Drikus Combrinck

“Some things are believed because they are true. But many things are believed simply because they have been asserted repeatedly.” -Thomas Sowell

🔴 BREAKING: High Court blocks Agri Minister's foot-and-mouth vaccine prohibition Minister John Steenhuisen is also interdicted from interfering in private commercial relations of those who lawfully import FMD vaccines. Here's the latest 🧵

“Wherever there is a crowd there is untruth.”

Back in Q3 2023, we highlighted the Strait of Hormuz as a geopolitical risk investors should not ignore. Not because we knew the timing. But because in a changing world, portfolios need exposure to energy, real assets and optionality — not just traditional equity/bond diversification. That is no longer a side issue. It is core portfolio construction. capicraft.co.za/wp-content/upl…

"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51% of the people may take away the rights of the other 49%." Thomas Jefferson

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“If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living." — 2 Thessalonians 3:10–12

History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

S&P futs new record high, and yes: with 350 S&P names down, we may see the narrowest breadth record high today in history

@News24 @DeanMacpherson 🤣

DA's task is to be biggest party in KwaZulu-Natal, says party leader Geordin Hill-Lewis brnw.ch/21x2kZ0

How very Arthur Burns of him

“There are telltale symptoms by which history gives warning to a threatened or perishing society. Such are, for instance, a decline of the arts or a lack of great statesmen.”

Another 100 million barrels will be lost between now and then.

While everybody is wating for the art of the deal, let me remind you: COVID was instant demand destruction with supply still flowing — inventories exploded. An Iran energy shock is the inverse: demand remains, but supply disruption arrives with a lag as oil already on the water keeps landing. The danger is that the market reads “no immediate shortage” as “no shortage.”

The market seems to treat continued AI improvement as automatically bullish. I’m not sure that follows. LLMs may keep improving, but with rising marginal cost and falling marginal returns. At first, more compute, data and model size buy big capability jumps. Later, the bottlenecks migrate: power, chips, latency, data quality, inference cost, workflow integration, trust and regulation. So the key question is not: “Will AI get better?” One should accept that it will. The better investment question is: “Will the next dollar of AI capex buy enough incremental intelligence to earn attractive returns?” AI can be transformative and still overcapitalised. The technology can be real while the extrapolation present in the stock market is wrong.

IRAN STATE MEDIA, IRIB: Axios published five separate reports over 19 days calling an Iran deal "imminent." None produced an actual agreement. Questions are now circling around whether the reporter and allied U.S. officials may be leveraging the resulting market swings for profit.

BREAKING: According to our analysis, ~$920 million worth of crude oil shorts were taken 70 minutes before an Axios report claimed the US and Iran were near a "14-point" deal to end the war. At 3:40 AM ET today, nearly 10,000 contracts worth of crude oil shorts were taken without any major news. This is equivalent to ~$920 million in notional value, an unusually large trade for 3:40 AM ET. At 4:50 AM ET, just 70 minutes later, Axios reported that the US is "close" to a "memorandum of understanding" to end the Iran War. By 7:00 AM ET, oil prices had fallen over -12% with these crude oil shorts gaining approximately +$125 million. Minutes later, Iran launched the "Persian Gulf Strait Authority" and oil prices surged +8%. What just happened?

“When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done.” - John M Keyns

@madaboutmarkets Not to mention that Capex cycles are by their very nature cyclical.

Massive increase in earnings expectations in US earnings. Interesting to note that capex is written off over years, whilst that same capex is 100% revenue in most companies that sold it . Do analysts still care about FCF