Market Discussion with John Biccard Webinar Recording

23 Jul 2026

Most South African investors have spent the past decade shifting money offshore into the US market, at valuations John Biccard compares to the 1929 and dot-com peaks.

In this Investonline market update, Director Nick Brummer sits down with John Biccard of Ninety One, manager of the Value Fund for 25 years, on where the real opportunities sit heading into 2026. Biccard walks through his contrarian process, why he holds no US tech, the case for South African equities and gold, and how he is positioning the fund today.”

The Track Record

• The fund has beaten both the market and the average competing fund over every meaningful period since it started and did it without owning the market’s biggest winner. Naspers was only held once for six months in 25 years.
• The edge is patience, not cleverness. John is content to be measured over three or four years rather than three months, which means he never has to buy something simply because it has already gone up.
• The gains arrive in bursts but can take a long time. Four major decisions produced most of the record returns over the last 25 years. But these can be painful, such as buying platinum too early, which cost four straight years of poor returns and lost several clients, before the rewards were reaped.

The Process

• John buys companies that are cheap and unloved, usually after five to seven years of falling share prices.
• The real work is deciding what to reject. Too much debt rules a company out however cheap it looks, and so does a business the world no longer needs. Sappi fails the first test. Kodak fails the second.
• Price matters more to John than anything else, because it is the only thing he can measure with confidence. Management quality, future profits and the economy are all guesses.
• John buys before a recovery starts, not after. What lifts an unloved company is usually outside its control, such as interest rates or a commodity price, and the share price usually jumps before anyone can react.
• John sells his winners rather than holding out for more. Platinum was bought around R40 and sold at R120, without waiting for the R240 that it eventually reached.

The United States

• The fund owns no large American companies and no technology shares. Their prices already assume everything is going right, which leaves little to gain and a great deal to lose.
• Recent American growth has been paid for with borrowed money, while countries written off as stagnant are living within their means.
• American growth now rests on a single bet: that the money being invested in artificial intelligence delivers a return. If it does not, both the investment and the market gains it has produced should unwind together.
• American shares have never been more expensive.
• Global investors are already putting less money into America. Share prices do not need sellers to fall, only fewer buyers.

Debt and Gold

• Western governments are too indebted to use austerity to reduce debt. Their only option is to let inflation run above interest rates for years to shrink the debt slowly.
• Savers carry the cost of that approach. Cash and government bonds lose value in real terms, and the value passes to the borrower, which is the government.
• The traditional safe havens of shares, bonds and cash are no longer adequate, so gold starts to take over the safe haven role. Central banks are doing the same, rebuilding gold reserves after seeing Russia’s dollar reserves frozen.
• The fund sold all its gold early this year and bought back after gold shares fell 40%. Harmony locally, Barrick and Newmont abroad.

Emerging Markets

• Developing economies are as unloved today as they were in 2000, at the peak of the internet bubble. From that starting point they went on to beat America fourfold over the following decade.

South Africa

• South Africa’s economy has become better run while its shares have got cheaper. Inflation and interest rates fell sharply, which should have made local companies more valuable.
• Falling interest rates are the strongest reason a company should be worth more, yet South Africa’s rates fell and its share prices dropped, while America’s rates rose and its share prices climbed.
• John rates South African shares the cheapest in the world once their low interest rates are taken into account.
• Weak growth explains it, not politics. The economy is stuck near 1% a year and foreign investors have been selling. Growth of 2% would bring them back, although the numbers already work without it.

What the Fund Owns

• Three quarters of the fund is invested in South Africa, mostly in retailers and private hospitals. Life Healthcare and Netcare are the cheapest hospital groups in the world, at roughly 60% less than hospitals elsewhere.
• South Africa’s medium-sized companies are priced as though the country has no future, on single-digit earnings and 6% dividends.
• Dividends do much of the work in the local holdings. Nine companies make up over a quarter of them, paying more each year than a government bond, and most raised those payments by double digits at their last results.
• The overseas quarter is mostly food and drink companies, particularly spirits. Bars and retailers ran down their stock after COVID, and John believes the market mistook that for people drinking less. Rémy Cointreau is the largest holding, alongside unloved consumer brands, gold and Adobe.

Questions from the Session

What will close the gap between South African and global share prices?

Growth, and not much of it. Moving from 1% to 2% a year would bring buyers back. Politics matters less than it did six months ago. Prices today assume that 2% never materialises.

Are gold shares still worth owning after the fall?

John believes gold shares are priced for a gold price well below where gold actually trades, which makes the recent weakness a pause rather than the end. The speculative money has already left.

In Summary

• Investors in this fund are not buying someone else’s profit. John trims his winners and adds to his laggards, so his holdings sit close to what he paid for them. A technology fund today is the opposite.
• The fund is built for two outcomes: South African shares returning to sensible prices and the excitement around global technology fading.
• John has done this before. The fund looked much like this in 2001, at similar prices and with higher interest rates, and it worked.

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