second Coming.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

The Price inflated further reaching a high of $19,763.00 on 18 dec
2017. By the first of January this year we had retreated to
$13,428.00. On the 02-JAN-2018 I reiterated my Point to get out and
said '' I am no longer bullish bitcoin, in fact, I am bearish''  At
this point in time, I met Folks on these Streets who would pull out
their Computer and show me how they were making money every second
[Look at that they would say and indeed There was a number and it was
ticking higher] mining BITCOIN. The recent cryptocurrency market
decline has resulted in a similar drop in mining profitability and
forced Chinese operators to sell their mining devices at a loss. Some
mining machines are being sold on the second-hand market for merely 5
percent of their original value.  Others would tell me, I've bought
Nvidia. Crypto at this point was at Peak Phenomenon.

As I write this BITCOIN is trading at $3,650.00. I think its going
right back to levels below $1,000.00.

Merryn Somerset Webb, editor of the finance magazine Money Week and a
long-term sceptic about Bitcoin, told the BBC she feels vindicated:

"The things the old fuddy-duddies have been saying about
crypto-currencies for the last couple of years turn out to be mainly
true - that they're in the main vehicles for speculation, that the
currencies in themselves have very little value. In most cases their
value is around zero and that's where they're getting to gradually."

We have yet to hit peak melt-down. The reason being so many Folks
espouse the HODL philosophy.

GameKyuubi posted "I AM HODLING," a drunk, semi-coherent, typo-laden
rant about his poor trading skills and determination to simply hold
his bitcoin from that point on. "I type d that tyitle twice because I
knew it was wrong the first time. Still wrong. w/e," he wrote in
reference to the now-famous misspelling of "holding." "WHY AM I
HOLDING? I'LL TELL YOU WHY," he continued. "It's because I'm a bad
trader and I KNOW I'M A BAD TRADER.  Yeah you good traders can spot
the highs and the lows pit pat piffy wing wong wang just like that and
make a millino bucks sure no problem bro."

He concluded that the best course was to hold, since "You only sell in
a bear market if you are a good day trader or an illusioned noob.  The
people inbetween hold. In a zero-sum game such as this, traders can
only take your money if you sell." He then confessed he'd had some
whiskey and briefly mused about the spelling of whisk(e)y.  [HODL
Definition | Investopedia]

Selling at todays levels frankly is still a great Trade.

“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.’’

Let me leave you with Hunter S. Thompson, “Life should not be a
journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty
and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of
smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming
“Wow! What a Ride!”

This interregnum between Christmas and New Year is an interesting one
in Nairobi and

..........
To lead you to an overwhelming question ... Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

BREAKING DOWN 'HODL'
The term HODL (or hodl) originated in 2013 with a post to the
bitcointalk forum. The price of bitcoin had surged from under $15 in
January 2013 to a high of over $1,100 at the beginning of December
2013. In the 24 hours to 10:00 a.m. UTC, Dec. 18 – possibly in
response to reports of a Chinese crackdown – the price of bitcoin fell
39%, from $716 to $438, according to CoinDesk's bitcoin price index.

I AM HODLING
At 10:03 a.m. UTC on Dec. 18, GameKyuubi posted "I AM HODLING," a
drunk, semi-coherent, typo-laden rant about his poor trading skills
and determination to simply hold his bitcoin from that point on. "I
type d that tyitle twice because I knew it was wrong the first time.
Still wrong. w/e," he wrote in reference to the now-famous misspelling
of "holding." "WHY AM I HOLDING? I'LL TELL YOU WHY," he continued.
"It's because I'm a bad trader and I KNOW I'M A BAD TRADER.  Yeah you
good traders can spot the highs and the lows pit pat piffy wing wong
wang just like that and make a millino bucks sure no problem bro."

He concluded that the best course was to hold, since "You only sell in
a bear market if you are a good day trader or an illusioned noob.  The
people inbetween hold. In a zero-sum game such as this, traders can
only take your money if you sell." He then confessed he'd had some
whiskey and briefly mused about the spelling of whisk(e)y.

Pos diverging RSI makes the current weakness as opportunity to get long imo

Frontier Markets

This political fiasco is undoubtedly a boost to the Kabila camp for
several reasons. First, Shadary now faces a divided opposition field
with at least three serious candidates. The Kabila government amended
the constitution ahead of the 2011 election, scrapping a second-round
run-off. With the opposition divided, this makes it much easier for
Shadary to win, or to look like he has.

