Indholdsfortegnelse for Issue 949 i MoneyWeek

Given the way it is disrupting our politics, you would think that Brexit is just about the only thing that matters to the UK. Not so. On page 14, Matthew Lynn looks at some of the other (rather more important) things that the brave (or perhaps foolish) person who becomes the next prime minister needs to concentrate on. As far as he is concerned, our trading relationship with Europe comes pretty low down the list. John rather agrees that Brexit doesn’t much matter. Note that for all the sound and fury, the UK is still seeing rather better GDP growth than most of the other EU countries. At the same time, unemployment is at its lowest for 44 years (3.8%) and retail sales are up more than 5% year-on-year. This…

Rare earth metals are not as scarce as the name might suggest. However, China is by far the dominant supplier to the US, accounting for about 80% of American imports (and 71% of the entire global supply of mined rare earth minerals). The metals – a group of 17 elements such as neodymium and yttrium – are used in applications ranging from military and industrial lasers to energy-saving light fittings. Speculation that China might restrict access to rare earths as a negotiating tool in its trade war with the US increased last week after President Xi Jinping visited a rare-earth facility in Jiangxi. As a result, the share prices of many rare-earth producers (including China Rare Earth Holdings, featured here) have enjoyed a spike higher.…

Finally, an initial public offering (IPO) outside the tech sector: Hollywood talent agency Endeavour (whose clients include singer Rihanna and actress Charlize Theron) plans to float later this year. The group, valued at $6.3bn in 2017, has diversified into fashion, marketing and sports, notes the Financial Times. In 2016 it bought UFC, the mixed martial arts league, for $4bn, one of the biggest sports deals on record. But most of its sales stem from licensing or creating content for television and streaming networks. Cashing in on the content craze bodes well for longterm growth. A record 500 television shows were commissioned last year, thanks to the burgeoning streaming industry.…

This month, US markets reached an important milestone: money invested in passively managed equity funds (at more than $4.3trn) now stands neck-and-neck with that invested in actively managed equity funds ($4.31trn), according to data provider Morningstar. Within the next month or so – given that money is still flowing into passive funds and out of active ones – passive should take the lead. It was only a matter of time. As Julie Segal notes in Institutional Investor, 20 years ago, in 1998, “the amount investors held in active US stock funds was 6.5 times that in index funds.” Yet US investors have been quicker than most to realise that active managers rarely beat the market, and that they charge too much for failing to do so. As a result, the…

It is surprising to me that so many people still want to be prime minister. As Theresa May would surely tell you, it’s a thankless job. Still, for their own mysterious reasons, lots of people seem to want the prize. In a crowded field, Boris Johnson is the clear favourite with the bookmakers to replace May as Tory leader and PM, with Dominic Raab and Michael Gove lagging behind. By Tuesday morning, ten candidates had declared, and a few more may have thrown their hat in the ring by the weekend. Conservative MPs will narrow that down to a final two, and then the question will be thrown open to the party’s 160,000 members to decide on a leader. With grim inevitably, the debate will all be about Europe. Yet…

Amazon muscles into new territory Rana Foroohar Financial Times Should the US government buy all its supplies from Amazon? It’s a pertinent question, says Rana Foroohar, thanks to what has become known as the “Amazon Amendment” to the National Defence Authorisation Act, which means that officials need to come up with an “e-commerce solution” for a sector worth $5.6trn in sales a year. Wholesalers say that this requirement will “allow Amazon to eat their lunch, just as it has in retail”. The National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors is particularly riled that the General Services Administration (GSA) has already discarded options including a government-managed portal for multiple players, and remains silent on the subject of Amazon capping seller fees, which could put firms at risk of being undercut by Amazon’s own lines.…

unherd.com Fifteen years ago the owners of Knepp Castle estate near Horsham, West Sussex, gave up on “financially ruinous” dairy farming and instead let nature take its course, says Amy-Jane Beer. Knepp now feels like a parallel universe: red deer and Tamworth pigs roam freely through thickets of hawthorn and dog rose, and there’s a “riotous cacophony” of birdsong. A new plan by Rewilding Britain, a campaign group, calls for billions of pounds of farm subsidies to be redirected towards creating more places like Knepp. The group claims this would benefit not just the local environment, but be good for the climate, farmers and struggling rural economies too – in the UK, tourism already brings in more revenue (£18.6bn) and provides more jobs than farming. True rewilding requires lots of…

