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Speaker 1: The money show the market.

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Speaker 2: Chris Stewart's a portfolio manager at ninety one Chris, Good evening.

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Speaker 2: So you have the US President Donald Trump. Saint to

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Speaker 2: Reuter is, well, maybe the US will get out of

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Speaker 2: Iran quite quickly. There's a big announcement tonight. He's doing

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Speaker 2: a televised address in the US tonight, and suddenly we

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Speaker 2: see sort of the unwinding of pretty much all the

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Speaker 2: market activity over the last month.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, O, good evening, Steven. You could be forgiven if

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Speaker 1: you look at your screens today for thinking of March

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Speaker 1: as an aberration or a bad dream. You know, the

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Speaker 1: market is now in positive territory again year to date.

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Speaker 1: The US markets are only modestly off year to date.

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Speaker 1: The rand is pretty flat against the major crosses on

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Speaker 1: a year to date basis. The gold price is up

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Speaker 1: yere to date, platinum prices recovering quite nice, and the

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Speaker 1: only thing that sort of stands out on your screen

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Speaker 1: is but hold on. The oil price is still up

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Speaker 1: between seventy and eighty percent so far this year, despite

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Speaker 1: the fact it's come off down to closer to one

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Speaker 1: hundred dollars a barrel mark again today, having peaked at

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Speaker 1: I don't know whatever. It was one hundred and eighteen

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Speaker 1: dollars a barrel yesterday, so you know it's it's but

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Speaker 1: can we say right, you know it's game on. Everything's okay.

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Speaker 1: We saw some good macro data in the domestic economy today,

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Speaker 1: very very strong vehicle sales numbers. Once again, there's going

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Speaker 1: to be lots of shiny new cars probably sitting in

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Speaker 1: people's garages because they can't afford to put petrol or

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Speaker 1: diesel in them. But you know, it just shows where

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Speaker 1: we would be were it not, I guess, for this

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Speaker 1: rather inconvenient war going on in Iran and the impact

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Speaker 1: that it's had on the global oil price. Because other

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Speaker 1: than that, you know, things are looking reasonably positive domestically

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Speaker 1: and indeed globally. You know, the US jobs data today

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Speaker 1: wasn't bad. You know, mortgage application data wasn't great, but

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Speaker 1: wasn't a disaster either relative to expectations. So you know,

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Speaker 1: generally speaking, things are looking okay. But unfortunately there's a

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Speaker 1: big bat out there, and the big butt is who

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Speaker 1: knows what? You know, what Trump says this evening? Who

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Speaker 1: knows what the stance is? Who knows who, if anybody

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Speaker 1: he's speaking to within the Iranian regime. Certainly everything he

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Speaker 1: says is almost immediately contradicted via the various data sources

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Speaker 1: or information sources coming out of Iran. So you know,

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Speaker 1: we could wake up in two days time and we'd

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Speaker 1: be sitting with markets off three percent and a disaster

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Speaker 1: on I hands.

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Speaker 2: Again, I mean, this is the whole problem, is the

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Speaker 2: sheer volatility of it. I mean, it's relentless. It must

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Speaker 2: be exhausting, but is also quite difficult to sort of

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Speaker 2: consider and invest over the longer term, and just that

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Speaker 2: must have an economic impact.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean exactly. You know, this degree of uncertainty

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Speaker 1: is not going to be good for businesses who are

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Speaker 1: planning to invest. It's you know, there's there's huge amounts

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Speaker 1: of uncertainty as to what's going to happen, the prices

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Speaker 1: the future, what's the oil price going to happen? You

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Speaker 1: know you're going to have in the future. Nonetheless, it

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Speaker 1: does appear as though most businesses are trying to look

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Speaker 1: through this. I saw some data today that looked at basically,

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Speaker 1: you know, merger and acquisition corporate activity in the US

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Speaker 1: in the first quarter of this year is running twenty

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Speaker 1: twenty five percent higher than it was in the equivalent

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Speaker 1: quarter last year, So you know, AIL is not falling

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Speaker 1: in a heap. And I guess there's a general view

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Speaker 1: that you know, Trump wants and needs, from a political perspective,

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Speaker 1: some sort of off ramp from this war. He needs

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Speaker 1: to do it in some manner that he can at

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Speaker 1: least credibly say to his voting base that he's achieved

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Speaker 1: the goals that he set when he went in. I

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Speaker 1: think the Iranians know that, and they're going to make

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Speaker 1: it increasingly difficult for him to do so. But generally speaking,

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Speaker 1: I think the consensus view remains that we are going

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Speaker 1: to see some sort of the escalation the residual pain.

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Speaker 1: I guess that will be felt even if we do

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Speaker 1: manage to achieve that is, we are going to see

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Speaker 1: a structurally higher oil price for the foreseeable future. And

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Speaker 1: a structurally higher oil price for the foreseeable future is

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Speaker 1: generally not good for the globe. Some economies bend it,

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Speaker 1: some don't, but in particular it's not very good for

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Speaker 1: South Africa.

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Speaker 2: Christian, thanks so much, portfolio manager at ninety one