Single stock futures are steadily overtaking warrants as the drug of choice for those in search of investment thrills. Stories abound of individuals making profits of 50% or even 100% on single stock futures over two or three days, but less well told are the stories of investors nursing monstrous losses over a similar time frame.
Many South Africans are paying more on their monthly phone and Internet bills than on bond repayments, according to Doug Reed, CEO of Data-Pro, an AltX-listed company that competes with Telkom by providing voice telephony over the Internet. A study by the Link Centre at Wits University says the telecoms sector generated an annual revenue of R74-billion last year.
Discovery Life has thrown its hat into the retirement funding ring with the launch of Optimiser, a product the company says is made-to-order for those fed up with the high costs and lack of transparency in a much-criticised industry. This comes at a time when the government is overhauling the country’s retirement funding regulations.
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/ 14 January 2005
The Reserve Bank is likely to shut the door on foreign ownership after two of the Big Four retail banks acquire a foreign partner, an analyst suggested this week.
"The question is, when does the Reserve Bank close the door on foreign ownership of local banks? Maybe after two of the Big Four are in foreign hands, maybe three? In the end it may be more of a political decision than a commercial one".
Despite low interest rates and improving economic conditions, debt delinquency is now reckoned to be more than R40-billion in South Africa. Most of this — more than R24-billion — is owed to municipalities for unpaid services such as electricity and refuse removal. The culture of non-payment is still strong in South Africa.
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/ 21 October 2003
Paging through the financial press, you may notice your unit trust prices quoted as Net Asset Value (NAV) rather than the old ”buy” and ”sell”. This is just one of the more visible changes introduced by the Collective Investment Schemes (CIS) Act.