All the latest product and investment news about the world’s biggest companies, including Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Vodafone, Barclays, Deutshe Bank, Goldman Sachs, Tesla, and Netflix.
The jury is out on whether Facebook (FB: Nasdaq) is a good investment proposition. It created ripples of excitement when it announced a staggering deal to snap up mobile phone messaging service WhatsApp last week. Should you be adding some Facebook shares into the mix of your largely South African portfolio? Looking at the current revenue … Read more
If the international investment bug hasn’t bitten you, it soon will. The prediction from Johan van Zyl, who heads an advisory service for South Africa’s ultra-rich, is that we are going to become increasingly interested in what the investment world has to offer beyond our borders. Although the sharp decline of our national currency is … Read more
If you’re a  South African on holiday or networking with business movers-and-shakers in the UK or Europe, it’s not fun converting what you are spending back into rands. On the other hand, tourists who fancy a game-watching holiday or spending time on a pristine beach, must be rubbing their hands in glee when contemplating their … Read more
One way of hunting for shares that are likely to outperform the stock market averages is to look for companies with high barriers to entry. These are organisations that have a monopoly in a market because the high costs of setting up and running such a business are beyond the reach of most. Or, perhaps … Read more
Cuba remains a gift to economic theorists. A living monument to the folly of a closed economic system built on the socialist fallacy that the State knows best. With a regulated average wage of under $40 a month, Cubans no possess no financial incentive to produce anything more than the minimum. So the country is … Read more
From the SA Press Association: Apple CEO Tim Cook was paid $4.25m  (R43m) in 2013, the company reported Friday in a regulatory filing. The compensation was more or less the same as the $4.2m  Cook earned in 2012. But it represented a dramatic drop from the $510m  (R5.2bn) worth of stock options that Cook was … Read more
Tim Cook has achieved something his company’s founder Steve Jobs couldn’t get right. The company has tied up a deal with China Mobile which with 740m subscribers is comfortably the biggest cell phone business on earth. The new relationship has the potential to add more than 25% to Apple’s iPhone sales. It sells around 34m … Read more
There is a lot of pessimism in the air around emerging markets (EMs). With Fed tapering widely anticipated to begin early next year, observers worry that EMs will take a big hit as the flow of easy money dries up. Further, there are worries about deeper structural problems in EMs. In particular, observers are worried … Read more
Having spent my career and most of my life in the City of Gold, it’s no wonder the yellow metal has retained its fascination for me. This was almost ordained. In January 1980, my first month as a trainee financial reporter at Johannesburg newspaper The Citizen, the gold price hit a record $850 – a … Read more
The face of retail is changing fast, and perhaps fastest of all in the United States, the birthplace of the internet and of e-tailing. Amazon has so far dominated the online retailing game, but low-cast retailer Walmart has decided that the time has come to get serious about online, and the stage is set for … Read more