I am a shareholder in Tesla, because it is something I really believe in, and it had a great year.  At the moment all the news coming out has been positive and the price has really just been heading up.  

The one thing however that I got used to with the American Stock Market, from watching it for many years, is that prices go up and down much more quickly than in South Africa.  Shares are not traded as much in South Africa and many of them are held by the same companies for many years whereas, if you look at the statistics in America, basically the people who own for example Apple shares at the beginning of the year are completely different to the people who own it at the end of the year.  

What I have seen is that basically every single share over one or two years seems to go up or down quite dramatically and I guess the lesson that I am trying to learn from that is not to buy at the top.  In other words, if I see the price going up I should not buy then – let me wait for it to come down.  They tend to all come down and we have seen that, in particular with Apple over the years.  

Yes, on the long-term the trend has been all up, but there have been opportunities, even with massive and steady companies like Apple to buy the shares at a tremendous discount at certain times only to watch them go tumbling down.  I remember a few months ago when Apple was trading at $93 Kevin O’Leary, one of the presenters of Shark Tank on CNBC, rubbished the share.  He said that he would not be a buyer of the share until it got to about $80/$85 and it was definitely going down.  It must have been at the exact time he said that that it reversed, turned around and went straight up to $140 – proving that no matter how much money, experience and knowledge you have, you are not necessarily going to be right (my calls on Facebook have proved to be spectacularly wrong) and that even a mature company like Apple, who has pretty consistent sales year after year, can see enormous fluctuations during the year of its share price.  Having said that, I am not a shareholder of Apple and I would not buy at the current price – because I am sure there will be a time again that you will get it back to $100 or so and then, and depending on what is happening in the market, it may be a better deal. 

We all have different things we are proud of, and one of the things I am proud of is that I have done a number of different things in my life.  Apart from my firm I have been involved in the legal profession itself and I have been the chairperson of both the Johannesburg Attorneys Association as well as the Gauteng Law Council and have sat as a councillor on the Law Society of the Northern Provinces.  I have been very involved in a variety of different things, including sports, etc, but one of the things I am the most proud of is the television documentary of mine that was flighted on the Tellytrack channel.  

I did not have any filming experience, and I bought a video camera in Hong Kong while visiting my former trainer, David Ferraris, and I filmed an interview with him, footage of Hong Kong and spent two days in the Tellytrack studios together with the producer of theirs, putting together my footage, interview, etc with a script written and read by me as well.  So, it is something I am very proud of, because I filmed it, I wrote it, I did every part of it and it was good enough to be flighted on television.  I finally found the video cassette recently, digitised it and I have loaded it up to YouTube and you can see it here: https://youtu.be/UZfqyvCXtIw

Capitec is obviously a fairly well know South African bank now and it has been incredible to watch its growth over the years.  The one area where we have seen its growth is how we had to pay more and more staff, as well as clients, into their Capitec bank accounts whereas a couple of years ago it was unheard of.  I have invested in the Capitec share at a point where it had already grown tremendously, but I did not stay in it for too long, thinking at the time when it was almost at a peak and due to certain investments I made I had to sell all of my shares at that time in any event.  

If I remember correctly I bought it at about R28 and sold for a small profit at about R35 or R40 a share.  If I look at a chart of Capitec it means that my purchase was in about 2009.  Today the share sells for more than R700 a share!  In other words, since I bought it, it has still multiplied more than 20 times!  That is the kind of return one dreams about – put R10,000 into a share and 5 or 6 years later you get R200,000 back.  

As they say in all the adverts though, wait, there is more.  I am just telling you about what my losses are for not having held on to Capitec.  If you bought into Capitec earlier it was actually available at R2 in 2002, so if you’ve held Capitec shares for 15 years, you would have seen your money multiply 350 times!

On a similar note, Naspers, due to their holding of Ten Cents in China, has increased from R17,50 a share in 1994 to R2,500 now and PSG, who I used to use as my stockbrokers, has seen its share price increase 1,429% between 2006 and the end of 2016!

The question is as to how you spot such shares - and that is hard.  It is not as if I have not had both Naspers, which I owned when it was at R800 a share, as well as Capitec and so I think while it is hard to spot them, it is even harder, once negative articles start coming out about how they are too highly priced, to actually hold onto them and just sit through dips and ups and downs so that you can have such a massive hit.  Imagine just putting in R10,000 into Capitec in 2009 and now having over R200,000!