We in the UK may be transfixed by Brexit, but out in the rest of the world there are numerous interesting developments for adventurous investors to keep a close eye on. The key country to watch is India, especially now that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been resoundingly re-elected. Although doubts about his reformist zeal have intensified over the last few years, Modi’s BJP party has delivered on around 50 key reforms. It’s worth highlighting real progress on rural electrification; a reform of how benefits are transferred to people; and significant investment in building toilets and new roads. There’s obviously lots still to do, not least in job creation for the young population, as well as in boosting low farm incomes. However, the political stability should help India become the…

When our fixed-rate mortgage period was nearing its end, a combination of poor planning on our part, and an apparent reluctance from our broker to respond to emails, meant that we ended up paying the much more expensive variable rate on our old mortgage for two months before we could switch to a new fixed-rate deal. This left us wondering why we’d gone through a broker in the first place. So what are the key benefits of doing so? The most obvious one is that they search the market to find the best possible deal for your particular situation, saving you the effort. Another positive is that they should do the bulk of the arrangement work for you – although you will still have to fill out a lot of…

Horrible news for British strawberry lovers, says The Guardian: this year’s crop – which has started to ripen two weeks early, thanks to the good spring weather – may end up rotting on the ground. Why? A shortage of fruit-pickers. Growers across Europe are “competing for labour”. Demand is high everywhere (hence better deals on pay, bonuses and accommodation), but supply is falling fast: wages in Romania (where most EU fruit-pickers come from) have risen such that workers no longer make six times the local rate abroad, but more like three-and-a-half times. That rather changes the incentive – and the supply of strawberries (see page 17). Or so the story goes. But if the worriers were to look a little deeper into it, they might find that the picking panic…

A lot of money is now invested in passive “index” funds that track a particular stock market index, such as the FTSE 100 or S&P 500 (see page 13). Despite their many advantages, one flaw is that if a stock is removed from the index they are tracking, the fund must sell it, and replace it with any stocks being added to the index. Some active funds also prevent their managers from investing in stocks outside a given index. While the index providers typically announce these changes in advance to avoid a mad rush of buying and selling, fund managers still have a very limited period in which to make the changes. The boost that inclusion in an index provides to the price of a stock (or the negative impact…

What does your firm do? Virtuo is a 100% mobile car-rental firm that removes the pain of traditional rental, including queues and reams of paperwork. The process is carried out via the Virtuo app, including booking a car, locating and unlocking it, customer service and damage reports. What’s been your firm’s greatest achievement? One of our key goals is expanding into strategic markets, so I was thrilled when Virtuo launched in London, which has the biggest car-rental market in Europe and is a hugely competitive arena. It was a really big achievement for our business and since then Virtuo has gone from strength to strength. The company has recently launched in Manchester and we will also be expanding our business to other UK cities in the near future. What has…

HomeServe (LSE: HSV) provides home emergency insurance and repair services to more than six million customers. Half are in the UK, the rest in the US, France and Germany. It also owns the Checkatrade rating platform, which it bought in 2017. Sales have risen every year since 2011, with revenue in the year to 31 March up 12% to £1bn and pre-tax profit up 13% to £139.5m. All areas of the business performed well, with the United States the outstanding performer. Investors have been rewarded with a 46% rise in the share price in the last year.…

Born in 1860, Horatio Bottomley lost both his parents by 1865 and spent five years in an orphanage in Birmingham. He became an office boy in a firm of solicitors, and by the age of 23 was a partner in a transcription firm. Over a career spanning four decades he would find fame (and notoriety) as a company promoter and proprietor of the ultra-nationalistic magazine John Bull. Despite several bankruptcies, his skills as an orator saw him elected to Parliament twice and he was considered for a cabinet post. What was the scam? Bottomley was involved in several failed companies, and narrowly escaped being convicted of fraud at trials in both 1893 and 1908. The swindle that finally brought him down involved the Victory Bonds Club, which was set up…

