WorldWide Markets with Simon Brown

Vodacom has cut its dividend payout ratio from 75% to 65%, which pushes one of the JSE's dependable income names down the list. Simon Brown runs the Top 40 and the mid-cap screen to find where quality local yield actually sits, and shows how Growthpoint, Nedbank, Coronation and Standard Bank can be combined into a home-built income portfolio yielding roughly seven and a half to eight percent, growing ahead of inflation. He also unpacks Alphabet's record quarter, where two thirds of the profit was unrealised paper gains and free cash flow turned negative for the first time on record, and asks how any investor values Tesla when the CEO has promised self-driving cars every year for a decade.
Topics: Alphabet results, AI capex, circular AI revenue, Vodacom dividend policy, JSE dividend yields, income ETFs, Tesla valuation, Elon Musk, Bid Corp, Clicks, Absa.
WorldWideMarkets is part of JustOneLap.com.

Can you find a real edge in prediction markets? Simon hunts the arbitrage — and calls Netflix cheap.
In this week's WorldWideMarkets:
• 🎲 Prediction markets: where's the edge, and where's the scam?
• 🇧🇷 The Brazil election "two-horse arbitrage" explained
• 📈 Betting SA's 2026 inflation print with a Bayesian model
• 🎬 Netflix halved — Simon says it's now cheap
• 📊 Stocks on the move: Bid Corp, Mr Price, OUTsurance, Vodacom, Absa, Gold Fields
CHAPTERS:
0:00 Introduction
1:20 Prediction markets: where's the edge?
4:35 The Brazil election arbitrage
8:05 Betting SA inflation with a Bayesian model
13:30 Upcoming events
14:25 Oil, Iran & Canada tariffs
16:45 Netflix: cheap for the first time in years
19:50 Stocks on the move
🌐 More at JustOneLap.com

A month after the year's most hyped listing, nearly everyone who bought SpaceX and held is underwater — and with the 180-day lock-up now gone, Simon Brown explains why insider selling is only getting started.
He then tours the week's biggest moves: Apple's copyright lawsuit against OpenAI and what it means for hardware and an IPO, Purple Group buying Telescope AI to strengthen EasyEquities, oil climbing back into the 80s as Middle East peace talks stall, De Beers closing its last South African mine, and Sappi languishing at 1998 levels.
He closes on a US 10-year yield near 4.6% and the start of a US earnings season priced for 23–24% EPS growth. Topics: SpaceX, OpenAI, Apple, Purple Group, Telescope AI, Brent oil, De Beers, Sappi, Mpact, US Treasuries, bank earnings.
WorldWideMarkets is part of JustOneLap.com.

Wars burn hardware, and rebuilding it takes years.
This week Simon Brown works through the defence sector as a replacement thesis — the US fired roughly half its THAAD interceptor stockpile in twelve days against Iran — and settles on Lockheed Martin as his pick, with RTX as a second choice.
He weighs the faster-growing but pricier European names (Leonardo, Thales, BAE Systems, Rheinmetall), runs through the main defence ETF options, and flags the risks: budgets are politics, and forward orders still have to convert.
Also covered: a post-IPO look at Bending Spoons, SK Hynix's planned $28bn Nasdaq listing and the memory trade, and the Q2 review of the Equity Coverage AI project — 26 names, 22 buys and one sell.
WorldWideMarkets is part of JustOneLap.com.

This week's WorldWideMarkets is a tour of cheap stocks that each come with a question mark.
Simon Brown looks at Microsoft, where a forward PE of around 20 against a mean of 33 makes it look inexpensive — except free cash flow has slipped back to 2021 levels as AI and data-centre capex ramps. He revisits Afrimat, a high-quality cyclical now trading near 10-year lows, and digs into Bending Spoons, the Italian roll-up of legacy tech brands like Evernote, WeTransfer and AOL heading to the NASDAQ under code BSP.
He also covers Naspers' latest results, the discount embedded in the Naspers-Prosus-Tencent chain, and why petrol gets a sizeable cut as Brent drops into the low 70s. Topics: Microsoft, Afrimat, Brent oil, Bending Spoons IPO, Naspers, Prosus, Tencent, Takealot.
WorldWideMarkets is part of JustOneLap.com.