From a satellite ground station in Namibia to an Egyptian laboratory in orbit, China has been building the hi-tech backbone of Africa’s space ambitions. Earlier this month, Beijing handed over a new satellite data ground station near Windhoek, Namibia – the latest in a growing network of space facilities across the continent built by China or with Chinese funding. The China-funded ground station a...
From a satellite ground station in Namibia to an Egyptian laboratory in orbit, China has been building the hi-tech backbone of Africa’s space ambitions. Earlier this month, Beijing handed over a new satellite data ground station near Windhoek, Namibia – the latest in a growing network of space facilities across the continent built by China or with Chinese funding. The China-funded ground station at Windhoek’s Telecom Earth Station enables Namibia to process remote-sensing data from satellites,...
Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana will this week outline improvements in South Africa’s public finances that pave the way for a sovereign credit-rating outlook upgrade, a Bloomberg survey shows. Six of the nine economists canvassed — including those at Bank of America Corp. and Morgan Stanley — expect Fitch Ratings to revise its outlook to positive at its next review. Four predict a similar move b...
Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana will this week outline improvements in South Africa’s public finances that pave the way for a sovereign credit-rating outlook upgrade, a Bloomberg survey shows. Six of the nine economists canvassed — including those at Bank of America Corp. and Morgan Stanley — expect Fitch Ratings to revise its outlook to positive at its next review. Four predict a similar move by Moody’s Ratings. Standard Chartered Plc, which responded after the survey closed, expects both Fitch and Moody’s to shift to a positive outlook. An outlook change is long overdue, after S&P Global Ratings in November upgraded the country’s credit rating to BB — two steps below investment grade — with a positive outlook, Razia Khan , Standard Chartered’s chief economist for Africa and the Middle East, said. “You can’t ignore the positives in South Africa,” Khan said in an interview on Friday. “We’re likely to see confirmation of the fiscal progress and there’s every possibility that revenue will outperform,” buoyed by booming gold and other precious-metal prices, she said. When Godongwana delivers his budget at 2 p.m. in Cape Town on Wednesday, he’s expected to announce that the National Treasury will beat its consolidated fiscal deficit forecast of 4.7% of gross domestic product for 2025–26, with economists projecting a shortfall of 4.4%. They also expect the Treasury to meet its target of stabilizing debt this fiscal year. “Sure, they could hang on to the fact that growth has been very slow to turn around, but I’m not sure anyone really has reason to think it’s going to remain persistently weak,” Khan said. Economists in a different poll forecast South Africa’s economy will grow 1.6% this year and 1.3% in 2025, after stagnating for more than a decade. IMF Encourages South Africa to Adopt Fiscal Rule to Curb Debt Morgan Stanley Sees South African Budget Extending Bond Surge Goldman Sees South Africa Beating Its Primary Surplus Target Fitch rates South Africa’s long-term f...
AWS Engineers Allowed An AI Tool to Act...Then The Cloud Unit Went Down Amazon’s cloud arm has experienced two recent service disruptions tied to the use of its own AI-powered coding systems, stirring debate inside the company over how quickly such tools should be rolled out, according to FT . One incident in mid-December led to a 13-hour interruption affecting a tool customers use to analyse AWS ...
AWS Engineers Allowed An AI Tool to Act...Then The Cloud Unit Went Down Amazon’s cloud arm has experienced two recent service disruptions tied to the use of its own AI-powered coding systems, stirring debate inside the company over how quickly such tools should be rolled out, according to FT . One incident in mid-December led to a 13-hour interruption affecting a tool customers use to analyse AWS spending. Engineers had permitted the Kiro coding assistant to implement changes, and the system determined the fix was to “delete and recreate the environment.” An internal review later characterized the episode as an “outage.” Staff familiar with the events said it marked the second time in a matter of months that an AI tool played a central role in a production issue. “We’ve already seen at least two production outages [in the past few months],” said one senior AWS employee. “The engineers let the AI [agent] resolve an issue without intervention. The outages were small but entirely foreseeable.” AWS, which accounts for the majority of Amazon’s operating income, is investing heavily in AI systems that can act independently on human instructions and hopes to market them to customers. The episodes have highlighted the potential downsides of granting such tools significant autonomy. FT writes that Amazon pushed back on suggestions that the technology was to blame, describing it as a “coincidence that AI tools were involved” and arguing that “the same issue could occur with any developer tool or manual action.” The company added: “In both instances, this was user error, not AI error,” and said it had found no indication that AI increases the likelihood of mistakes. According to Amazon, the December event was an “extremely limited event” affecting a single service in parts of mainland China, while the other disruption did not touch any “customer facing AWS service.” Both were far smaller than a separate 15-hour AWS outage in October 2025 that disrupted customers including Open...