Going… A Porsche Type 64 from 1939 is heading for auction at RM Sotheby’s in California in mid-August. An ancestor of the 911, the Type 64 (pictured), is the earliest-known surviving Porsche, built to compete in a Berlin to Rome road race in September of that year that never happened due to World War II. After the war, the founder Ferdinand Porsche’s design for the car was modified to become the Volkswagen Beetle. The Type 64 for sale was owned by the Porsche family, while a second Type 64 was confiscated by the Allies and crashed. It is expected to fetch upwards of $20m, surpassing the $14m paid for the 1970 Porsche 917 race car used in the 1971 film Le Mans, starring Steve McQueen. Gone… A 1959 Lotus Elite,…

“Something very odd happens to cooks once you point a camera in their direction,” says Virginia Blackburn in the Daily Express. “Nigella Lawson makes food preparation look like something that should only take place between consenting adults and then only after the watershed. Marco Pierre White and Gordon Ramsay both look as if they’re out on day release.” So, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise when Jamie Oliver’s restaurant chain, Jamie’s Italian, went under. “The Oliver persona is cheeky chappy/cheap as chips, but the chips in his restaurants were anything but.” There were also so many of his restaurants that they didn’t feel exclusive either. Oliver (pictured) should have followed the example of the upmarket The River Café, where he was discovered as a young chef. Instead, “he spread…

“The growing gap between the Premier League and lower-league clubs has been starkly illustrated by figures that show nearly three quarters of English Football League sides are losing money”, says Martyn Ziegler in The Times. While the 20 Premier League clubs made a combined surplus of £304m in the 2017/2018 season, the 72 teams in the lower leagues, comprising the Sky Bet Championship, League One and League Two, suffered a collective net deficit of £388m. A total of 52 of those 72 sides ended the season in the red. Bolton Wanderers went into administration this month, while Bury is in “crisis”. Clubs overextend themselves trying to reach the top flight, with its minimum guaranteed income of £100m. “The gap is now so big between the Premier League and the rest…

Three to buy Bunzl The Sunday Telegraph A record of reliable performance has made this distributor of paper plates and surgical gloves something of a support services “pin-up”. Exposure to the US used to be a boon as a weak pound flattered revenues, but news of a hiccup stateside – underlying revenue growth has disappointed – sent investors “running for cover”. It is a sign that the “solid returns” of the past may be harder to come by, but on 16.5 times this year’s earnings and with scope to grow through acquisitions, it’s a buy. 2,090p IG Group The Times Britain’s biggest spread-betting firm has had a torrid few years, squeezed between tougher regulations on one side and periods of relative calm in markets (which reduces the number of punters)…

• If only Marks & Spencer got paid every time it promises a “transformation”, writes Alistair Osborne in The Times. In 2010, Sir Stuart Rose promised to “fundamentally transform the way M&S does business”. Now boss Steve Rowe has crammed 36 iterations of the word or a variant thereof into the latest full-year figures. Underlying food sales were down 2.3% and profits before tax fell by 9.9%. When Rowe took over three years ago, the shares were around £4. Now they are below 250p, and he’s “cut the dividend by 40%”. This is all “a bit too transformational”. • Facebook’s plan to create its own cryptocurrency is reminiscent of something that “Dr Evil from the Austin Powers movies might come up with”, says Lionel Laurent on Bloomberg. The new system…

Many investors use the price/ earnings (p/e) ratio as a measure of whether a share is cheap or not. There’s a good reason for that – it’s one of the simplest valuation measures out there. You simply take the share price, and divide by the earnings (profits) per share. So a company with a share price of 50p and earnings per share (EPS) of 5p would have a p/e ratio of ten. A p/e ratio which is based on forecast earnings is often referred to as a forward p/e ratio, while one based on past earnings is sometimes described as a trailing p/e. P/e ratios are also sometimes referred to as “multiples”, as in “Acme Widgets is trading on a multiple of ten times its earnings”. In effect, a p/e…

