http://www.moneyweb.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/180821-03.mp3

SIKI MGABADELI: As you know, the Sanlam iTrade challenge comes to an end. Gerhard Lampen is head of online trading, Sanlam Private Wealth

GERHARD LAMPEN: Good evening. Ja, last week we stopped the trading. We know who the winner is.

SIKI MGABADELI: Come on, I won’t tell anyone.

GERHARD LAMPEN: No. I can tell you one thing. The winner doesn’t know who he is either, because there were several changes in the last week as most people realised that the top ten had one share in particular which went up when the market came down, and that was Brait. I think they are quite happy that the competition closed last week, because Brait fell 5% today. It was down 6.5% at some stage.
    But there were a few changes in the top ten, because when you sell the Brait shares you can’t keep them until Friday afternoon. You must sell them because we take only the cash position in the competition.
    It’s interesting. We’ll announce the winner tomorrow at ten-thirty, eleven o’clock.

SIKI MGABADELI: What were some of the trends, then? Let’s talk firstly about the stock picking. You’ve talked about Brait and how it was a common denominator among those who did very well. What sort of trends did you pick up in the way that individuals and some of the teams picked stocks?

GERHARD LAMPEN: I think everybody wanted to have a chance of winning. You don’t normally win by picking a good-quality stock and keeping it for the whole period. There is one good lesson through that, because the guys who got to the top ten picked one share, a good quality stock – that was after the Pepkor sell, but they stuck with it. That was a good one.
    A lot of other guys traded, a lot of people traded commodities, because commodities were low and they thought, well, something that has fallen may will come up. They are all in negative territory; they lost a lot of money.
    But I think the learning experience – and that’s why we do the competition – the learning experience was good, because it was a very volatile market. Siki, in the eight weeks we had Grexit. The market went back up. Then we had this Chinese stock market meltdown. And the market came down again. It was so volatile.
    I think it also told people that it’s not easy. You can’t just say okay, I’m going to invest and I’ll make 20, 30% a year. You have to have lower expectations – 10, 15% in the long term and you’ll make it in good quality stocks.

SIKI MGABADELI: All right, we’ll find out who won tomorrow. Thanks, Gerhard.