Coming up next on the SGM Podcast youtube.com/@StonksGoMoonPod… Can money buy happiness? Dr Robert van Eyden is a veteran financial market executive, author, and one of South Africa's most experienced voices in stockbroking and investment management With more than 35 years in financial markets, Robert has held some of the industry's most influential positions, including CEO of IG South Africa, CEO of FNB Stockbroking & Portfolio Management, CEO of Barclays Africa Group Stockbrokers, and Global Head of Research at Standard Bank Robert holds a PhD in Finance and is a Fellow of the South African Institute of Financial Markets. His career spans institutional investing, quantitative research, trading psychology, and financial technology. He was exploring artificial intelligence and neural networks in financial forecasting decades before AI became a global obsession He's also a published author of four books, including Badass Trader, The Money Fountain, Investing Happiness, and his latest release, Jack of All Trades: How to Become the Complete Trader Robert has dedicated much of his career to understanding why intelligent people make irrational financial decisions and what separates consistently successful traders from everyone else

There is something wonderfully seductive about driving a R600,000 car for what appears to be the monthly repayment of a R400,000 one Welcome to the wonderful world of balloon payments, where affordability is an illusion and tomorrow's problems are conveniently excluded from today's sales pitch What is a balloon payment? A balloon payment is a large lump sum deferred until the end of a vehicle finance agreement. Instead of paying off the entire loan through monthly instalments, you leave a substantial portion outstanding Take a R600,000 vehicle with a 30% balloon. That's R180,000 waiting for you at the end of the agreement, potentially after five or six years of repayments. And yes, you're generally paying interest on that outstanding amount along the way So why do balloon payments exist? Simple. They lower monthly instalments, making expensive vehicles appear affordable. For dealerships, that means more sales. For financiers, it means another lending structure that generates interest. For consumers, it means access to cars their monthly budgets might otherwise reject And therein lies the trap Your car depreciates. Your balloon doesn't. When the agreement ends, you could find yourself owing R180,000 on a vehicle worth considerably less than you imagined Your choices? Pay the balloon from savings, sell or trade in the vehicle, or refinance the outstanding amount, assuming you qualify. That last option could mean paying interest on a car you've already been financing for years The alternatives? Buy a less expensive vehicle. Choose conventional instalment finance without a balloon. Save a larger deposit. Keep your current car longer. Or, here's a revolutionary idea, buy a reliable second-hand vehicle instead of financing the depreciation of a brand-new one And always compare the total cost of credit, not merely the monthly instalment We've somehow normalised the idea that affordability is determined by what leaves your bank account every month, rather than what something ultimately costs A balloon payment doesn't make a car cheaper. It simply moves part of the bill into the future And the future, unfortunately, has a habit of arriving

South Africa has a water crisis. It's been years in the making Now more than 400 people and counting have fallen ill in Bronkhorstspruit after untreated water entered the municipal supply and it's spreading Three weeks without chlorination. Three weeks without adequate warning Nationally, municipalities lose approximately 47% of their water through leaks, theft, metering failures and other losses It's an infrastructure and management crisis Then there is the water tanker mafia , but that's another issue... It's time to have a conversation about water privatisation I'm not talking about bottled water or selling our rivers to the highest bidder, but introducing regulated private-sector participation, independent treatment facilities and decentralised suburban water stations Imagine neighbourhood-level purification and distribution systems, professionally maintained, independently tested and publicly accountable Water security shouldn't depend entirely on whether a municipality can keep its treatment plants operational Of course, privatisation isn't a magic wand Without regulation, transparent pricing and universal access, we risk replacing public-sector failures with private monopolies But surely the debate should be about who can deliver safe, affordable water consistently, rather than who gets to control the infrastructure Water is a basic human right. Reliable delivery should be non-negotiable There is great precedent already Public Transport ----> Private Transport Police ----> Private security Eskom ---> Private Solar Post Office ---> Private Couriers State Hospitals ----> Private Healthcare Water and Sanitation ----> On its way The next big trend

