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“Big UK value stocks could well be the trade of the next decade” At the beginning of 2010 we offered you an idea about the asset class we thought should do best over the next ten years. Japanese equities, we said, would be the “trade of the decade”. At the time they were, as Merryn pointed out, unloved, unfashionable, underowned and undervalued (see moneyweek. com/japan-trade-of-the-decade). The Nikkei 225 traded on a average price-to-book (p/b) value of about one. That’s cheap. We didn’t expect it to go nuts in a year but we were convinced (as we usually are) that value always outs and that Japan would be a very good long-term investment. It has been. The Nikkei is up around 200% since (see page 4). That hasn’t made it the…

Lockdown has cost budget gym franchise PureGym about £500,000 a day, the company’s boss told the BBC. Eight months of closures have seen the 275 gyms rack up about £120m in costs with no revenue to cover them. While the government furlough scheme has covered a portion of staff salaries, the business still has many other costs, as well as “sizeable” rent arrears. Italian heiress Camilla de Bourbon had to pay a £2m fine this week as part of a “bitter inheritance dispute” over her mother’s €250m (£216m) trust fund, says Harriet Dennys in The Mail on Sunday. The princess was fined in December after Jersey’s highest court ruled she had ignored an order to reveal the location of valuable assets owned by her mother. Her appeal against the penalty…

“Everything’s glittering except for gold”, writes Mike Bird in The Wall Street Journal. You’d think these would be good times for gold. Commodities are roaring and central bankers seem keen to stoke inflation. Yet the yellow metal is being left behind. Trading at around $1,810/oz (£1,280/oz) this week gold is still more than 10% short of its early August highs. Even silver has been attracting more interest of late thanks to Reddit traders. The idea that the surge in bitcoin, dubbed “digital gold” by some, is overshadowing the real thing has become a market commonplace, says Joe Weisenthal on Bloomberg. But it isn’t true. Bitcoin is really a “risk-on” asset that is more comparable with a stock like Tesla. Gold, by contrast, is a traditional safe haven strongly influenced by…

The annual deficit has spiked towards 20% of GDP this financial year. That is higher than during the financial crisis and is eclipsed only by the two world wars, notes Isabel Stockton of the Institute for Fiscal Studies. It won’t come down quickly either: post-crisis “economic scarring could keep borrowing elevated for years”. Yet with ten-year gilts yielding less than 0.7%, the costs of servicing that debt are the lowest they have been in three centuries. With borrowing so cheap the chancellor’s short-term focus will be on nurturing the recovery rather than fighting the deficit. Yet ultimately net tax rises of £60bn will be needed to “balance the books” and pay for the costs of an ageing population.…

The European initial public offering (IPO) market has had its best start to the year since 2015 thanks to a series of technology and e-commerce listings, says Nikou Asgari in the Financial Times. Companies have sold €8.4bn in equity through 16 deals. Around 70% of the equity sold was in companies that have been boosted by the shift to online shopping during the pandemic, including card retailer Moonpig and self-service parcel-locker business InPost. Floats such as online car dealer Auto1’s in Frankfurt and mobile-gaming company Huuuge in Warsaw have allowed bankers to highlight Europe’s digital offerings, which are usually overshadowed by Wall Street’s tech companies.…

Only a few weeks after the 737 MAX jet was finally cleared to resume flying after an hiatus of almost two years, prompted by safety concerns, Boeing is facing another “public-relations nightmare”, says Alan Tovey in The Daily Telegraph. The latest incident comes after one of its Boeing 777 jets was forced to make an emergency landing when an engine burst into flames, leading to “debris being scattered far and wide on the ground”. Regulators have insisted that all 128 of the 777s with the type of engine that failed be temporarily grounded and inspected. Don’t panic, says Jon Sindreu in The Wall Street Journal. While this is “more unwelcome publicity” for an “already battered US aerospace industry”, it isn’t “another 737 MAX debacle”. The problem is likely to affect…

