Tuesday, 2 June 2026
Tuesday 2 June 2026
[1] Bafana Bafana managed to get out of the country, leaving assistant coach Helman Mkhalele behind. SAFA president Danny Jordaan told reporters that the team will not be affected in any way, which must have been tough on Helman.
[2] Anthropic, who built Claude, has filed confidentially for an IPO later this year. SpaceX is set to IPO as early as next week, with Open AI still asking its chat-bot to draft the IPO documents (we assume token limits have been reached). There is a race between the three companies to get on the market first, as the incredibly high valuations all compete for a finite amount of capital (just print more money Mr. Warsh). Interestingly, Anthropic was started by ex-Open AI employees. You might be wondering why a confidential filing is being reported. The confidentiality is not in the filing itself, but its details. DNF will keep an eye out for the actual financials, expected closer to the IPO date, to see how much money Anthropic loses each year. Anthropic got into a fight with the Trump administration after the Pentagon wanted to use its software to spy on Americans (more nuanced, but not much). The Pentagon promptly ordered agencies to stop using the product, Anthropic sued. Luckily for the Washington elites, eager to get every last bit of data on their citizens (we can only assume for altruistic reasons, right?) Altman’s Open AI had no problem with allowing their software to be used for whatever the government wanted, including autonomous warfare (also more nuanced, also not much).
[3] Nvidia realized that making world-class chips is a lot more complicated than building PCs to run them on. Hoping to continue its recent earnings and share price run, the most valuable company in the world announced that they will be entering the PC market, sending the stock up 1.8%. The laptops will be designed for running AI “agents”. To start, Nvidia will work with Dell, Lenovo, Microsoft, Asus and MSI to build them. This signals another move by AI to move away from human users. In other words, AI will be running AI. We’re sure everything is going to be just fine.
[4] Early Monday, while futures signaled all-time highs for US equities, oil rose 3% to nearly $94 a barrel. The US and Iran’s progress towards a peace deal continues to be unclear. Equity investors, who have seemingly decided that the only way is up, have not been much fazed with the war, as the SP500 continues breaking records. Bond and commodity markets are probably a better measure of the economic impact of the global chaos (we are drafting a bond market opinion). The US stock market is experiencing a stand-off between the Iran War (bad) and AI (good, maybe bad, probably okay?). Adjusted for AI companies, the SP500 is lower than it was before the war. Fear the day that Nvidia comes out with weaker-than-expected results. Michael Burry, legendary investor who called the 2008 global financial crises so well that Hollywood made a movie about him (The Big Short, watch it, Margot Robbie explains complex financial derivatives in a bubble bath with a glass of champagne) is cooking up a storm on Substack against Nvidia. I am reminded of a market adage: being wrong and being early is the same thing.
[3] SoftBank, who we spoke about yesterday, overtook Toyota as Japan’s most valuable company. Clearly, selling Cruisers and Hilux bakkies to South African farmers and Middle East terrorist organizations is less lucrative than building data centers.
[4] Berkshire Hathaway, the company ran by the best fundamental investor of all time, Warren Buffet, for the majority of his career, will acquire Taylor Marrison Home Corp. in an all-cash deal worth about $6.8 billion. This is the first deal since Buffet’s departure, with Greg Abel taking over as CEO in January. If you think having $6.8 billion of cash on hand is a lot, look at Berkshire’s cash build-up over the past few years:
Source: Bloomberg
That’s $373 billion of cash at year end 2025, making the Taylor Morrison acquisition seem like buying a pack of gum. A cash build up in an investment holding company signals uncertainty with the market, and if Warren Buffet is uncertain, you should be as well.
[5] Apple has struggled to keep up with the AI success enjoyed by other tech companies. On June 8, they hold their annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WDC). Expected announcements include iOS 27, which is expected to give Siri (the voice assistant that you have never used and only see when you accidentally long-press the power button while trying to use Apple Pay) a much needed overhaul. Apple first announced their AI capabilities, which they called Apple intelligence (in other words, also AI) in 2024. The announcement itself has been Apple’s biggest move in the AI industry. This will be Tim Cook’s last WDC at Apple. Cook took the reigns from founder Steve Jobs and ran the company well. He will be succeeded by long-time hardware boss John Ternus. The Siri-AI overhaul is rumored to use Google Gemini (?). Apple has always been very secretive about new product/software launches, but other expected announcements include the iPhone 18 Pro and a foldable iPhone. Interestingly, Apple hardware upgrades often leak pre-announcement, because foreign companies who make the protective cases for the phones/tablets receive molds early to start production.
[6] The US bombed Iran over the weekend, after Trump said that a peace deal was imminent on Friday. As with previous attacks, the US Central Command called the action “self-defense”. While the “self” continues to sit roughly 9,000km away from where the bombs fall, Hegseth probably floated the idea of calling the strikes “self-war”. Regardless, the peace deal/extension of the peace deal/total obliteration of Iran/end of the war remains uncertain (we need White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt to come back from maternity leave. Kidding, she is just as skilled at equivocation as JD Vance and Marco Rubio who stepped in in her absence. We were going to make a joke along the lines of “at least she’s blonde”, but decided that we will leave her alone while she deals with motherhood). It seems very likely that ending the war will come at a high political price, which will be infuriating for republicans who have staked their career on smooth talking the President to their own public embarrassment. With the mid-terms in November, the GOP should gear up for trouble.
[7] If you drive a petrol car, fill up your tank. If you drive a diesel car, walk. Retail prices of petrol will increase by R1.43 per liter tomorrow, while Diesel will fall by R3.25. We wrote and rewrote an explanation on why Diesel is going down and Petrol is going up, but it got lengthy and complicated and left us feeling unsure whether we know exactly why. Buy the new Ferrari Luce and call it a day.
[8] The South African market looked like a scene from the Red Wedding in Game of Thrones yesterday. The All Share fell 2.18% and financials, industrials, resources, mid-caps and small-caps were all down. This did not scare Michiel Le Roux, co-founder of Capitec, who increased his share in the bank with R1.8 billion (through a funded options transaction, not open market purchase).
[9] Jill Biden continues a long history of first ladies writing books after their husband is kicked out of the white house (see “Becoming” by Michelle Obama, Melania Trump opted to release a documentary, the jokes write themselves). “While Joe was in office, I think he and I both erred on the side of silence, dignity and letting news cycles run their course,” she writes. DNF is unsure how dignity was preserved when Joe clearly lost the ability to read from a teleprompter (or maybe that’s where the “silence” comes in?). We are glad to hear that Joe noted “I really f-ed up, didn’t I?” after his disastrous debate, to which she responded “Yes, you did”. DNF has now successfully taken a jab at Joe, Jill and Hunter Biden in two days - not bad ay?
[10] Bad news for the gym bros and Cape Town running influencers: whey protein demand is outpacing supply. As companies realized that adding “high in protein” to 1,000 calorie smoothies makes consumers think they are eating (drinking?) healthy, food companies are facing skyrocketing prices for the powdered milk. Supply chains are buckling, with various companies already fully sold-out for the remainder of the year. Fear not, as companies have signaled their intent to start looking for alternative sources. Might be time to rotate out of gold and into protein.
(DNF will soon pass 500 views across all articles, thank you.)