Walk into the South African summer heat with a scoop of real vanilla ice cream, and you are locked in a desperate, dripping race against time Walk out with a McDonald’s Soft Serve Cone, however, and it stubbornly holds its perfect, whipped peak under the blinding sun It looks like a magic trick. In reality, it is a masterclass in industrial food manipulation We have been brainwashed by corporate nutritionism to believe that if a food contains milk and hits a low calorie count, it is a harmless treat But watching a soft serve cone defy the heat forces us to confront what we are actually eating This isn’t a traditional dairy dessert; it is an ultra-processed chemical lattice disguised as cream The reason it refuses to melt normally comes down to its heavily engineered ingredient list Traditional ice cream relies on a costly, dense network of natural milk fat to maintain its structure Because McDonald’s strips that away to sell a cheap, "reduced-fat" alternative, the structural integrity vanishes To fix the ruined texture, food scientists deployed a chemical scaffolding of plant-derived stabilizers and industrial emulsifiers: mono- and diglycerides, cellulose gum, guar gum, carrageenan, and polysorbate 80 These additives act as a microscopic net Even as the water inside the soft serve warms up, this chemical grid traps the moisture and injected air bubbles tightly together. The cone is essentially locked in a synthetic gel that refuses to collapse Worse still is the heavy reliance on glucose syrup and industrial sugars, a combination specifically designed to cause rapid blood glucose spikes This sweetness is paired with emulsifiers like carrageenan and polysorbate 80 compounds that emerging gut-health studies suggest can actively erode the protective mucous lining of the human digestive tract McDonald’s soft serve isn't melting because it was never designed by nature to begin with. It was engineered in a lab to survive the drive-thru, prioritize corporate profit margins, and maximize shelf-life over human biology Just because a laboratory creation looks like ice cream, doesn't mean our bodies should treat it like food

How do you know an election is coming? Easy Politicians suddenly start appearing everywhere, like cockroaches when someone switches on the kitchen light. Except these ones arrive with cameras, branded T-shirts and promises they have absolutely no intention of keeping Gogo is out doing doughnuts. Someone else is promising to halve the petrol price "if elected", presumably because basic economics only becomes negotiable once you've secured a government pension Meanwhile, overweight politicians are sprinting through communities, shaking hands and making promises. One suspects the poor cameraman has barely shouted "CUT!" before someone needs to fetch a defibrillator It's political theatre at its finest. Years of disappearing acts interrupted by six weeks of pretending to care But here's a radical thought What if we stopped waiting for politicians to save us? You want to build someone a house? We have crowdfunding. We have AI. We have technology capable of connecting thousands of people and mobilising resources in minutes Yet somehow we've convinced ourselves that progress requires a politician, a tender and three cousins on the payroll Imagine supporting our communities with the same ferocious optimism we reserve for the Springboks We'll happily spend R3,500 on a rugby ticket and R1,500 on a jersey, paint our faces green and gold and scream ourselves hoarse for 80 minutes Now imagine directing even a fraction of that collective energy towards building homes, funding education or helping someone start a business Suddenly, that R1,500 isn't just a jersey. It's a contribution. That R3,500 isn't just a ticket. It's an investment in someone's future And that collective enthusiasm? That's a movement So yes, "go and vote". Democracy matters. Accountability matters. But stop confusing campaign promises with actual progress It's time we stopped waiting for someone to give us permission And if all else fails, you can always vote for my Slightly Democratic Party I promise to steal less than the others At least I'm managing expectations

Say what you want about @bensmithrugby , but he doesn't hide behind pseudonyms and anime character pfps like some cowards and delinquents -- he says what he wants to say and I've responded with some real out of pocket replies and he hasn't blocked me (yet) -- you don't have to agree with him, but you have to respect him having the balls to put himself out there