For now the lesson the DRC – and its neighbour Burundi – teaches us is
that international and African actors do not yet have either the tools
or the gumption to prevent corrupt elites from hijacking a country.

Conclusions

Kabila is in charge.

The second round of the Madagascar presidential election on 19
December promises to be a hard fight between two sworn enemies: Marc
Ravalomanana, who led the country from 2002-09, and Andry Rajoelina,
the man who deposed him in a coup. They polled 35% and 39%
respectively in the first round, with the incumbent, Hery
Rajaonarimampianina, taking a mere 9% of the 5.3 million votes cast.

By 2016, the opposite was true. The average Asian made close to 80% of
the average global citizen, but the average African was relatively
worse-off, making a little over 40% of the worldwide average.

The 1950 African economy was awash in money from oil, gold, diamonds,
and other natural resources that, combined with Africa’s land wealth
(sub-Saharan Africa is larger than China, the US, and India combined),
should have fostered diverse and fruitful markets. But colonialism and
the slave trade had left the continent with little labor; between 1650
and 1850, Africa’s population barely grew. Without enough labor or
capital, African national economies became monoculture exporters,
relying on outsiders for equipment, technology, and consumer products.

It’s telling of Africa’s deep resource wealth that it took more than
35 years for average incomes in Asia to catch up. Some economists,
like Jeffrey Sachs, believe that resources are a curse: Countries like
Cameroon, for example, have experienced weaker growth than less
resource-abundant nations. But economists Daron Acemoglu and James
Robinson (from MIT and Harvard, respectively), point to the success of
Australia, Chile, Norway, and the US in using resources to grow their
economies. They argue that African countries were hurt not by their
richness in one resource, but by the absence of political and economic
institutions prior to the discovery of that resource. Without such
institutions, which can turn a one-commodity boon into a diversified
economy, the resource well will eventually run dry.

Economists Elsa Artadi and Xavier Sala-i-Martin contend that Africa
was also hurt by diminishing investment, education enrollment, and
health. Between 1975 and 2003, investment in the continent as a whole
fell by 8.5%, while investment in East Asia grew 30%. Artadi and
Sala-i-Martin estimate that if Africa’s school enrollment rates had
matched the OECD’s in the 40 years since 1975, its economy would have
grown by 2.37% (instead of 0.9%).

Ironically, lack of investment in Africa may soon be changing… thanks
to China. In a true reversal of fortunes, the country is now one of
Africa’s largest investors, and committed $60 billion to the continent
in 2015.

John Magufuli’s latest economic plan is, in all senses, his nuttiest.
By buying up the entire cashew harvest at a near-100 percent premium,
the Tanzanian president hopes to help farmers. In fact, it will only
serve to show that statist meddling comes with a downside.
The East African nation was always a laggard in the continent’s
gradual post-Cold War liberalisation. But market realities had started
to trump affection for founding father Julius Nyerere, a fan of Mao
Zedong and socialist central planning. Magufuli, a 59-year-old
chemistry graduate nicknamed The Bulldozer, has turned back that
reformist ebb. Foreign mining firms have been hit with
multibillion-dollar tax demands, pregnant girls banned from school and
bloggers regulated off the internet.
Magufuli’s scheme has a certain base political logic. Farmers are an
important constituency: last year, cashews were the most valuable
export crop, earning $540 million. And although only the world’s
seventh-largest producer, Tanzania is unique among large growers in
having an October-December harvest, giving it some temporary pricing
clout.
But in promising to pay farmers 3,300 shillings/kg ($1.44) for this
year’s 220,000 tonne cashew harvest, the president has made it the
government’s problem to sell them on. The mainly Vietnamese firms that
turn the fruit into tasty snacks are refusing to buy at the elevated
prices. While the price of processed cashew kernels – the bits people
eat – jumped 10 percent to $3.80 per pound after Magufuli’s bombshell,
it has since stabilised, traders said.
The upshot is Tanzania’s fruit is vastly uncompetitive. This raises
the prospect of the entire 2018 harvest going to waste. Without any
commercial buyers, the army has been called in to collect and store
the harvest. Magufuli’s plan B is to sell the redundant cashew
mountain to his 55 million compatriots. Assuming that doesn’t work,
the country is on the hook for an unbudgeted $320 million, over 2
percent of planned 2018-19 spending.
Without cashew cash, Tanzania’s $56 billion economy looks a touch
shaky. The shilling has shed nearly 1 percent against the dollar this
week, close to a record low, and a $66 million Eurobond repayment is
due in March. Still, Magufuli’s antics have an upside. They remind
Africa that liberalisation and fiscal rigour are good things. And that
statist intervention can veer towards the nutty.