• Shareholder advisory group Glass Lewis has advised Walmart’s shareholders to vote against the remuneration packages for the US supermarket’s executives, citing “a pay and performance disconnect”, says Alistair Gray in the Financial Times. Chief executive Doug McMillon (pictured) received $23.6m for 2018 – a pay rise of 3.6%. That compares with 3% for the average Walmart worker, who took home median pay of $21,952. Shareholder returns fell 8% last year. • Former BT boss Gavin Patterson bowed to shareholders’ anger in agreeing to halve his bonus for last year to £572,000. The telecoms company had suggested a figure of £1.1m, but relented in light of investors’ concerns over BT’s performance. Even so, Patterson was paid £1.7m in total for 2018, including a salary of £847,000, £46,000 in benefits, and…

“My mum is very concerned that my husband is going to leave me out of intimidation. I had to explain to her that the only kind of man that would leave a woman who makes more money is the kind of man that doesn’t like money.” Comedian Ali Wong (pictured), in Vanity Fair “When I first started making decent money, the first thing I said was I don’t care how much things cost in the hotel mini-fridge – if it’s a $5 Kit Kat, I’m going to let myself have it. I always tell people the nicest thing they can do for themselves is to buy a good bath mat.” Actor Eric Stonestreet, quoted in Metro “A month after my father’s death I was cut loose from the army in…

theguardian.com When Marks & Spencer launched its LGBT sandwich – your classic BLT with some “gay” guacomole thrown in – I was asked if I was offended by it, says Owen Jones. I wasn’t. But the incident does tell us something about how today’s culture wars are affecting business. By flashing their support for just causes – by “woke-washing” their brands – are businesses just “cynically preying on your conscience”? Or are they genuinely concerned with social justice? In the case of the sandwich, no doubt the charity that supports homeless LGBT people will benefit from the sums M&S donated. But the amounts are barely more than a couple of fun runners could raise. More likely is that younger people tend to be on one side in the culture wars,…

Activist investor ValueAct Capital has told Merlin Entertainments, owner of attractions Alton Towers, Legoland and Madame Tussauds, to put itself up for sale, say Oliver Gill and Michael O’Dwyer in The Daily Telegraph. ValueAct, which owns a 9.3% stake in Merlin, believes the City doesn’t see the true value in the world’s second-largest visitor attraction group. Merlin has “struggled” as a public company, said Value Act, which also criticised the “excessive focus” of analysts on short-term results. A private buyout of the company could value it at a premium of more than a third, reckons the activist.…

Foxtons estate agents has acquired a reputation for being flashy and a bit brash. Unfortunately, while this may have paid off in the days of the property boom, the approach hasn’t translated into as many sales over the past few years. Having reported in February its first full-year losses since going public in 2013, Foxtons’ first-quarter results for 2019 made for similarly gloomy reading when the company reported this month. The number of houses sold was at “record-low levels”, which was put down to Brexit uncertainty dampening consumer confidence (though we tend to think the slowing of the UK housing market is more down to the government’s crackdown on the buy-to-let sector, which has made it a far less appealing investment prospect). “Foxtons shares are down 84% since March 2014”…

The last fortnight has been mixed for my seven “long” tips. Five of them have risen, with John Laing Group advancing to 387p (382p); JD Sports rising to 618p (from 611p); Hays increasing to 150p (from 146p); and Somero rising to 367p (from 365p). Superdry also rose to 480p (from 455p), while Safestore stayed steady at 643p. However, the small gains on most of my long positions have been outweighed by the slide in housebuilder Bellway’s share price, from 2,998p to 2,792p. This wiped out my profits on the trade, and cut the overall profit on my longs to £1,064. On the short side, recently-listed Zoom’s share price hasn’t fallen enough yet to make it worth shorting. Pinterest did fall beneath the $25 a share level at which I suggested…

