Breaking News Today – Monday 1 December 2025

Business News Today

Retail Sales Spike on Black Friday Deals in South Africa

Black Friday 2025, marked a strong uptick in consumer spending across South Africa, with preliminary data indicating a clear increase from 2024, despite economic pressures like inflation and high living costs. ABSA bank forecasted and confirmed a 10% year-on-year growth in card spending for the weekend, projecting over R4.5 billion in transactions and 9.75 million swipes, driven by essentials like groceries and household items. Overall weekend estimates from analysts peg total spend at R146–R153 billion, a 5–10% rise from R139 billion in 2024, with early figures showing R500 million processed by midday Friday via major payment systems. FNB anticipates surpassing R3.3 billion in sales, fueled by digital payments and strategic discounting. Capitec reported Black Friday value 15% higher than January’s payday weekend, with transaction volume up 8.8% year-over-year. Online sales outperformed, growing over 10% year-on-year, with average order values at R752 versus R513 for in-store purchases.

CoCoa Futures Claw back Losses on Supply Concerns

Cocoa futures have indeed jumped over 6% this morning (with New York March contracts up around 7-8% in early trading, reaching near $5,500 per metric ton), extending gains from Friday’s rally. The primary catalyst is the International Cocoa Organisation’s (ICCO) stark downward revision to its 2024/25 forecasts, slashing the global surplus estimate to just 49,000 metric tons (from 142,000 MT) and production to 4.69 million MT (from 4.84 million MT), marking the first surplus in four years but still underscoring persistent supply tightness. A 3.7% year-on-year drop in Ivory Coast port arrivals, and an 11% projected decline in Nigerian output, plus a softer U.S. dollar has fuelled short-covering, amplifying the upward momentum. Prices are still 40% down in the last year and down over 10% thin month alone.

AWS Interconnect – New Multi-cloud Service Launched

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud unveiled AWS Interconnect – multicloud, a jointly engineered service to streamline multicloud networking. This preview offering integrates AWS’s Interconnect with Google Cloud’s Cross-Cloud Interconnect, enabling customers to establish private, high-speed connections between VPCs and Google environments in minutes via the AWS Management Console or API—dramatically faster than traditional setups that take weeks. Key features include dedicated bandwidth with adjustable capacity from pre-built pools, built-in resiliency, and an open API specification published on GitHub for broader adoption by other providers like Microsoft Azure (planned for 2026). Benefits encompass reduced complexity in data and application mobility, enhanced outage resilience (addressing issues like the October AWS disruption), and support for AI-driven workloads amid surging traffic.

Breaking News Shorts: 

• Crypto Currencies are seeing prices plunge, with major institutional sell-offs driving prices lower today. Crypto currencies such as Cardano have seen more than-8% plunge will crypto major Bitcoin has dropped by over 5% already, bringing the crypto’s month loss to over 22%
• China’s RatingDog China General Manufacturing PMI fell to 49.9 in November 2025 from 50.6 in the previous month, hitting a four month low and missing market forecasts of 50.5. The latest result indicated a slight drop in factory activity, with output and new orders largely stagnant amid renewed job cuts and subdued purchasing levels. 
• South Africa’s trade surplus shrank to ZAR 15.6 billion in October, from an upwardly revised ZAR 22.3 billion in the prior month. Imports jumped by 7.2% over a month to ZAR 176.6 billion, driven by big increases in mineral products – up by 21%. Conversely, exports in Agricultural products declined sharply by -35% for vegetable products.
• Silver rose by more than 1% to above $57 per ounce today, reaching a new record high as supply concerns and expectations of US interest-rate cuts continued to support gains. The spot price rose as much as 1.4% to $57.29, surpassing Friday’s peak, when trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange was disrupted for several hours due to a data-centre outage.
• Gold prices rose to around $4,240 per ounce today, hitting a five week high, driven by rising expectations of a US interest rate cut later this month. This follows remarks from Federal Reserve officials, along with weak economic following the longest US government shutdown, have fuelled expectations that the Fed may lower rates, pricing in an 87% probability of a 25bps reduction.

Markets by Numbers 

Currency markets indicate the US dollar flat today, with the Euro trading against the US dollar at 1.16013 while the Pound is trading at 1.32298 to the US dollar. The Yen is currently trading upwards at 155.44 to the dollar. The rand (ZAR) is currently at R17.14 to the US dollar.

Commodities:  

• Gold futures have continued its upward momentum, and are currently trading around $4220.00 per ounce.  
• Copper prices are trending 0,5% higher today, with prices currently around $5.2160
• Silver futures prices are up by around 0.4% this morning, and currently trading around $5.6657
• Platinum futures have gained over 0.6 % this morning, and currently trading at $1683.60, While Palladium prices are surging and 0ver 1.4% higher this morning, currently trading around $1470.00 per ounce.
• Brent crude oil prices continue upward momentum today, up by over 0.5%, and currently at $63.51 with WTI trading at $59.66
• Cocoa futures have spiked today by over 6.6%, and currently trading around $5404.00 per ton. 
• Coffee futures are flat this morning, and are currently trading at around $4.1232 per pound

Crypto Currencies: 

• Bitcoin prices have plunged by almost 5% today, and trading at around $85903per coin currently 
• Ether prices are in free-fall today, down by -5.7%, and are currently trading around $2822.11
• $Trumpcoin are trending over 4% lower today, and currently trading around $5.72

(All prices quoted at approximately 07H35 Central African Time) 

Africa News Briefs:

• Senegalese authorities are racing to prevent a potential oil spill after water entered the engine room of the Panamanian-flagged oil tanker Mersin near Dakar’s coast, the port authority reported on Sunday.The vessel is owned by Turkey’s Mersin Shipping Inc and managed by Besiktas Shipping, according to data from the London Stock Exchange Group. The incident, which led to the vessel issuing a distress signal, occurred overnight from November 27 to 28, resulting in the deployment of tugboats and oil-spill teams from Senegal’s navy and maritime authority.
• A prominent opposition figure, Chaima Issa, has been arrested by police in Tunisia, while she was taking part in a protest march in the capital on Saturday. This follows a day after an appeals court handed jail terms of up to 45 years to a group of opposition leaders, businessmen, and lawyers. In a ruling seen as a sign of increasingly authoritarian rule by President Kais Saied, they were charged with conspiracy to overthrow him. Moments before her arrest, Issa and two other convicted politicians called on the divided opposition to united in escalate demonstrations against Saied.
• The daughter of former South African President Jacob Zuma, Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla has resigned as an Member of Parliament, following allegations that she tricked 17 men to fight for Russia as mercenaries in Ukraine that have brought her under a political cloud last week. Zuma-Sambudla, who became a member of parliament for the main opposition party uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) last year, has said in an affidavit that she thought the men were going to Russia for “lawful” training. The MK party says it was Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla’s decision to resign as she wants to focus her efforts on ensuring the return of those trapped in Ukraine’s war-torn Donbas region.