Three of Airbnb’s top growth markets are in Africa and the continent
has become a cornerstone of the U.S. company’s sustainable tourism
strategy, a senior official with the home-sharing service said on
Thursday.
More than 3.5 million customers have stayed with Airbnb hosts across
the continent since the company began operating in Africa, with
roughly half of those coming in the past year.
South Africa constitutes the bulk of that business, followed by
Morocco, Kenya and Egypt. But the rest of the continent is catching
up, the company’s South Africa manager, Velma Corcoran, told Reuters.
“Three of the top eight fastest-growing countries globally are in
Africa: Nigeria, Ghana and Mozambique,” she said on the sidelines of a
tourism conference in Stellenbosch, South Africa.
As of July, Nigeria had recorded year-on-year growth in guest arrivals
of 213 percent. Growth in Ghana and Mozambique was 141 percent and 136
percent respectively.
“They’re off a relatively small base, but that kind of growth has been
really, really encouraging,” Corcoran said.
Since its founding in 2008, Airbnb hosts across Africa have earned
more than $400 million in direct income from renting out their
properties via the service, the company says.
Corcoran said it was working with other African governments to ensure
they were able to benefit from the home-sharing market.
“Ideally what we want is government’s recognising home-sharing. Then
we can work with them to put in place certain tools, like collecting
and remitting tourism tax,” she said.
Tourism is among Africa’s fastest-growing sectors and contributed
nearly $178 billion, or roughly 8.1 percent, to the continent’s gross
domestic product last year, according to the World Travel and Tourism
Council.
“We’re looking at Africa and South Africa as our flagship markets for
how Airbnb is thinking about more inclusive and sustainable tourism,”
Corcoran said.
“We know that if we want to grow as a business over the next 10 or 20
years, that is going to be absolutely key.”

Dollar versus Rand 6 Month Chart INO 13.8205
http://quotes.ino.com/charting/index.html?s=FOREX_USDZAR&v=d6&t=c&a=50&w=1

Egypt Pound versus The Dollar 3 Month Chart INO 17.9030
http://quotes.ino.com/charting/index.html?s=FOREX_USDEGP&v=d3&t=c&a=50&w=1

Nigeria All Share Bloomberg -17.17% 2018
http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/NGSEINDX:IND

Ghana Stock Exchange Composite Index Bloomberg -0.85% 2018
http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/GGSECI:IND

‘al-Shabaab’ or ‘Ansar al-Sunnah’ or ‘Ahlu Sunnah Wal Jamo’ (no one is
sure what to call the attackers) is regrouping and that more assaults
could occur soon. He suspects that foreigners could for the first time
become targets of what has so far been an assault only on local
security forces and citizens.

He also warns that, having failed to respond in a coherent way,
including tackling root causes, Mozambique’s government is about to
hand over responsibility to a private security company. This could
aggravate the problem.

One security source said the L6G security company, owned by Erik
Prince, founder of the notorious Blackwater US private security
company, is promising to flatten al-Shabaab in three months. This is
in exchange for a hefty slice of oil and gas revenues when those large
reserves come on stream sometime after 2023. The equally controversial
Russian private security company Wagner is bidding against L6G for the
contract, the source said.

The most efficient way to overcome these costly electricity imbalances
would be through a common energy market. Much like the European
Union’s internal market for electricity, power trading would ideally
extend across Africa and form part of the continued evolution of the
African Union, which Rwandan President Paul Kagame is so admirably
pushing forward. But high-volume power trading from Ethiopia to
Lesotho is unlikely in the foreseeable future, and a more realistic
path forward would be at the sub-regional level.

LONDON – African countries are increasingly coming together. A
landmark free-trade agreement was concluded earlier this year. East
Africa has made great progress on free movement of people. And a
commitment to a single market for air travel has been revived,
potentially connecting countries better than ever before.
Each step toward greater cooperation and unity on the continent is, on
its own, an important one. Together they show how a new generation of
African leaders understand that power in the twenty-first century
reflects strength in numbers.
But, for Africa, power requires power in another sense: a lack of
electricity continues to hold back the continent’s progress. And here,
too, integration is essential to scale and connect markets, reduce
consumer costs, and drive growth.
Despite advances in recent years, more than 600 million Africans still
lack access to electricity. Solar technology has improved, and its
declining cost has made it a viable option

“When you look at the blue economy, it has an asset value of $24
trillion and that’s delivering something between $4-500bn each year in
terms of the dividend to humanity,” says Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg,
director of the Global Change Institute.

