The opening morning of FMAS:26 in Cape Town focuses on the grit behind the glamour. From CEOs surviving operational wild rides to macro experts hunting for value in the storm, the sessions pivot from high-level strategy to the FSCA’s tightening grip on education and the search for signals within trading communities.
The CEO Reality Check
The day began with a reality check from those steering the ship. CEOs and regional leaders gathered to dissect a year where compliance standards and growth assumptions were pushed to their limits.
The discussion was hosted by Jimmy Moyaha, founder of Lebowa Capital and featured Ricardo Da Silva, CEO of Webull Securities South Africa, Amar Ramith, CEO of TD Markets, Ingmar Mattus, co-founder of Tickmill Group, and Kevin Algeo, Senior Vice President at Crypto.com.
The consensus was clear: in a market this unpredictable, operational agility is no longer a luxury but a requirement for survival.
Finding Opportunity in Macro Volatility
If the CEOs provided the operational context, the macro panel provided the map for the "stormy" year ahead.
The next panel session interrogated whether South African equities can sustain their breakout performance or if a correction is looming for the Rand in the second quarter.
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The panel included Pakama Bangiso, Advice Manager at Old Mutual; Lourens Reichert of Holborn Assets; Adam Bulkin of Edify Invest; Francois du Plessis of ATFX; Cobus Potgieter of SouthernCross Capital; Francois Strydom of Momentum Securities; and Zander van der Merwe of TD Markets.
Between debates on the war's impact and the pricing of precious metals, the group weighed up whether 2026 is a year for offense or defensive positioning.
The Economics of African Prop Trading
As the first day of FMAS:26 progressed into the afternoon, the focus shifted from high-level strategy to the specific mechanics of the African market. The sessions moved from the controversial rise of prop trading to the digital plumbing of the future, eventually landing on the oldest safe haven in the book: gold.
The afternoon kicked off with a hard look at the prop trading phenomenon.
In a region where the average deposit is a fraction of global norms, the panel questioned whether the prop firm model can actually thrive.
Francois du Plessis of ATFX guided the debate on the "25-dollar-problem," featuring Nathan Meyer of WeFunded, Jakub Roz of For Traders, and Huziefa Khalafallah of Match-Trade.
The panel interrogated whether these accessible entry thresholds inadvertently trigger a destructive feedback loop for market participants and providers.
The consensus was that pricing is not really a problem; the real challenge is the shift in moving people from traditional brokers to prop firms.
“So, it’s changing the narrative and that concept,” Meyer highlighted.
Blockchain as a Structural Fix
If prop trading is trying to solve the capital gap, the next panel argued that blockchain is the solution to the continent’s infrastructure gap. With settlement times often dragging into a second week, the potential for on-chain tools to bypass incumbent payment systems was a primary focus.
The session featured Paul Hwingwiri of Capacity Africa; Ben Ainsle, the UK’s Acting HM Trade Commissioner for Africa; Shelley Havemann of VALR; Isabel McParland of BVNK; and Anzill Adams of Dominion Investment Holdings.
Anzill Adams was adamant that, at the moment, the current technology is being executed in a manner that maintains the disempowerment of African economies.
"Take Mastercard, for example," he said. "When you send money from Cape Town to Cairo, it goes through so many intermediaries. Has that been eliminated? For a smallholder farmer in Kenya, doing business is still very expensive. How do we address these issues?
On his part, Ainsle noted that to solve the problem, it requires short-term solutions, such as regulation and policy-making, and long-term fixes, mainly the the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA).
"We all know the complexity and the challenges, but we see the potential. The UK government sees the potential of where that can go," he noted.
Within the digital protocol pillar of the agreement, a fair amount of technical capacity went into thinking about how to foster a single pan-African digital payment platform.
"Some of the modelling we looked at said you're looking at about 25% reduction in costs when that comes in," Ainsle went on. ""We are very much optimists in this space."
