The Johannesburg Stock Exchange invites you to their next Power Hour presentation. These series of presentations will educate you on the principles of investing and the latest issues in the South African economy. 

In their third presentation, Barry Bramley will give an overview on the generational theory - how the Gen-X's want to manage their money and the impact thereof. 

JSE POWER HOUR
DATE: Thursday, 24 March 2011 
TIME: 17h30 – 18h30 
VENUE: Johannesburg Stock Exchange, Auditorium, One Exchange Square, Gwen Lane, Sandown 
PARKING: Across the road at Village Walk 
RSVP: Please respond by Thursday, 17 March 2011 
FURTHER INFORMATION: Takalani Philip Nyelisani on Tel: (011) 520 7127 or takalanin@jse.co.za 

To RSVP please click here

I put a challenge to my staff and collegues that if they could raise R5k I wouuld shave my head live on CNBC.

We way past R5k and money sill coming in (seems nobody likes my hair but me and my lovely wife).

Anyways, live on CNBC Monday the 8th at 4.45pm.

The history of stock exchanges in South Africa dates way back to 1802 in Cape Town, and of course we know all about the Johannesburg and Durban exchanges. The Kimberley exchange also makes sense seeing as that's where Barney Barnato and Cecil John Rhodes started some of South Africa's largest listed companies. But what of Pretoria, Klerksdorp, Potchefstroom and Pietermaritzburg exchanges?

I spent a few years in Pietermaritzburg in the early 90's and as a child had often visited as it was the nearest town of note and in the warren of lanes off Church street that is the CBD I always remember one building in Chancery Lane with the concrete logo above the door - The Stock Exchange.

The Pietermaritzburg Stock Exchange started life in 1866 but that was only really a branch of London broker. The first Pietermaritzburg listing was in 1881 with the official start date being 1st May 1888.

The real question is why? Well Pietermaritzburg is the political capital of then Natal, and while Durban was bigger is was more of a trading port and not a political city.

Pietermaritzburg being a part of South Africa it naturally had a number of gold mining companies listed, with some actually mining for gold in and around Pietermaritzburg albeit most where mining in Johannesburg. But there were also number of other listed industries such as coal and assurance with 23 new listings in 1889.

The boom years were probably the late 1880's into late 1890's and it was in 1903 that the Pietermaritzburg Stock Exchange moved into the building in Chancery Lane that I saw as a kid.

The 1900's saw the exchange in decline and by 1931 in the midst of the great depression is was finally closed and the few remaining companies transferred their listings to other exchanges.
 

With the new Gordon Gecko coming out shortly here's the list of market movies, surprisingy few over the years.

The ony one I haven't seen is Boiler Room and my favourite is American Psycho, but me also thinks the book was better.

• Trading Places (1983)
• Wall Street (1987)
• Trader (1987)
• Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)
• Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
• Rogue Trader (1999)
• Boiler Room (2000)
• American Psycho (2000)
• Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room (2005)

• More than 456000 international visitors poured into the country between June 1 and 13 to watch and participate in the tournament. South African Tourism has conservatively estimated that each visitor will spend R12000 on their trip;
• About 98% of the more than three million tickets have already been sold - an indication that the ticket sales could well surpass those of Germany 2006;
• More than $240-million worth of tickets have been sold with an anticipated $40-million more to be spent on entry to games;
• Of this, about $77-million has been earmarked by the LOC for the South African Football Association to bolster soccer development;
• A million spectators attended the first 20 matches;
• Eleven of the matches had an attendance of over 97%;
• Matches played so far have attracted at least 500 million television viewers worldwide; and
• A "conservative" R93-billion will be pumped into the South African economy, according to research by global business and audit advisory firm, Grant Thornton.

Source Sunday Times

Everybody has been commenting about what a huge success the 2010 world cup is proving to be, certainly ahead of the sceptics expectations and frankly even ahead of positive expectations.

However the thinking was that it would end up costing us as a country a number of billions – but that in the long term it would be worth as our status as a country and as a tourist destination would be hugely improved and this longer term impact would offset the costs.

However in an interview earlier today Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan said that the event would actually break even!!

Spending was around R33billion, including the R11billion for stadiums while the event is expected to add around R38billion to the economy.

Full article at http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/332810,world-cup-finance-minister.html
 

I live in Johannesburg, the largest city in Africa. Yet my exchange only offers a 512 kb internet service, no 4 mb speed for me. Neotel have finally put a base station near enough for me to get decent internet, but then they dropped the 10 and 15 gig services on their high speed product leaving just the 5 gig monthly cap? I can get HSDPA on my mobile, but at huge expense.

So even while living in the continent’s largest city I can get first class internet access.

Then I read this - SA left out as Kenya gets fibre to the home. The killer quote “Wananchi plans to offer residential consumers in Kenya access speeds of up to 150Mbit/s over time”.

When asked why they aren’t coming to South Africa the comment was that the regulatory environment wasn’t conducive.

OK so I can’t get decent internet access, but maybe I can benefit from the Kenyan story, what of Altron? They have an investment in Kenya Data Networks Limited, problem I suspect is that right now that stake is too small within the large Altron group to really have an impact?
 

Official Trailer: Wall Street - Money Never Sleeps AKA Wall Street II.

Dunno ?? Can they really make a movie of this book ??

TickerTalk has been nominated in the SA Blog Awards in the UCT GSB Best Business Blog section.

Voting is at http://website.sablogawards.com/2010/

I have resigned from OST and am leaving at the end of the year to start a new venture, a long time in the planning and now finally all coming together .

Full details at http://www.justonelap.com/2011.htm

I will be seting up a TickerTalk group/use in the next few weeks for the new project.

Finall, almost a year after launching is the USA and other parts of the world the must vaunted Apple iPad is on sale in SA from today at iStores & selected Dion Wireds.

The pricing is surpringly good but the question is with some 300 tablets expected to hit the market this year - does one buy this first gen product or does one wait for the Xoom or one of the other second gen products?

The bottom end one (16GB wifi only) is R4,399 and the top end (64GB and wifi/3G) is R7,599.

More pricing at http://www.core.co.za/secondary.html

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