Small businesses’ access to valuable tax relief when investing in research and development (R&D) could be curtailed by attempts to crack down on fraud in the system. R&D tax credits, paid to companies investing in innovation, are currently worth around £3.5bn a year. The scheme is particularly generous to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which receive around 85% of this cash, providing valuable assistance to lossmaking firms that might otherwise struggle to invest. This relief unlocks around £25bn of investment in innovation each year, estimate ministers. However, they are concerned that abuses of the system are increasing, via companies setting up artificial arrangements to inflate the value of the relief for which they are eligible. From April next year, the government plans to limit the value of the credits to…

Kier Group (LSE: KIE) is a construction and services company, building and maintaining large infrastructure projects around the world. Much of its business comes from government contracts, but it is increasingly branching out into the private sector. The collapse of Carillion piled pressure on the company, and it has become one of the most shorted stocks in the market. A turbulent year has seen a rights issue snubbed by many investors in addition to the departure of the finance director earlier this month. The shares have fallen 69% in the last year.…

2016 Paringa Estate, Peninsula Shiraz, Mornington Peninsula, Victoria, Australia £23.87, greatwinesdirect.co.uk Earlier this week I launched my 100 Best Australian Wines Report for 2019/2020 at Australia House in London. This is the sixteenth year in which I have compiled this snapshot of the greatest Aussie wines in our market. The criteria for making the grade for this report are simple – the wines must be awesome and they must be available in sufficient quantities to last until at least Christmas. This wine is spectacular, but it didn’t quite make the “100 Best” list because stocks are a little tighter than I would like. Made by one of the most sought-after wineries in Australia, this is a shiraz made in one of the most famous pinot noir territories in the land.…

Is it art or just a PR stunt? Either way, “the most dangerous laptop in the world”, according to Forbes, was sitting in a room somewhere in New York last week. Deep Instinct, a cybersecurity firm, had commissioned artist Guo O Dong to infect a 2008 Samsung notebook with six of the most dangerous computer viruses. Taken together, they have caused $95bn in financial damage, according to the special auction website that had been created for it. The artwork is called The Persistence of Chaos. “These pieces of software seem so abstract, almost fake with their funny, spooky names, but I think they emphasize that the web and IRL – in real life – are not different spaces”, the artist told Vice. “Malware is one of the most tangible ways…

One of the nice things about this job is that we never run out of targets. We aim for claptrap. Wherever we go, we throw a beer can out the window – we are sure to hit it. We are in Ireland, and there’s plenty of targets here, too. We have been putting the roof on our cottage in Ireland. The place was so derelict most people thought it was not worth saving. It was abandoned, like so many thousands of others in Ireland. On our little farm alone there are three of these ruins hidden in the woods – just stone walls covered with ivy, laurel, and thorn bushes. They are the remains of what was called “The Great Crumble.” “People menaced the government by threatening to leave them…

There is still no end in sight to Donald Trump’s “great patriotic wars”, writes Michelle Cottle in The New York Times. The US president kept up the pressure on Beijing this week: during a state visit to Japan (see page 11) he warned that “we’re not ready to make a deal” and that tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of Chinese goods could “go up very, very substantially, very easily”. As the economic toll of the dispute becomes more apparent, the Trump administration has taken to reminding Americans that “patriotism means sacrifice”. Nor is China in any mood to back down, note Andrew Batson and Chen Long for Gavekal Research. For his part, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has referred to a “new Long March”, but the metaphor is…

“If you’re one of that breed of free marketeers who don’t believe Facebook should be broken up… try listening to Chris Hughes. The Facebook co-founder and friend of Mark Zuckerberg says governments… have stood by... as the Zuck… has built himself more personal power than anyone on the planet... He controls the algorithms that dictate what news billions of people consume, which media they watch and who they talk to. He has the power to follow their hobbies, interests and opinions, and... to monetise that knowledge... The decisions from monopoly watchdogs to allow him to buy Instagram and WhatsApp mean he controls the vast majority of platforms used by the 70% of Americans using social media. These deals have destroyed competition... There was another man who would have agreed with…

