November has been a down month for equities in most countries except South Africa, due to the performance of our Resources sector. Unfortunately, we are seeing South Africa falling out of favour with the USA; so much so that we will not be invited to the G20 summit next year. We might argue that we don’t need the US, but they are still the most powerful country in the world, and getting sanctioned by them is not a good thing. People also argue that the dollar is going to be replaced by some other currency soon but looking at the slide, we can see that that is not going to happen any time soon.
There has also been a lot of chatter about AI being the reason of a lot of job losses but if we look at this graph, we can see that although it is one of the culprits, it is still only 4.4% of the reasons year to date. It will be interesting to see how that percentage changes over the next year.
I have come across an interesting piece in a Vestact newsletter recently that compares the thought process of wealthy people with those not so wealthy and the following paragraph stood out: “Most (people) tend to see money as something they earn. The wealthy see it as something they build. The pack asks, ‘How can I make more per hour?’ The wealthy ask, ‘How can I make money while I sleep?’ Those in the rat race sell their time; the wealthy multiply theirs. That’s not greed, it’s just different software. And software can be learned, installed, and upgraded.”
We can add to that the fact that not everyone is interested in financial matters. We can also understand that not everyone is an original thinker when it comes to making money. The good news for the latter group is that you can always copy what original thinkers do. If you can switch on that software in your brain that wants to understand better ways of wealth creation, then you will discover a multitude of sources of ideas, tried and tested, ready for implementation.