Berkshire’s Busy 2020 Broke a Record Despite Lack of Major Deals

Berkshire’s Busy 2020 Broke a Record Despite Lack of Major Deals

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) — Warren Buffett made no splashy deals in 2020, and he didn’t weigh in on some of the year’s most contentious topics in his much-anticipated annual letter. Behind the scenes, the 90-year old billionaire was hardly inactive. Berkshire Hathaway Inc. was firing up another engine: stocks — both buying its own and trading others. The conglomerate snapped up $24.7 billion of Berkshire shares last year, a stark record for the…

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Comment: Can equities tolerate higher bond yields?

Comment: Can equities tolerate higher bond yields?

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – The spike in yields of late has sent shivers through stock markets, which recently reached all-time highs and whose valuations are seen as stretched. But this rise in yields, if contained, isn’t necessarily bad news for stocks. Rather, it suggests to us that the rotation into reflation-driven cyclical stocks may have legs. The inflation influence Global bond yields have been trending higher for some time, but the pace of…

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Cryptocurrency’s Popularity Fuels Global Tax Crackdown

Cryptocurrency’s Popularity Fuels Global Tax Crackdown

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) — Financial transactions involving virtual money are on the rise, and tax authorities in the U.S., EU, and Asia are stepping up efforts to grab their share of potentially billions of dollars in lost tax revenue from unreported gains. Tracking anonymous virtual currency trades remains a major challenge—especially as cryptocurrency becomes more mainstream. Central banks, global services like PayPal Holdings Inc., and financial firms like Fidelity Investments are among the…

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Kenya—a Two-Fold Approach to Covid-19: Tax Insight

Kenya—a Two-Fold Approach to Covid-19: Tax Insight

NAIROBI (Capital Markets in Africa) — Following presidential directives to the National Treasury to put in place various tax and fiscal measures to cushion Kenya’s economy from the adverse effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Tax Laws Amendment Act 2020 (TLAA) was assented to by the President of Kenya on April 25, 2020. Kenya has adopted a two-fold approach, not only introducing relief measures but also measures to maintain tax revenue. This Insight will analyze…

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Coronavirus and Oil Price Crash

Coronavirus and Oil Price Crash

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Coronavirus (COVID-19) creates fear and uncertainty, hitting the global economy and amplifying the volatility of the financial markets. The oil price reaction to COVID-19 was gradually accommodated until March 09, 2020, when, 49 days after the release of the first coronavirus monitoring report by the World Health Organization (WHO), Saudi Arabia floods the market with oil. As a result, international prices drop with more than 20% in one single…

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Brighter than expected, but cloudy in patches by Nuveen

Brighter than expected, but cloudy in patches by Nuveen

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – During the Cold War, a group of atomic scientists began publishing the Doomsday Clock, a representation of how far away the world was from man-made destruction. It was originally set at seven minutes to midnight but has since been readjusted to between 17 and two minutes to, without quite ticking on to Armageddon. More than a decade since the global financial crisis, real estate investors are rather like the…

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The Big Picture: Investing in an uncertain world – Invesco’s Q1 2020 Update

The Big Picture: Investing in an uncertain world – Invesco’s Q1 2020 Update

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Is this a buying opportunity or the half-way stage in a larger slump? The truth is we don’t know, so we have constructed a range of scenarios that see the S&P 500 anywhere between 1400 and 3000 in 12 months. A probability-weighted approach, adjusted for the recent change in cross-asset correlations, leads to a bar-bell approach in our Model Asset Allocation that favors gold and cash among defensive assets…

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