| Old warhorse Steinhoff has been in the news twice this week. The first time wasn't so great, announcing a fine of more than R190 million payable to BaFin, the financial regulator in Germany. This fine is for late publication of the 2016 / 2017 annual financials and for other disclosure failures, so it takes a while to conclude these matters. In much happier news for Steinhoff, its European discount retail subsidiary Pepco Group is doing really well. For the first nine months of the financial year, Pepco's revenue is up 17.1% in constant currency. An aggressive expansion of the store footprint has played a major role in this growth. Interestingly, the company talks about there being a much larger discount market across Europe than at the time of the global financial crisis. This tells us that (1) Pepco feels bullish about its prospects and (2) Eur opeans are starting to feel like this is 2007 all over again. Coronation would be forgiven for feeling that way as well, with assets under management (AUM) down to R580 billion from R662 billion at the end of 2021. Asset management firms can only achieve a change in AUM through net flows and investment performance. When the market falls sharply, so too does the source of income, as fees are charged as a percentage of AUM. You can find more information on these stories and others in Ghost Bites, the best daily summary of JSE news that you'll find in the market. I've made a further tweak to the format, splitting out financial and operating updates. Seriously - there's no quicker or more effective way to catch up on local company news than to read Ghost Bites every morning. CLICK HERE TO READ GHOST BITES>>> In today's feature article, I decided to focus on Pan African Resources. This company has significantly outperformed the other gold miners on the JSE, with incredible divergence in performance over the past 12 months when you consider that they are all producing the same underlying commodity. It all comes down to hitting production goals and managing costs. In mining, there's also a healthy dose of luck needed as well, as mother nature can be unforgiving. To learn more about Pan African Resources' record production and significant decrease in debt, read this article. Every Friday, the team at DealMakers treats us to a great weekly summary of the company news on the JSE and you'll find all the links below. For those interested in the more technical elements of the Companies Act, there's also an article dealing with shareholder voting rights in a scheme of arrangement. Those who attended the excellent TreasuryONE webinar yesterday learnt a great deal about the key macroeconomic pressure points out there at the moment. To add to my point on Europe above, the team pointed out that Europe may well lead the world into recession. In an update from Wichard Cilliers (Head of Market Risk at TreasuryONE), he notes that the US dollar has finally broken through the "parity level" which means it is now more valuable than the euro. The final push came from the US PPI print of 1.0% vs. 0.8% expected, which puts upward pressure on inflation. The market has priced in an 80% chance that the Fed will hike by 100 basis points in the meeting at the end of July. Before the CPI print, that probability was just 10%. These are historic times, as this is the first time in two decades that the US dollar has broken through parity to the euro. Almost needless to say, the rand has been taking more of a hiding. Risky assets are vulnerable to any news of recession and a hawkish Fed. The rand has now broken the R17.20 level and a move to R17.50 cannot be ruled out. In commodities, gold briefly broke below the $1,700 level before recovering slightly above that level. Brent Crude fell 4% on the day to trade at $96 per barrel. The longer we see talk of recession and lower growth, the greater the pressure will be on commodities. If you missed yesterday's webinar, we will be releasing a recording on YouTube soon. Look out for that link next week. In a brand new episode of Magic Markets, Craig Antonie from AnBro Capital Investments joined us to discuss what has been a truly awful start to the year for growth stocks. The team recently put out some research on the impact on different sectors of this bear market vs. the Global Financial Crisis of 2007/2008. There are wonderful insights in there, with the important caution that no two crises are the same. This episode is a great learning experience and you can enjoy it at this link. It's been a hectic week. Get some rest this weekend! | 