badahos/iStock via Getty Images Introduction The S&P 500 is up in the low single digits so far in 2026, a break from the double-digit gains observed in the last three years. Indeed high valuations appear to be taking their toll, with investors flocking into safe haven assets such as gold and silver, while also increasing allocations to cheaper international and small-cap U.S. stocks. One ETF that ...
badahos/iStock via Getty Images Introduction The S&P 500 is up in the low single digits so far in 2026, a break from the double-digit gains observed in the last three years. Indeed high valuations appear to be taking their toll, with investors flocking into safe haven assets such as gold and silver, while also increasing allocations to cheaper international and small-cap U.S. stocks. One ETF that has been a principal beneficiary of these dynamics is the iShares MSCI Peru and Global Exposure ETF ( EPU ), which has posted double-digit gains in 2026 after a very strong performance in 2025. While this has naturally diminished the ETF's prospective returns, I rank EPU a Buy, with my positive outlook underpinned by: An earnings yield of 4.8%, notably below that of the S&P 500, notwithstanding an elevated allocation to cyclical sectors. Solid Peru 2026 GDP growth prospects of between 2.7% and 3.1%, which coupled with higer commodity prices should result in robust earnings growth. A current account surplus and sound macroeconomic policy, which limit the potential for currency-driven losses. Current Valuation EPU's 25 holdings trade at a trailing P/E of 20.83x (earnings yield of 4.8%). Even after the strong outperformance relative to U.S. large caps, EPU holdings remain notably cheaper relative to the S&P 500 which trades at a trailing P/E of about 27.8x (earnings yield of 3.6%). In essence, S&P 500 earnings would have to grow roughly 1.2% faster in perpetuity just to make up for higher starting valuations. It is true that part of the valuation difference can be explained by EPU's outsized exposure to cyclical sectors such as materials, financials, consumer discretionary, and industrials, which combined account for more than 90% of EPU's sector exposure. As such, while investors are getting a relatively cheap valuation when they buy EPU, they should also note that earnings volatility will also be quite elevated. Now that we have seen what is EPU's valuation starting point, l...
Elijah-Lovkoff/iStock via Getty Images Blackstone Mortgage Trust ( BXMT ) has worked diligently in the last two years in reducing the size of its office loan portfolio which has weighed on the REIT's financial performance. BXMT's impaired loans in turn dragged down the mortgage REIT's distributable earnings and dividend coverage which necessitated a 24% dividend cut in 2024. Since then, however, t...
Elijah-Lovkoff/iStock via Getty Images Blackstone Mortgage Trust ( BXMT ) has worked diligently in the last two years in reducing the size of its office loan portfolio which has weighed on the REIT's financial performance. BXMT's impaired loans in turn dragged down the mortgage REIT's distributable earnings and dividend coverage which necessitated a 24% dividend cut in 2024. Since then, however, the mortgage REIT has seen a consistent improvement in its dividend coverage trend which as of the end of the fourth-quarter stood at 109%. Blackstone Mortgage Trust now published two consecutive quarters of more than 100% dividend coverage, drastically reducing the odds of another dividend cut. This, in combination with the second-largest discount to book value in the CRE finance REIT industry group, justifies a rating up-grade to buy, in my opinion. Data by YCharts Previous rating Shares of Blackstone Mortgage Trust were a hold for me -- Improving Outlook For 2026 -- following the company’s dividend cut in 2024, but I am now willing to up-grade shares to buy due to favorable underlying business trends. While Blackstone Mortgage Trust continues to suffer from a high amount of impaired loans in its portfolios that require resolution, the overall trend in the distributable earnings metric as well as the coverage ratio is a positive one, mainly due to a past dividend cut that realigned its dividend with lower income expectations. I like Blackstone Mortgage Trust here, given its solid growth in earnings available for distribution/EAD and the coverage profile. Shifting portfolio structure, focus on non-office properties Blackstone Mortgage Trust originates mortgage loans for commercial properties, invests in bank loans and owns real estate directly in order to generate income. This income is then distributed to shareholders of the business on a recurring basis. The main reason to own Blackstone Mortgage Trust is therefore to capture a 9.6% dividend yield with the potential of ca...