First published in News24 on May 10, 2020...

By Vusi Thembekwayo & Isaah Mhlanga...

·         COVID-19 continues to spread inside and outside China, with new cases acceleratingoutside China....

·          Data just in from the underfunded Statistics South Africa, headline inflation for January rose 4.5% from 4.1% in December, and is 10 basis lower than the 4.6% the market expected...

News just in is that credit rating agency  Moody’s has revised SA economic growth lower to 0.7% in 2020 from a previous forecast of 1.0%. Growth for 2021 is forecast at 0.9%, way below the 2.6% economic growth rate required to stabilise the debt to GDP trajectory....

For the past week and half I have been on a roadshow seeing both institutional and retail clients across SA’s major cities and as expected they wanted know what is the impact of the outbreak of the coronavirus in China on the Chinese, South African and global economies and markets....

The South African Reserve Bank reduced the repo rate to 6.25% from 6.5% (prime rate goes from 10% to 9.75%) at today MPC decision. Since the November MPC where the committee voted 3:2 in favour of keeping rates on hold, a number of factors have changed in favour of cutting rates....

Bond markets have long screamed that something amiss is happening in the global economy. The US yield curve, specifically the 2Y10Y, has inverted. That happened just before all of the last seven US recessions, so there is reason to worry....

Why am I starting a blog?...