So, what smaller companies have you seen out there that are starting to grow?

A lot of people consider horseracing and casinos all pretty much the same – they are after all, all gambling and the casino environment often seems more exciting and more glamorous.  I have never enjoyed gambling at casinos – I very seldom gamble at a casino and I don’t think I’ve ever bet more than R200 in a casino whereas I have bet quite a bit more than that on horseracing!  In fact, my biggest win ever of my life was when Master Sabina won the Summer Cup in 2015 and my gambling profit alone was R300,000 but that is also because he was at exceptional odds of 15/1 which essentially means I have about R20,000 worth of bets on him and from other horses who had won, going on to him.  

Normally if I bet, I will bet much smaller, probably R2,000 or R3,000, but there is a world of difference between betting on horseracing and betting in a casino.  I worry when I say that, because some people start trying to think whether that is not an easy way to make money, whether they should not try to bet for a profit, etc, and ultimately that type of approach, as opposed to hard work and actually earning money in your job, is going to lead to the same kind of losses that you will suffer at a casino. 

Where horseracing though is different is that in a casino the odds are completely stacked against you because not only does every number, whatever day you are playing, just about have an equal chance of coming up (there are no patterns, despite the fact that some people delude themselves that there are) they pay you less than the odds of that number coming up.  In other words, it is mathematically designed from day one that the casino is going to win in the first place and it is just a matter of how long it takes them to win your money.  In horseracing some people will lose every day and some people will win, but basically, and especially with the tote, all the money that is put into a race less the tote’s fees is distributed amongst the winners, so the tote does not make extra money if a surprise horse wins the race, although in the case of bookmakers they would.

Mathematically and logically horseracing makes more sense for those who like to gamble, but if we just take the recent J&B Met as an example the winner was the 3rd favourite, the horse who came second was the favourite, the horse who came third was the 9th favourite and the horse that came fourth was the 4th favourite.  In other words, of the first four favourites in the race three of them filled the first four positions.  Yes, there are surprises in racing, and usually there are in races that you know there is going to be a surprise because that is exactly how the field looks, it is a race consisting of a whole lot of inconsistent horses who have run badly in the past and it is precisely the kind of race you would not bet on.  By comparison to a roulette table, you would not be able to say, as you could in the J&B Met, that of the 15 horses 5 or 6 of them really had no chance of winning.  In a roulette table every single number has an equal chance of coming up and so it is just pure gambling, pure luck and there is no thought or analysis involved at all.  About 35% of all horse races are won by the favourites and although those usually pay less money you cannot say that there is any particular number or anything at the casino which is similar other than if you are betting on red or black on an even money basis which is probably the most fair odds that one can find in a casino.  Over time, both of those colours should come up an equal amount of times.

In short, although you can still lose just as easily in horseracing, it is not mathematically programmed against you in the first place and where it is completely different to games like roulette, is that you are in a position, if you truly follow horseracing, where in most races you can narrow the race down and say it is between these three or four horses, maybe the following three or four horses also have an outside chance but the rest have no chance at all.  People who choose the best bet based on a name, on a lucky number, or simply because they say that they like outsiders, will every now and then get it right, but on the whole they will lose money and lose it quickly.  In a casino you will lose anyway.  In horseracing you actually have a chance if you bet carefully and without being impulsive (which is not very easy to do) to win.

I know that we are bringing up a generation of youth at the moment who believe that they are entitled to everything.  I am not saying they are not entitled to a good education and all sorts of other things, and maybe it is not just a privilege, but it would be nice if we could teach them some manners.  There is nothing wrong with saying “thank you” for everything somebody does for you and that includes the things you feel you are “entitled to”.