Qiagen is a core healthcare holding, says WirtschaftsWoche. The Dutch-German group provides a wide range of products to help diagnose diseases. Its most famous offering is QuantiFERON, a blood test to identify tuberculosis that has been applied to 60 million people. “Demand is huge” – 1.6 million die of the disease every year, reports the World Health Organisation. QuantiFERON accounts for a tenth of sales, while new tests for meningitis could be approved in the US soon. Oncology is a growing industry for Qiagen too – testing the effect of various treatments helps doctors tailor treatments to patients. Sales are expected to grow by 7% to €1.4bn in 2019 – a 15th successive year of growth.…

The car industry is going through its biggest changes “for 125 years” as the age of internal combustion draws to a close, writes Larry Elliott in The Guardian. That is forcing companies fearful of becoming “museum pieces” into ever-larger combinations. Italian-American carmaker Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) confirmed on Monday that it is seeking a merger with French peer Renault. The tie-up would create the world’s third-biggest carmaker, or the largest if Renault partner Nissan’s production is included. Shares in both companies shot up by more than 16% on news of the talks. Looks good on paper FCA doesn’t say “merger of equals”, but that is what’s on offer, says Stephen Wilmot in The Wall Street Journal. The plan is for a 50:50 merger of each firm’s share capital, so that…

As Brits focus on Brexit, “another story is emerging: the green wave”, says Fraser Nelson in The Spectator. From Ireland to Germany, Green parties made big gains in last week’s European elections, emerging as the fourth-largest bloc in the European Parliament, with 69 out of 751 seats. It is a Europe-wide trend and “challenges the idea of voters taking their allotted space in a left vs right, or even globalist vs nationalist spectrum”. After years of “operating from the periphery”, the Greens now have enough seats to make themselves a “near-essential partner in any functioning coalition”, says Jim Brunsden in the Financial Times. The Parliament’s centre-right, centre-left and liberal parties could try to work together, but their majority would be “fragile, and highly vulnerable to internal splits”. But is the…

We all know that Warren Buffett is a great investor, says Michael Brush of Marketwatch.com. But the obsessive focus on Buffett means we run the risk of neglecting other stockmarket stars who could teach us useful lessons. Kevin Landis, who runs the Firsthand Technology Opportunities Fund, is a good example, says Brush. Unlike Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway vehicle, his fund has beaten both the wider US market (the S&P 500 Index) and its peer group over the last ten years. So how does he do it? Landis believes in owning a concentrated portfolio – if a fund manager owns fewer than 40 stocks, he notes, it puts pressure on them to get it right. “I never really thought investors should pay active money managers for their 50th-best idea.” As for how…

The “73 lucky Britons” who were elected to the European Parliament on Sunday can look forward to drawing one of the world’s biggest parliamentary pay cheques, says Andrew Byrne in The Sunday Times. MEPs earn £90,576 in salary, and they can allocate more than three times as much in expenses. They get a general allowance of £46,680 a year, with an additional £257,974 staff allowance, which is paid directly to employees. MEPs also receive a personal travel allowance of £3,675 and £275 for each day they sign the Parliament’s register in Brussels or Strasbourg. Britain’s MEPs take their seats on 2 July, and assuming the UK still leaves on 31 October, they will receive £45,752, and another £85,991 for staff salaries over four months, most of which will be in…

hitchensblog. mailonsunday.co.uk A “frightening omen” has appeared that bodes ill for Britain, says Peter Hitchens – empty seats in the House of Commons during Prime Minister’s Questions. The “central ritual” of our democracy has now become so dull that quite a few MPs can no longer be bothered to turn up. This is a clear sign that “something is seriously wrong”. In the 1980s, the country was divided into two mutually hostile tribes. But the divisions were reflected in our parliament – in a twice weekly joust between Neil Kinnock and Margaret Thatcher. Because the issues that divided us were addressed, nobody felt “voiceless and forgotten”. Today the country is again divided. The rise of Jeremy Corbyn and the Brexit result are symptoms of a divide between what we might…

■ Terry Smith is to step back from the day-today running of the Fundsmith Emerging Equities Trust, says Patrick Hosking in The Times. Since its launch in 2014 the fund, which invests in consumer goods companies in emerging economies, has returned 23.7%, relative to 49.1% for emerging markets generally. The fund’s underperformance can partly be explained by a sell-off in the Indian market, where it has 40% of its assets, and by the success of Chinese internet companies, banks and insurers, which it has shunned. Smith will continue to play a part in the “big investment decisions” of the trust, but will no longer vet small position changes, handing this responsibility to newly appointed portfolio managers. “I’m not running away from this,” he said. “I’ve still got a lot of…

