Today’s markets. ‘It's all resources, and today it's gold up again.’

ALEC HOGG: Well, David Shapiro had a big smile on his face when he saw that amongst our guest this evening is Dr Nicola Theron, Charlize's sister - not! No, she isn't David. Or she might be - we can ask her.

DAVID SHAPIRO: Well, I can promise you, Charlize doesn't know about it.

ALEC HOGG: And it's unlikely that Charlize, being an actress, would really want to become a doctor, would she?

DAVID SHAPIRO: No.

ALEC HOGG: No, not necessarily. I suppose it's too much like hard work if you're an actress. Talking about acting, our columnist here on Moneyweb, Cityboy, Geraint Anderson, is nominated for an Emmy. Ja, actually we've got famous guys here.

DAVID SHAPIRO: You're kidding!

ALEC HOGG: We think that David Bullard is our most famous columnist, and David Shapiro is our most famous market commentator, but they haven't gone for an Emmy.

DAVID SHAPIRO: How did he manage that?

ALEC HOGG: Well, he put together a programme - he was a stockbroker who turned, went rogue, who actually went to the good guys ... and then told off all the naughty things that the stockbrokers are doing. He does a column for Moneyweb. He did a television programme on it, and he was one of the finalists for an Emmy, the New York Emmy awards. He didn't win it - Niall Ferguson won it for The Ascent of Money.

DAVID SHAPIRO: Have you read The Ascent of Money?

ALEC HOGG: I have indeed. He's one of my absolute favourites.
    But the stock market today, David, is it one of your absolute favourites?

DAVID SHAPIRO: Well, it's all resources, and today it's gold up again, and that on talk that the Indian central bank may be open to buying more gold. So gold went up to $1180. Platinum, funnily enough, was a lot stronger, platinum up $20. So all the action was in the mining stocks, and that boosted the market. Financials and industrials down.
    Alec, that story of yours on Murray & Roberts I think put a bit of a damper on the market. Suddenly the reality of what's happening in the economy, I think, is coming through to investors. On top of that Massmart also came out with a trading update, saying their profits will be down. And I think that just led to a bit of withdrawal from the market on the local scene. Foreign scene OK.

ALEC HOGG: When you see the big companies here struggling, we've heard a lot of little companies coming under pressure. Interestingly enough, Doug Reed is sitting next to you - he's with Vox Telecom. Their results were pretty solid. We'll talk to him about them later. But we have had a string now of little companies that are either just about to go bust or need new capital injections, or are just doing badly generally speaking. We see the same from Murray & Roberts and then the investors wake up.

DAVID SHAPIRO: Then you know. And Murray & Roberts is supposedly one of the growth stocks because of all the infrastructure development that's taking place. Gautrain, government spending, government delaying...

ALEC HOGG: Gautrain's interesting, Dave, because it almost seemed as though the construction companies were banking extra profits to get government to pay additional to accelerate Gautrain. But government has now stepped back and said we might have 2010 coming, but we don't think we can afford to spend extra money to make sure the Gautrain is quicker.

DAVID SHAPIRO: That "afford" is very important, because that "afford" is also affecting Eskom. I think government are not quite sure where they are going to get the money to fund these projects. The revenue is slowing down, they don't want to go and borrow too much because, No 1, it puts pressure on future cash flows. Share prices holding back, and we're seeing that in a  number of companies. We were reporting delays in government projects from IT companies through to construction.

ALEC HOGG: That's a critical issue in one of our stories tonight. That same Nicola Theron, who's not the sister of Charlize, who in fact works for a company called Econex, which is based in Stellenbosch, is up here and coming into the studio. They've done some number-crunching on the national health insurance idea. Now, if you can't afford to get people into jobs, if you can't afford to pay for infrastructure, what the devil are you considering national health insurance for?

DAVID SHAPIRO: These are ambitious political projects that have no chance of succeeding, simply because the base is not there to pay for it. You know, you are going to tax people out of existence if you do bring it in, and government hasn't got the kind of money to continue with these social welfare projects without increasing employment. So I think a lot of promises are being made, a lot of projects are there which just cannot be delivered in the short term, certainly in this kind of environment.

ALEC HOGG: Well, we hope that as more of the reality comes forward of what these ideas will cost, and there's more focus on another crazy idea, which is part of our legislation on the labour side, that we will get some sense of reality that things need to change. And I said in the introduction, David, we have got an unemployment rate in South Africa that we live with, which the United States had in the 1930s that they still say they cannot go back to. Yet we accept it - 25% is where we are.

DAVID SHAPIRO: You can't...

ALEC HOGG: It's appalling.

DAVID SHAPIRO: The worry is what this will lead to down the line in terms of social unrest. And the other thing is that of those who are employed there's only a very small portion that is at a high level who can really afford to live. A lot of the other people who are employed are still battling.

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