I really worry about the people coming out of University at the moment - I can see it in the people I hire, I can see it in candidate attorneys and there is just not the same attitude to work there was 20 years ago.  That is not to say that I don’t have some gems in my office who, despite not having gone to University, know how to work hard, but it is amazing how many would-be attorneys consider that the day starts at 8.30am and finishes at 5pm and it means nothing to swop your articles and go from one firm to another or just move cities, etc.  Many years ago, you would never think of doing that, apart from the fact that invariably it means starting one’s articles again, or which means a loss of earnings at the end of your career of one or sometimes two years.  Today’s would-be young attorneys don’t seem to really mind that – as long as they can play around for a little bit longer, or chase their latest boyfriend to wherever he is moving, etc.  The career takes last place and I don’t have a problem with that – as long as people with that approach don’t complain one day as to how they got unlucky in life and things never worked out.  All the usual excuses – “my boss never recognized me”, “my parents never left me any money” etc .  I honestly believe that you get what you work for and if you don’t take your job seriously you will pay the price for that one way or another later.  Don’t make excuses later – take responsibility for your own life.

I have changed the topic of this blog a little bit by writing it, but it does start with people not thanking their parents for University, not thanking people for what is done for them and thinking they are absolutely entitled to everything - entitled to the good life and constant self-gratification without having to put in the hard work.  We can at least teach the new generation, if they cannot put in the hard work, to at least learn to say “thank you”?

Later this year the iPhone 8 is going to be released.  Some say that the iPhone 8 will in fact be called the iPhone X and there are some rumours that some of the new iPhone 8’s could cost more than $1,000 or about $200 more than what they currently cost.  That means about a 25% rise in cost for the fancier ones with the most memory.  Analysts are excited for Apple in any event, because they say when the iPhone 7 was released only 25% of iPhone owners had not upgraded for more than two years that by the time the iPhone 8 is released 31% of iPhone owners will not have upgraded for more than two years and they say that is going to spur record demand.  It allegedly has an edge to edge screen and will have more screen space than the current iPhone 7 Plus does.  

The other big money-spinner for Apple, and I don’t own Apple shares anymore, is that when the new iPhone is launched a lot of people sell their phone second hand and that brings more people into the iPhone universe – which pushes them towards iCloud as well as the App Store.  Obviously, in selling service to those people, even if they have not bought a brand-new phone, Apple is going to make money in any event.  

It is an understatement to say that this is an important time in South Africa’s history.  We stand in a place where, depending on what happens now, the whole future of the country can change dramatically and one path is a very poor economic future.  

It is really one of those times where every person needs to stand up and be counted.  You need to speak to your friends, you need to be active on social media – in your own personal capacity – and you need, where appropriate, to take part in sensible and well planned marches and campaigns.  

You need to think very carefully what you stand for and what you support and take a stand because people power has worked in many countries, and it can work in South Africa.  The problem with South Africa, and it is true of other countries in the world, is that inevitably people get the leader they deserve.  In other words, if you remain apathetic, if you think someone else will sort out the problem, if you forever are trying to find the silver lining in the next cloud where somebody else or some other organisation or some committee sorts out the problem you may well get exactly what you deserve for your apathy.

This is not the time to simply stay away, to go home and have a braai or hope that South Africa’s leadership issues are resolved either by the SACP or a committee within the ANC.  The ANC needs to see that the people of South Africa, and by that I do not just mean disgruntled white people, are sick and tired with what they are seeing and do not want a country where almost every important decision is motivated by what suits the Gupta’s.  To my mind, a one day march or strike is not enough – it needs to be a rolling ongoing thing and even if it takes a week, I think it will achieve the same result.  If you listen carefully to the speeches of many of the leaders right now, including our former Minister of Finance, Pravin Gordhan, that is exactly what they are telling us to do – they are saying that we need to stand up and be counted now.  If you don’t, those that have taken all of these actions and are behaving in this way will be emboldened, and they will grow stronger.  If they are ever going to be replaced, now is the last opportunity.

By now everybody knows that President Jacob Zuma has a wonderful compound at Nkandla.  It was recently reported in the Sunday Times that his ex-wife actually has a house allocated to her in the compound in which she stays from time to time.  

I know a lot of people believe the Cyril Ramaphosa will be the next President, and I would hope that he is, but I don’t believe that.  I have always believed that Jacob Zuma’s ex-wife, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma will be our next President.  I was interested to read in the Sunday Times article, and I don’t know the veracity of the allegation, that it was alleged that in the Zulu culture there is no such thing as divorce, regardless of whether one is divorced in terms of the law or the country.  It is interesting that a husband and wife having been divorced for many years, that the ex-wife still has a house inside the family compound of her ex-husband and it may well be that the current President of South Africa lives in Nkandla, and that the next President of South Africa will also live in Nkandla.