Britain hasn’t had anything that could be described as a hard-left government since 1979, when Margaret Thatcher ousted Jim Callaghan’s Labour government. That could be about to change. We can’t say exactly how likely a Jeremy Corbyn-led government is. But in the wake of the European elections and Theresa May’s resignation as prime minister, it’s certainly a possibility. The Conservative party is torn between “hard” Brexiteers such as Boris Johnson and near-Remainers such as Rory Stewart, yet both factions would agree on one thing – given their drubbing in the European elections (see page 8), it would be best to delay a general election for as long as possible (5 May 2022 is currently the next scheduled date). But the parliamentary arithmetic remains against the new leader. As Samuel Tombs…

It’s safe to say that my suggestion to short online food delivery firm Just Eat last September (issue 915) didn’t work out particularly well. After I made the tip, it rose in price from 660p to 735p. Eventually I decided that, as it was making a loss after six months, enough was enough and that the best thing to do was to cover your position and close the trade at a loss of £228. In retrospect, I’d have been better off saying nothing, as the price subsequently crashed by nearly 20%, to below the original level of my “short” tip, at 620p. So why am I suggesting that you short it again now? “Slowing growth suggests that Just Eat may have reached saturation point” Just Eat has been hit by…

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are tempting targets for cybercriminals. Their defences tend to be less sophisticated than their larger peers, but they still offer rich pickings, from valuable personal data to banking and payment systems. New data from the government underlines the scale of the challenge now facing SMEs: 40% of small businesses and 60% of medium-sized firms have experienced some form of cybersecurity breach or attack in the past 12 months. While no organisation, large or small, can ever achieve complete security, doing the basics well is actually relatively cheap and very effective. First, it’s worth checking how physically secure your office is, as you want to restrict access to anything that would contain sensitive details, or give an attacker the information they need to try to trick…

The Troy Income & Growth Trust aims to provide shareholders with an attractive yield and the prospect of both income and capital growth. Historically, the key to market-beating returns with lower-than-average volatility has been investing in high-quality equities. We interpret quality as a preference for capital-light companies that can sustainably generate high returns on capital. As part of our endeavour to shield investors from excessive equity-market volatility, we employ a hard discount control policy, ensuring that not only do the trust’s shares continually trade within a few percentage points of the underlying net asset value, but also that investors can enjoy significantly improved liquidity when buying and selling the trust’s shares. This pizza group will deliver We often find franchise companies provide interesting hunting grounds and the trust currently holds…

It is hard to believe Niki Lauda is dead, says Jonathan McEvoy in the Daily Mail. He was “the motor-racing legend who for so long had simply refused to die”. Yet he has finally succumbed to the long-term effects of the horrific accident that “by all rights of reason should have killed him 43 years ago” when he swerved off the track at Nurburgring and “sat trapped inside his Ferrari as it burst into a fireball”. Lauda – who was 70 when he died in his sleep eight months after lung-transplant surgery – survived in 1976 and, through sheer will power, returned to racing at the Italian Grand Prix a mere 40 days after his accident. It was “arguably the greatest comeback in the history of sport”. He went on…

70.7 The percentage of shoes sold in the US imported from China. Footwear firms signed an open letter last week urging President Donald Trump to end the trade war with China, saying that, in come cases, tariffs could reach as high as 67.5%. 381 The record number of permits issued by Nepal to climbers wanting to scale Mount Everest in the spring season. The permits for the “normal route” cost $11,000 (charged in US dollars). Last week, a photo taken by Nirmal Purja, a former Gurkha soldier, showed hundreds of climbers queuing to reach the summit. 400 The number of licences to be issued annually by Botswana for the shooting of elephants. Conservationists criticised the country in southern Africa for lifting the 2014 ban on hunting elephants, but Botswana says…