This weekend the Gauteng North Wrestling Association together with Tuks Wrestling held the second annual Bennie Labuschagne Fundraising Tournament Wrestling is undergoing a momumental worldwide boom via organisations like @RAFWrestlingUSA and ambassadors like Bo Basset The truth is that is remains a largely amateur sport and funding remains a challenge So the concent of BLFT was born It was a day of hard wrestling, lots of laughter and at the same time sharing hardships with each other All money raised with be used to fund wrestlers who qualify to take part in the African Championships 2027 Special shout to our sponsors CSI Security, Jackson Attorneys and Sun Group Auto Body Parts These are the type of brand partnerships that enable community to tracend individual accomplishments for the greater good Continuing my @wrestling coaching journey with Tuks Wrestling

Question : who is the Tesla Roadster for? Answer: Have you seen the potholes? Introducing the Ford Fiesta Roadster 😅😅😅 Credit : carsouthafrica on Instagram

During my recent conversation with Konstantins Vasilenko , Co-Founder of @paybis , I raised what I thought was a fairly obvious contradiction If governments genuinely believed cryptocurrency was worthless, imaginary or destined to disappear, why would they go through the enormous effort of regulating it? Surely the act of regulation is, in itself, an acknowledgement that the industry has become a permanent part of the financial landscape? Konstantins agreed, pointing to the emergence of regulatory frameworks, institutional investment products and the growing acceptance of stablecoins as evidence of how dramatically the conversation has shifted And I think there's a much bigger story here You don't spend years building a regulatory framework around something you genuinely believe won't exist tomorrow That doesn't mean governments necessarily endorse Bitcoin, agree with its philosophy or believe every cryptocurrency deserves to survive. Regulation is also about managing risks, protecting consumers and maintaining financial oversight But it does suggest that the conversation has fundamentally changed I discuss this with Konstantins Vasilenko of Paybis on the SGM Podcast

Crypto spent 15 years trying to destroy the banking system youtube.com/@StonksGoMoonPod… Now it's becoming the banking system And the irony is almost comical In the early 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, banks started popping up across parts of Europe. Money was flowing, opportunities were everywhere, and everyone wanted a piece of the action Regulation was struggling to keep up, and financial institutions were operating in an environment where the rules were still being written Then the inevitable happened. Banks collapsed, fortunes disappeared, and governments stepped in to establish stricter rules around lending, managing customer funds and protecting consumers Sound familiar? The ICO boom, speculative mania, exchange collapses, FTX and billions in lost value. Different decade, different technology, but remarkably similar human behaviour. During my recent conversation with Konstantins Vasilenko, Co-Founder of Paybis, he drew an interesting parallel between the evolution of traditional banking and the cryptocurrency industry His argument was relatively simple. Financial industries tend to follow similar evolutionary patterns. Innovation creates opportunity, opportunity attracts speculation, speculation exposes weaknesses, and eventually regulation arrives to establish some order We've seen variations of this play out in traditional banking, including the challenges surrounding China's property sector, and we're watching another version unfold in crypto But here's what fascinates me The industry that promised to eliminate the middleman is now building the infrastructure to become one Crypto companies are pursuing financial licences, implementing institutional compliance standards and developing the very safeguards that traditional banks spent decades establishing And perhaps that's not necessarily a bad thing What if regulation isn't evidence that crypto has failed, but rather that it has finally become too important to ignore? The technology might be revolutionary, but the economic forces driving its adoption are anything but new And history has a funny way of repeating itself, particularly when there's money involved. I explore this with Konstantins Vasilenko of @paybis on the SGM Podcast

Imagine sitting on a goldmine and deliberately choosing not to dig youtu.be/mWlq4LC4a78?si=xKjH… That's essentially what @paybis did during the crypto token boom While everyone was launching tokens, raising millions and chasing the next big thing, Konstantins Vasilenko and his team asked a different question: What will this decision cost us in five years? Sure, launching a token could generate serious money in the short term But what happens when regulators come knocking? What happens when you have to explain whether that token was actually a security? And what happens to your reputation when the hype disappears? Paybis chose the boring route Compliance. Infrastructure. Trust The kind of stuff that doesn't make headlines or generate overnight millionaires Fast-forward more than a decade, and Paybis has surpassed 7 million users. There's a lesson here that extends far beyond crypto. Not every opportunity is worth pursuing. Sometimes saying NO is the most profitable long-term strategy you'll ever have I discussed this with Konstantins on the latest episode of the SGM Podcast