Market Capitalization $9.29b
EPS:1.38
PE: 17.210
EPS 0.79 vs. 0.65 +20.2%

Par Value:                  0.50/-
Closing Price:           26.25
Total Shares Issued:          665441775.00
Market Capitalization:        17,467,846,594
EPS:             3.96
PE:                 6.629


6 months through 30th September 2018 versus through 30th September 2017
Sales 4.818287b versus 4.772045b
Direct and Operating Costs [4.428471b] versus [4.233126b]
Trading Profit 389.816m versus 548.919m
Operating Loss from Financial Services [91.833m] versus [111.481m]
Investment and Other Income 4.093440b versus 2.203492b
Operating and Admin Costs [683.689m] versus [524.585m]
Finance Costs [1.230388b] versus [557.253m]
HY PBT 2.392198b versus 1.765589b
HY PAT 2.079909b versus 1.631461b
HY EPS 3.40 versus 2.07
HY Comprehensive Income 1.524082b versus 1.928075b

The company’s Private Equity business reported a 300 percent profit
growth to Sh1.5 billion from Sh513 million recorded last year.
In a statement released Sunday, the company said that "all of Centum’s
four business units recorded a robust performance in the period".
"In the Real Estate Business Unit, revenue potential for pre-sales
achieved was Sh1.8 billion as at September 30, 2018, with a
corresponding profit potential of Sh460 million," the statement read.
The firm is engaged in the Two Rivers Development in Nairobi, Vipingo
Development in Kilifi and Pearl Marina Development in Uganda.
The Marketable Securities unit held a portfolio of Sh3.5 billion,
which recorded a realised cash investment income of Sh130 million over
the past six months. The company’s portfolio comprises Sabis
International School- Runda, two energy projects and an agribusiness.
Total assets increased from Sh66 billion as at March 32, 2018 to Sh67
billion as at September 30, 2018.
The company closed the half-year period with a cash balance of Sh1 billion.
“The company’s debt service capacity remains strong with Debt Service
Coverage Ratio (DSCR) consistently above the minimum level set under
its various debt covenants,” said Centum Group CEO James Mworia in a
statement.
This half-year profit marks a recovery for the company compared to the
losses it suffered in the same period last year when its subsidiary
Sidian Bank was hit by interest rate caps.

Conclusions

They are highly accomplished at upsizing and downsizing risk effectively.
1.2b was a one-off

.@StanChartKE  Q3’2018 EPS +33.9% +9.7% growth in Non-Funded Income
(NFI) to Kshs 7.0 bn from Kshs 6.4 bn, coupled with a faster 49.6%
decline in Loan Loss Provisions (LLP) to Kshs 1.9 bn, from Kshs 3.7 bn
in Q3’2017

Market Cap; $630.645m
EPS: 19.64
PE: 9.572

.@Barclays_Kenya Assets increased by 15.9% to Kshs 322.2 bn, from Kshs
278 bn in Q3’2017 +29.5% increase in government securities to Kshs
74.6 bn a +6.7% increase in loan book to Kshs 178.4 bn
.@Barclays_Kenya Non-Funded Income (NFI) increased by 14.0% to Kshs
7.4 bn, from Kshs 6.5 bn in Q3’2017. largely driven by the 16.6%
growth in foreign exchange trading income to Kshs 2.5 bn from Kshs 2.2
bn in Q3’2017

Market Cap: $580.81m
EPS: 1.23
PE:8.902

Market Cap: $398.64m
EPS: 23.73
PE:6.153

@StanbicKE Non-Funded Income (NFI) increased by 19.6% to Kshs 7.4 bn
in Q3’2018 The growth in NFI was driven by a 56.9% increase in other
income to Kshs 2.1b
.@StanbicKE  Total assets increased by 21.0% to Kshs 286.3 bn from
Kshs 236.56 bn in Q3’2017 +16.3% increase in the loan book to Kshs
141.1 bn from Kshs 121.3 bn

Market Cap: $357.099m
EPS: 10.9
PE:8.486