Last weekend, the boss of the Leon fast-food chain, John Vincent, made some mildly critical remarks about the dangers of extending lockdown any further. Immediately he faced furious accusations that he was endangering lives, putting profits before public health, and only trying to further his own narrow commercial interests. The same fate has befallen any other business leader brave enough to question whether we can keep the economy closed down forever. Surely this is crazy. Nothing Vincent said was especially controversial. He argued it was “quite possible” Leon could fold “if weeks and months drag on”, as it was losing around £200,000 a week, adding that no one in charge of policy seemed to mind what happened to companies such as his. You can agree or disagree with his assessment.…

For around 40 years, inflation has not been a worry for investors in most markets. Indeed, since the early 2000s, deflation has been viewed as the biggest macroeconomic threat. That might be about to change. Markets are waking up to the risk that a better-than-expected post-pandemic bounce, combined with big-spending governments backed by money-printing central banks, might just create rising prices. So how do you prepare? “Equities have been a surprisingly poor inflation hedge” Sean Markowicz, a strategist at fund manager Schroders, has put out a paper on the topic. He took US data going back to March 1973 on seven asset classes to see how sensitive they are to inflation: bonds (US Treasuries); equities (US stocks); cash (three-month T-bills); property (real estate investment trusts, or Reits); inflation-linked bonds (TIPS…

Why we’re so relaxed about tax Ed Conway The Times Sir Paul Chambers may not be a household name, but his ideas resulted in the current pay-as-you-earn, or PAYE system, introduced in 1944, says Ed Conway. Before then, most people paid tax (resentfully) in arrears. Since then, the system has been exported around the world. “I have a pet theory” that PAYE – and its expansion to cover more taxes – has “dulled our appetite for reform because so much tax collection is happening without us noticing”. It may also explain why most people support higher taxes for better public services even though the tax burden is set to reach 38.2% of GDP, its highest since the mid-1980s. The other important legacy handed down “by bureaucrats past” is the length…

iea.org.uk Prejudice against the moneylenders is deeply ingrained, says Philip Booth. Commentators often lament that clever mathematicians and physicists end up in the financial sector rather than becoming engineers. Lord Adair Turner, the former head of the financial regulator, says that much of what goes on in banks is “socially useless”. President Roosevelt lamented the practices of the “unscrupulous money changers”. St Thomas Aquinas considered lending money for interest “unjust in itself”. Yet those clever physicists go and work for banks for a reason. The total value added by the UK financial sector represents about 7% of all output but only just over 3% of all jobs. In other words, it is a sector with very high productivity. Jobs there pay highly as aresult. And the UK’s success in that…

Banks are often prepared to make a juicy switching offer in order to entice new customers to their current accounts. It is a successful tactic. According to data from the Current Account Switch Service (CASS), Halifax notched up 22,000 new current accounts between July and September last year – the largest gain of any provider in that period. No wonder: it was offering a £100 switching incentive at the time. At present First Direct is offering £100 to new current account customers, while HSBC has a £125 switching bonus. Meanwhile, Virgin Money will give new customers 15,000 Virgin Red points. “This would buy you a ‘truffle-experience’ at home, a language course and abottle of bourbon, or six bottles of Prosecco from Virgin Wines, and five sausage rolls and three hot…

Despite the ongoing pandemic the US stockmarket continues to boom. As a result, valuations are at record levels, with the benchmark S&P 500 index now trading on atrailing price/ earnings (p/e) ratio of 30. While this is partly due to the fact that earnings have been depressed by the pandemic, even if you compare it with predicted profits the market still looks pricey. Edward Yardeni of Yardeni Research estimates that it is on a forward p/e of 22, the highest level since 2001 and nearly double the earnings multiple it was trading at a decade ago. It is, in short, very difficult to find shares that look priced at bargain levels. One of the few stocks that looks very reasonably priced, however, is housebuilder DR Horton (NYSE: DHI), which trades…

