| Holding | Weight | TZS m | Stance & rationale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Equities — 50% | |||
| NMB Bank | 14% | 70 | Overweight — the profit leader at a discount (27% ROE, ~8.6× earnings). |
| Vodacom Tanzania | 13% | 65 | Overweight — deep value; depreciation masks underlying earnings; M-Pesa rail. |
| Tanzania Cigarette | 11% | 55 | Overweight — ~62% margin cash machine, 8.5% yield, ~9× earnings. |
| CRDB Bank | 9% | 45 | Market weight — great bank, fairly valued after its re-rating. |
| Twiga Cement | 3% | 15 | Underweight — quality, but expensive (~24× earnings); a small toehold only. |
| Fixed income — 35% | |||
| Government T-bonds | 22% | 110 | The TZS risk-free anchor — ~11% nominal, ~7% real yield. |
| Treasury bills | 8% | 40 | Short-end yield & rolling liquidity (9–12%). |
| iTrust iIncome | 5% | 25 | Diversified income fund with monthly payouts. |
| Cash & liquidity — 15% | |||
| iTrust iCash | 10% | 50 | Money-market liquidity — dry powder that earns ~5%. |
| Cash | 5% | 25 | Reserve for drawdowns and new ideas. |
| Total | 100% | 500 | Balanced — tilted to cheap quality, anchored by sovereign yield. |
Weights are a hypothetical, illustrative model allocation, not advice. Stances summarise the public company overviews; full reasoning is in the subscriber briefs.
The Ghost holds NICOL at zero: a fine portfolio, but trading at a premium to an opaquely-disclosed NAV is the wrong entry. And it caps cement (Twiga) at a token weight despite its quality — at ~24× earnings for flat growth, the price already reflects the quality and then some.
On the funds: the Ghost prefers direct holdings to iGrowth, because iGrowth is ~38% concentrated in NMB — the Ghost would rather size that bank exposure itself, deliberately, than inherit it inside a “balanced” label.
The Dar es Salaam market traded more, not higher. The All-Share held around 3,950 (about −0.2% on the day), the latest weekly read was off roughly 1%, and the Tanzania Share Index slipped some 2.5% on the week — yet equity turnover jumped about 30% week-on-week to roughly TZS 27bn across some 21,800 deals. Activity without direction. The week’s real movers were small-caps, not the blue chips — TOL up some 31%, MUCOBA off about 15% — while breadth stayed neutral (around 9 of 20 names). Beneath the flat index the pattern the Ghost keeps flagging held: CRDB sat near 2,530 on support, and NMB continued to attract the institutional block interest that has marked the cheap-quality names. One tape, two stories — quality quietly bid, the index going nowhere.
The macro anchors did the steadying. Gold near a record ~$4,155/oz continues to underwrite Tanzania’s external account, while the shilling sat around 2,628/USD — roughly −6% year-to-date, orderly rather than a shock (Bank of Tanzania). The Bank of Tanzania held its policy rate at 5.75% for a second consecutive meeting, with April headline inflation at 4.0%, inside the 3–5% band — real yields still comfortably positive. The 17 June T-bill auction (No. 1201) has settled, but its weighted-average yield is not confirmed in our source this week, so the Ghost will not quote a figure it cannot verify; the next auction (No. 1202) and the longer bonds remain the part of the curve the book leans on for real ballast.
For the hypothetical book, none of this changes the central wager — own cheap quality, anchored by sovereign yield. It stays overweight NMB, Vodacom and the TCC cash machine; market-weight CRDB, whose soft tape is exactly when a market weight earns its keep; underweight Twiga at its rich multiple; and continues to avoid NICOL’s premium-to-opaque-NAV and iGrowth’s concentrated NMB exposure. The shilling’s orderly drift and the positive real yield on the curve are the quiet reasons the 35% fixed-income anchor stays put rather than being chased into richer equity.
The discipline this week follows from the tape itself: a flat index on rising volume is churn, not a trend — a reason to trade less, not more. With Vision/DIRA 2050 instruments due to launch on 29 June and implementation beginning 1 July, the temptation is to pre-position for a policy headline; the Ghost would rather watch execution than front-run a press release. Let the domestic bid and the yield anchor do the work, keep dry powder for the drawdowns thin breadth tends to produce, and resist confusing activity for opportunity. No rebalance — the balanced mandate stands at 50/35/15, summing to TZS 500m.
— The Ghost · a hypothetical editorial voice. Figures per the Bank of Tanzania and company reports; illustrative and educational, not advice.
The Ghost publishes a new editorial weekly, marking its hypothetical portfolio to market and revisiting its reasoning. Past (hypothetical) performance is not indicative of future results.