It takes less than three seconds You are browsing the racks at a clothing store, your mind occupied by price tags and sizes, completely unaware of the two figures closing in on your blind spot A viral clip filmed at Menlyn Park Shopping Centre in Pretoria captured this exact modern nightmare In the security footage, two women smoothly tag-team a fellow shopper, their fingers slipping into her personal space to snatch her iPhone But this particular story had a satisfying twist: the victim felt the intrusion, turned around instantly, and gripped the suspects tight until security arrived She caught them red-handed Finally, a win for the good guys But beneath the satisfaction lies a deeply unsettling reality: our smartphones have transformed from convenient gadgets into the most hunted commodities on earth This isn't a uniquely South African problem. We are living through a global smartphone theft epidemic In London, street-level phone snatching spiked so severely that tens of thousands of devices vanished in a single year, feeding black-market pipelines stretching all the way to China In the United States, well over a million phones are stolen annually Why has the humble cellphone become the crown jewel for petty thieves and international crime syndicates alike? Because it is no longer just a phone. It is a high-value, low-risk, hyper-liquid asset When a criminal looks at your phone, they don't see a device to make calls. They see premium hardware that can be stripped into a lucrative pile of untraceable spare parts like screens, cameras, and logic boards that shady repair shops buy for quick cash They see a device that can be bulk-shipped across international borders, bypassing local network blacklists entirely Worse still, they see the master key to your life. If a syndicate snatches your phone while it’s unlocked, or catches you typing your PIN over your shoulder, they don’t just own the hardware; they own your digital identity Within minutes, bank accounts are drained, cryptocurrency wallets are emptied, and fraud is committed in your name Have you been a victim?

It was only a matter of time The traditional Hollywood playbook is officially obsolete The industry relied on a predictable formula for guaranteed box office dominance: greenlight a nine-figure budget, attach a legendary auteur director, cast a global megastar like Tom Cruise, and mount a $100 million marketing blitz But the catastrophic failure of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s $180 million climate satire, Digger, paired with the historic triumph of 20-year-old YouTuber Kane Parsons’ $10 million feature, Backrooms, has exposed a massive structural shift The future of cinema belongs to digital-native creators who understand how to captivate an internet-born audience on a fraction of a studio budget This paradigm shift isn't just about changing tastes, it's a revolution in production economics Traditional studios are buckling under the weight of ballooning production overhead and costly on-set delays Meanwhile, a new generation of filmmakers is bypassing the traditional studio apparatus entirely By utilizing free, open-source 3D software like Blender, creators can render photo-realistic, expansive cinematic worlds from a home computer Kane Parsons didn't need a multi-million dollar backlot to construct the infinite, haunting labyrinth of The Backrooms; he built it digitally, infusing the film with a distinct visual identity that completely eluded old-school studio infrastructure Crucially, this lean production model grants independent filmmakers a level of creative agility that risk-averse legacy studios simply cannot match When a movie costs $10 million to produce, it doesn't need to appeal to every single demographic on earth to turn a profit. It can afford to be weird, specific, and fiercely original Backrooms generated an astonishing $400 million global haul because it treated its built-in internet community with respect, scaling up its web-lore without sacrificing the eerie atmosphere that made it a viral phenomenon When a micro-budget horror film can clear its entire production cost during Thursday night preview screenings alone, the old argument for $200 million studio blockbusters completely crumbles Hollywood executives must face an uncomfortable reality: star power and astronomical budgets are no longer a shield against creative bankruptcy Audiences are actively rejecting heavy-handed, studio-engineered prestige projects in favor of organic, concept-driven storytelling born from internet culture The barrier to entry has dropped and the gatekeepers have officially lost control of the gates

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Filthy hop drop tackle on Leroy Carter who looks to be in serious pain @wallabies Vs @AllBlacks -- not what you want to see