The market up 1.6%, driven by financials and the big diversified miners.

HILTON TARRANT: Wayne McCurrie of RMB Asset Management is with us in the studio. Wayne, the market roared ahead today, the gold price roared ahead and the rand at a two-week high.

WAYNE McCURRIE: Ja, look, it's back to what we've seen in the last couple of months. The markets wobbled once or twice, but there now seems to be a clearly defined pattern - it goes below 25 000, it goes straight back up again. So very strong markets. Gold shares didn't really benefit much. They are up marginally, 0.2%, but the overall market up 1.6%, driven by financials and the big diversified miners. Anglo American and Billiton both up 3%, and then the banks had a roaring day after being very, very weak on Friday last week - the banks up almost 4% in total. RMB Holdings up 5%, financial results up 5%. But in essence green right across the board.

HILTON TARRANT: Wayne, a lot of results out today. Vodacom out with its maiden set of numbers on the JSE. Some pleasing numbers. We knew about the impairments and the write-downs, but some concerns about growth.

WAYNE McCURRIE: Look, they gave a trading update which, by the way, I don't think was a good trading update and I'm not massively impressed with these results. They bought Gateway in December last year, and they write-off half of it. Within a year you write-off R3bn. And the DRC - well, outside of South Africa is not going all that well. But I suppose a mixed bag, and the share down about 1%. But this is not a cheap company. You are buying it at a 12 P/E. If you take the write-offs, the earnings disappeared, but let's put that aside. I think the earnings on some sort of measurable basis were down about 12%.

HILTON TARRANT: Wayne, Lewis out with numbers for the six months to September. Some nice revenue growth, but some big concerns again around bad debts.

WAYNE McCURRIE: But that's very normal. You get the bad-debt story in all of these credit retailers. But understand, they maintained their dividend. I forget - earnings are down about 4% or something. It wasn't huge. They maintained their dividend. Now, this thing's giving you a 6.5% dividend yield and they are maintaining it. To me that just looks like - if you can buy a company at a 6% dividend in a low-interest-rate environment where they are still going to reap the benefits of these lower interest rates over the next two years, it looks like a fairly safe buy for me.

HILTON TARRANT: Wayne, paper producer Sappi out with the fourth-quarter numbers today. Ralph Boettger joins us in a couple of minutes' time. One of your favourites from a  couple of years back.

WAYNE McCURRIE: A couple of years ago. I had to stick with it for two years, and the share price went from R80 to R110. But of course luckily enough I didn't stay with it after that, because it has totally and utterly collapsed. They have had the most torrid time of just about any company that I know that is still around. I mean, Sappi has been right there. They've had a really, really tough time. But a couple of pleasing things. Big cash generation, R250m cash generation, debt down slightly. But unfortunately with Sappi and a lot of other companies there are so many once-offs. Sappi had closing costs and tax write-backs, and plantation re-evaluations. So if you strip everything out, they returned to operating profit, which I think is quite favourable, quite good news.

HILTON TARRANT: Wayne, very quickly, Raubex, the road builder, out with numbers.

WAYNE McCURRIE: Numbers weren't bad. Buildmax also came out. They weren't so good. But the Raubex numbers were quite encouraging. They seem to have weathered the storm reasonably well.

HILTON TARRANT: Wayne McCurrie is with RMB Asset Management.

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