Of Safaricom and Revisions

The current rally of the Safaricom shares has reminded me of the adage that all men are equal by their greed. Over the past one year I have been consoling and encouraging and sometimes dissuading many of my friends who had taken loans to buy the stock. They have been paying the loan begrudgingly and some have actually defaulted. In fact am told equity which was one of the most bullish in the run up to Safaricom IPO are facing the highest percentage of non-performing loans in this category.

Most of these friends promised themselves that the moment the share price only but covered their outstanding loans, they would cut their losses, sell, repay in full and take a 'boltish' flight. There were many other options for investment than Safaricom.

Well fate had it, the price started moving north inch by inch. Each day, my friends revised their sell by level. It moved from 3.50 to 4 bob with reasons that the interest must be covered. Then the limit was moved to 4.40, when the price hit 4.20 early this week, they conveniently revised their target to 5 bob and said should it ever touch the IPO price, they would surely sell. Well it did yesterday and all of a sudden the options had to be revised all over again. They are back to the proverbial drawing board and now the discussions are if and when the share price will ever hit 10 bob since at 10 bob, loans are fully covered, down payments for dream houses can be made, and the range rover can finally land!

But the other questions am being asked is what I feel about the 'greed' of the MPs from Rift Valley regarding the Mau. Well my thoughts are that Mr. Ruto and his friends have behaved as expected of any Kenyan politician. Any (Kenyan) politician who hasn't used this opportunity to gain some mileage in the Rift Valley is not worth his salt. What of Raila, will this affect his career? Well I don't know, the man always makes mind boggling blunders every time in his career and from each one of them he somehow comes out stronger. Every body saw the end of him when he merged his party with Nyayo. At the end of the day you can never tell what he has up his sleeves.