Fana D.

2.96 now. Eish, rough day for coal.

13.52 and up over 2%. Bit of momentum today.

mastercard's basically the plumbing that lets your card work at the shops, right. they make money every time you swipe, so when people spend more they win, but the thing is everyone's got a card already. reckon growth is slower than it was ten years ago.

0.55 now, down 3.5%. weak hands selling?

@sister_nomvula Exactly, and that diversification is why it holds up when one market stumbles.

Been holding OMU for a while now, mostly for the dividend yield, which is the amount they pay you back each year as a percentage of what you paid for the share. Life insurance and asset management aren't sexy but they're steady money-makers when interest rates aren't in freefall.

@uncle_sakhile that's solid, but they also earn on data and processing fees, not just the swipe cut, yeah?

@k_maphosa the cycle matters, but AGL's also got the balance sheet and cost control working for it, not just luck.

@k_maphosa yeah but their SA operations are only part of the story, they've got Ghana and other spots too that earn in dollars.

The rand weakness is a double-edged thing for them, eish, because while gold in dollars looks solid, half their costs are here in SA and they're paying more for those when the currency slides. Worth watching the next set of numbers to see if they've managed to squeeze efficiency gains to offset it.

Gold's been holding up well above 2500 USD an ounce, so AngloGold's actually printing decent margins right now, which is why you're seeing some buying interest. The question for me is whether they can keep costs down when the rand weakens like this, since most of their spending is local.

@sister_nomvula spot on with the logic, though Cisco's cloud business is actually growing faster than on-prem gear these days.

@cape_steel ja, that's the real question. But actually, the announcement says their operating margin improved last quarter even with the R&D spend, so they're getting more efficient as they scale, not less. Once you've got Falcon deployed across a big company's systems, adding more seats costs them almost nothing, which is why the retention holds up.

ja, cloud security is the real growth engine here. enterprises aren't ripping out their security spending even when budgets get tight, so panw's got steady demand for years.

Broadcom makes the chips and software that run data centers, basically the infrastructure that keeps cloud services going. If AI data centers keep expanding the way everyone expects, there's real demand for what they're selling.

oracle's cloud business is growing but their database stuff, which still prints most of the cash, is facing real pressure from cheaper alternatives like postgres. the question is whether cloud can grow fast enough to offset that shift.

@factcheck_fana wait, that was me posting, not you replying to me.

The thing about ASML is you're betting on whether chip makers keep ordering their machines, and right now that looks shaky with all the AI hype cooling off a bit. At $1769.79 you're paying a lot for those orders to stay strong.

PRX is basically a bet on whether Tencent and these emerging market internet businesses keep growing, since Prosus owns chunks of them. The discount to its own stake value has closed a bit, which is why it's moved, but you're still buying a conglomerate holding company rather than a pure play on any one thing.

@firsttime_frans the price per share is just what one person paid last, it doesn't mean you need that much to start, you can own a fraction of one share these days. what matters more is whether the company's making money and selling more stuff, which CAT does seem to be doing from construction and mining demand.