The Editor's Desk - Tue 3 Feb 2026: Musk’s Trillion-Dollar merger and the precious metals meltdown

I’m weighing up the implications of Elon Musk’s massive SpaceX/xAI merger and what the brutal 21% gold crash means for your portfolio. Join me as we also look at South Africa’s high-stakes "moment critique" on the global stage and a fresh perspective from our new partners at The Common Sense..Don't miss out on future episodes of The Editor's Desk. Subscribe to BizNews Premium and get the podcast delivered to your inbox daily..Listen here.Edited transcript of today's Editor's Desk episode.This is the Editor's Desk, an exclusive analysis for BizNews Premium members. Today is Tuesday, the 3rd of February 2026, and I'm glad to have you with me. We’ve got a little bit of celebratory news today for entrepreneurs: an operation called The Common Sense. They are doing a lot of good work there. It's been put together as a bit of an antidote, I guess, to News24. News24 is a business that has some very strange ideologies from time to time. One doesn't really know what the future of News24 will be within the whole Naspers/Prosus empire, but it definitely comes with a certain ideological line. The operation, when you look at it, now seems to be at the other end of the spectrum, giving a different take on things—not quite as aggressively so as Rob Hersov’s group, but they are putting a lot of energy and effort into it. It is well worth going and having a look. Former columnist—and I say "former" not because he’s joined that lot, but because he is now to be found on The Common Sense—RW Johnson is there. We also have a relationship with them where we will be publishing an article from them every day. We are delighted at being able to leverage some of the wonderful work being done there and show it off to our community, in the hope that our members will find it as useful as I do. Today, the article we have on BizNews is written by Reine Opperman. It is a very instructive piece with the no-nonsense approach to politics that we've come to appreciate from Dr Frans Cronje over many years. Reine writes about US warships entering Iranian waters in the Persian Gulf and how the situation is positioned for conflict unless there is a massive climbdown on the Iranian side on two scores: the nuclear programme and the repression of internal unrest. It’s a really good piece that ties in South Africa's position. It suggests this is a "moment critique" for South Africa. Whichever way Pretoria decides to jump is going to have substantial consequences. Thus far, South Africa has been, as Renaud writes, something of a shield for the Iranian government. It will be interesting to see if that is perpetuated. If it is, it will show that ideology is trumping pragmatism in our country. Taking a position against the United States does have consequences—unfortunately, not for the politicians, it seems, but certainly for businesses and the people employed within South Africa. We also have a wonderful story from the Financial Times about silver. It relates to the crash we've seen over the past few days in precious metals. It's hard to believe that gold was down 21% in two trading days. It bounced up again a little this morning, by 6%, but if you've been in the markets long enough, you might suggest this is a "dead cat bounce." It’s not like we weren't warned. Peter Major, our go-to on mining, has been sharing graphs showing that gold—and silver even more so—were at historic ratios against oil and money market rates. As a consequence, he was calling for a correction in the gold price. He didn't know how high it would go, but he said that when it comes down, it's going to be sharp. And that’s exactly what occurred. The piece from the FT looks at how gold fell 21% and silver fell 40%. It discusses how retail investors have been really hurt, referencing the Reddit group and the "meme stock" craze of a few years ago. It highlights the pain inflicted by over-exuberance, fear, and greed. We are now in the fear stage. It’s a good reminder that when things turn, they turn very sharply. Just before the turn, they have a tendency to "blow out." From time immemorial, stock market crashes have been preceded by a sharp, last-minute surge before the pack of cards comes tumbling down. Interestingly, gold and silver exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have lost $150 billion in the past week. These are primarily the preserve of retail investors, so many people are feeling a lot poorer than they were a week ago. There is often gearing involved in this kind of trading, and a lot of that punting came from the Far East. While the meme stock craze was very much in the US, this time it appears metals have taken out the traders in Asia. It’s lovely to see Rhona O'Connell being quoted in the Financial Times—she is a highly esteemed analyst who worked with us at Miningweb in bygone years. Rhona was one of the stars of precious metals analysis, and she is quoted today saying that silver was "an accident waiting to happen." The other story I’d like to point you towards involves Elon Musk. It has been telegraphed through memos to the staff of SpaceX and xAI that the two companies are going to be merged. The rationale is that xAI, being an artificial intelligence operation, will require many data centres, and those data centres are going to be built in space. Only Elon would have the foresight to think of something like that. Jeff Bezos also has a space company, Blue Origin, but it has really tailed off compared with SpaceX. The SpaceX-xAI merger is now very much on the cards, and there’s talk of an IPO in America in June this year. The valuation being thrown around is $1.25 trillion. It wasn't that long ago that we didn't have a single trillion-dollar company, and now here is a brand new one being created. Well, SpaceX isn't brand new, but Elon Musk has built both from scratch. To put that $1.25 trillion valuation in context, it is three times South Africa's GDP. Here is a South African boy, born and raised in Pretoria, who had to find his fame and fortune outside of this country. It is such a pity that other "Elon Musks" are often precluded for artificial reasons from making similar contributions in their homeland. Let's hope some sanity starts prevailing on that front. The more his successes become evident—he is comfortably the richest man in the world—perhaps the penny will drop back home. He still carries a South African passport; he’s still got a "Green Mamba." Elon is successful because of how he thinks. He has famously refined what he calls "First Principles Thinking." He breaks a problem down to its absolute basics and then rebuilds it. He never accepts that the "way things were done" is the correct way. He prefers starting at ground zero. He realised assumptions are often built into our thought processes. For example, people thought electric cars would never be mainstream because batteries were too expensive. Elon looked at the basic constituents of a battery and saw they cost $80, yet factories were pricing them at $600. So, he reworked it and built everything himself from the ground up. If we, as fellow South Africans, can pick up that one thing from Elon Musk—looking at the world as it is, not as we want it to be—this country's potential can be fulfilled. And boy, do we have potential. Everyone who visits leaves thinking, "This is a great place, and I’d love to be back." I'm going to leave it there for today. Thanks for trusting us with your time. I'm Alec Hogg, until tomorrow, cheerio.

The Editor's Desk - Tue 3 Feb 2026: Musk’s Trillion-Dollar merger and the precious metals meltdown

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