Prosus has sealed its biggest deal yet, an R83 billion (EUR4.1 billion) acquisition of Just Eat Takeaway.com (JET). The offer, now unconditional after EU approval, drew strong shareholder support with over 90% of shares tendered.

Back in 2020, Naspers lost the bidding war for Just Eat to Takeaway.com's $8 billion offer. Fast-forward, Prosus now gets the combined entity at a lower price. To win regulatory approval, Prosus agreed to cut its Delivery Hero stake from 27.4% to a minimal holding and pledged not to interfere with governance.

The acquisition makes Prosus the world's fourth-largest food delivery player after Meituan, DoorDash, and Uber. With 60 million customers and 362 000 restaurant partners across 17 markets, JET offers scale, data, and reach. Prosus CEO Fabricio Bloisi is betting on AI-driven logistics and personalisation to transform JET into a European tech champion.

We hold Naspers/Prosus in local portfolios, and will continue to do so.

For an equity investor, knowing the future would be very useful, but sadly, time travel is impossible. Time moves forward and the present is shaped by the past, but the future doesn't yet exist.

Forecasting the future would be massively helpful to a professional investor who builds focused equity portfolios. Imagine the returns if you'd been holding Nvidia every time it surged in the last 10 years, and been out of it when it slumped.

In the past three quarters of 2025, we would have loved to have only owned Uber (+53.9%), Nvidia (+35.7%), Netflix (+30.0%), and Google (+29.5%), and avoided losers like Amazon (-0.3%) and Stryker (only +3.3%).

Our brains can make very short-term predictions (like preparing to catch a ball), but long-term, multi-variable forecasting is just a dream. People have tried models, statistics, and, more recently, AI to develop systems with predictive power, but with no success.

This news story got me thinking about making stock market prophecies:

"The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced charges against New York-based Prophecy Asset Management LP as well as its CEO and Chief Investment Officer Jeffrey Spotts, for a multi-year fraud that concealed hundreds of millions of dollars of losses from investors while bringing in millions in management and incentive fees."

According to the SEC's complaint, Prophecy Asset Management raised over $500 million between 2014 and 2020 for hedge funds it advised, misleading investors to believe that their investments were protected from loss. In reality, most of the funds' capital went to Kahn, who incurred massive trading losses. Once $350 million was gone, Prophecy Asset Management indefinitely suspended redemptions by investors.

If anyone tells you that they "know" what will happen a year from now, whether good or bad, boom or crash, they are just spitballing.

But all is not lost. From simple empirical observation, we can conclude that markets normally go up, that quality companies will continue to grow and that talented business leaders will keep striving to win. After a bear market, the bulls return. That's not making prophecies, it's well-grounded common sense.

Competition for users amongst the AI chatbot providers is intense. Most of the products are good and can do similar things. Users are new to the idea, have no brand loyalty yet, and don't really know where to start. That combination makes distribution and marketing very important.

ChatGPT has first mover status and has already built up some brand loyalty but is competing against some big established players. Google, Meta and X have huge user bases already and various platforms for distribution.

For example, Google is unleashing Gemini as an add-on to most of its existing products. The most recent collaboration is with Google TV. Take a look at the video which shows how it works.

The race is certainly on. My prediction is that billions of people will be using AI daily. There will be room for a few very big winners.

As a South African, I can be less emotive when discussing the current Trump administration. For example, we believe that efforts to reduce bureaucracy in government and private enterprises is a good thing. However, we feel that the US's new trade policies are a step backwards.

Free trade is a good thing - lower taxes and less government interference needs to be the goal. In trade-related news, China has slashed its purchases of US soybeans, down from 50% of the crop they bought last year. The White House responded by exploring the possibility of providing a bailout of at least $10 billion to soy farmers.

It is all rather messy, time-consuming and costly. As a farmer, you would much rather sell your crop than have to apply for a government bailout. Also, having too much government intervention distorts the market. For example, more farmers may decide to plant soybeans next year because they have a government safety net, which would make the problem even worse.

There is a reason that socialism failed - governments aren't good at meddling in the economy. In this case, the mucking around with trade policy, now requires a new response in the agriculture sector.

Our brains are hardwired with mental biases. The key is to be aware of them - What's the #1 cognitive bias that derails investors?

Data scientists can do fun things. This one analysed a decade of r/AmItheAsshole posts and the results were not surprising - When people tell the story, they come across better.

Asian stocks are mostly lower in quiet holiday trading. Japan hit record highs after fiscal dove Sanae Takaichi won the ruling party leadership race, and will become Prime Minister (she's a woman, their first). Hong Kong slipped and Australia eased after recent gains. Lastly, mainland China and South Korea remained closed for holidays.

In local company news, Vodacom is eyeing wealth management services for its 44 million South African clients after success in Kenya and Tanzania. Their fintech ecosystem is growing fast across the continent. Given Vodacom's abysmal service levels, we feel comfortable predicting that this service will suck, very badly. But hey, give it a go!

US equity futures are deep in the green pre-market. The Rand is trading at around R17.24 to the US Dollar.

Have a nice week, goodbye.