Ian Anderson Sold out of Sasol last November

Saville says the last time the market saw such multiples was in 1999/2000 with technology shares Dimension Data and Datatec. They subsequently lost 90% of their market value.

“When the correction comes, it will be brutal not gentle.”

Karl Leinberger, CIO of Coronation Equity Fund, has Naspers as his largest position. He believes that its disclosed 90 p:e is misleading. “It has a number of valuable electronic media properties which are still making losses at this stage in their life cycle.” Despite the heavy Naspers holding, Coronation Equity was 84th out of 124 domestic general equity funds with a 9% return. Leinberger says platinum shares and Anglo American were the main detractors from his returns. But, historically, he says Coronation has underperformed the Swix index about a third of the time, which is not out of line with a manager taking a long-term view.

Sean Ashton, CIO of the topperforming Anchor Equity Fund, says its performance was driven by sector allocation: staying out of resources — the exception was Sasol which it sold at about R520/share. It is now R400.

Anchor also did some good stock picking in the industrial and financial sectors. The portfolio now focuses on industrial rand hedges such as Naspers, Steinhoff, Richemont and Mediclinic, as well as high-growth financial shares such as Discovery,