Jul 1, 2008

Because the last post was so popular: ZimbabweanEquities.com has printed yesterday’s OMIR at somewhere north of 164 trillion to the USD. Now, even for Zimbabwe, that seemed kinda high. But… Old Mutual’s closing price yesterday in Harare was ZW$300,000,000,000; Ditto in London was 92.8p. The ratio is 1:1, so 1 GBP is worth 300 billion / 0.928, or about 323 billion ZWD; GBP/USD late yesterday (the WM Company fixing is close enough for government work) was 1.

Jun 24, 2008

Update: The Old Mutual implied exchange rate today is Z$78 billion to 1 USD. So you can chop all of the values listed below in half. Wow. As a followup to this morning’s wrap of the Zimbabwean currency market: it’s fascinating to read the business pages of the Zimbabwean papers and translate the numbers into USD. Here’s the stock market wrap from Pravda’s Zimbabwe edition this morning. (If you’d like to read a Zimbabwean newspaper that isn’t run by Mugabe’s propagandists, the Financial Gazette is apparently quite good.

Jun 24, 2008

Update: Hi to everyone arriving from FT Alphaville, Market Movers and the Economist! If you liked this post, click through to the main page and have a browse. It’s been no secret lately that Zimbabweans are stashing their cash in the stock market, because it’s the only store of value left. ZimbabweEquities.com shows just how ridiculous this has become. Interesting: there’s no longer any official inflation data, and there’s no official exchange rate data, but there is a way to find out how much the Zimbabwean dollar (ZWD) is worth and how fast it’s depreciating.

May 28, 2008

Fuel prices in Malaysia are so heavily subsidised that it’s cheaper to drive across the border to Johor and fill up there (at a subsidised 60 US cents/litre) than it is to fill up in Singapore (US$1.57/litre this morning). Unfortunately, Malaysia is now putting the kibosh on this locational arbitrage, by banning petrol stations within 50km of its borders from selling fuel to foreign-registered cars. But if your car was high-mileage enough, and the tank was large enough, it’d still be worth the trip… assume you’re driving a 3.

May 18, 2008

My typical Sunday morning involves sitting in one of the cafes on Mohamed Sultan Road, demolishing a coffee and leafing through whatever reading material happens to be lying around. Usually I go to the Book Cafe, which (joy of joys) has The Times, the NYT, and the Sydney Morning Herald in its stacks. Today, though, I’m at Delicatessen - which has much better coffee (and a truly great ham-and-omelette croissant), but doesn’t have international newspapers.