Speculating about the timing and magnitude of the British economic recovery this year is pointless – not because it doesn’t matter but because we have no control over it. Investors should bear in mind that the best companies are those using this time to ensure they can survive and even thrive despite the highly uncertain outlook for their businesses. Managing liquidity and ensuring their relevance in a changing world will be important regardless of the scale of recovery. Here are some examples of the firms we think are eager to control their own destinies. An evolving leader A real danger in 2021 is that we see the so-called post-2008 “expensive defensives” as backward-looking relics amid the scramble for technology stocks. Arguably, once the headline tech story starts to fade, the…

2019 Château de Bousval, Gouttes d’O Chardonnay, Bousval, Jardins de Wallonie, Belgium £34, reduced to £30.25 each by the case, Haynes Hanson & Clark, 020-7584 7927, hhandc.co.uk Early one evening, just before Christmas, the doorbell rang and a voice shouted out “wine delivery”. This is nothing new – it happens ten times a day – but I thought I recognised the voice. The cycle courier turned out to be none other than Jim Eustace, MD and fine-wine guru at Haynes Hanson & Clark. Soaking wet, but grinning from ear to ear, he was clutching two bottles of white each with a dribble of wine left inside. He handed them over and then sped off, shouting, “Happy Tasting, they are from Belgium!”. Until that evening, I had never tasted Belgian wine.…

Elon Musk (pictured) lost his title – for a time, at least – as the world’s richest person after the price of Tesla shares slid 8.6% earlier this week, wiping $15.2bn from his net worth, says Devon Pendleton on Bloomberg. Tesla’s biggest drop since September was partly fuelled by Musk saying the prices of cryptocurrencies bitcoin and smaller rival ether “do seem high” via his “favoured medium of Twitter… two weeks after Tesla announced it added $1.5bn in bitcoin to its balance sheet”. Bitcoin has risen by more than 400% in the past year, but fell sharply this week, slipping below $50,000 at one point. Musk’s loss took his net worth down to $183.4bn and saw Amazon founder Jeff Bezos reclaim the top spot, with a fortune of $186.3bn.…

After several decades of “false dawns” the sun is finally rising on Japanese shares, says Ian Cowie on Interactive Investor. The Nikkei 225 index has broken through the 30,000-point level for the first time since 1990. Roaring Japanese markets had dominated financial headlines for much of the 1980s. When “the music stopped” few could have predicted that it would be such a long climb back. Sadly, “quite a few longterm investors in the world’s third-largest economy” didn’t live to see this day. A protracted post-bubble hangover The “lost decades” after the stockmarket bubble’s implosion have turned Japanese equities into the “red-headed stepchild of global asset allocation”, says Udith Sikand for Gavekal Research. There have been moments of hope: foreign investors poured $240bn into the local market after former prime minister…

“Trust in [the US] government is near record lows... Business is one of the very few institutions that have maintained the public’s confidence... the country’s biggest companies and its leaders are enjoying the highest levels of approval among the public relative to almost any other institution... they are perceived as capable and competent... When it became dangerous to go to stores, retailers [delivered] essentials directly to the home... This stands in sharp contrast to the ineptness toward the... pandemic exhibited by governments at every level...Businesses and their leaders have not always been recognised as... trustworthy. Bankers were rightly blamed for... the 2008-2009 financial crisis [but] when business leaders are emphasising the rule of law and a peaceful transition of power even as the president of the US refuses to, something…

Five to buy RELX Investors Chronicle RELX, which mostly analyses data for a wide range of sectors, also runs events. Revenue at this division slumped by 71% in 2020 due to Covid-19 restrictions. But its three largest business areas, scientific, technical and medical, and risk and legal, posted combined growth in operating profit of 4% to £2.25bn. It’s also continued to invest in itself, completing 11 acquisitions in 2020, some of which have supported its “digital-first strategy”. Electronic revenues grew by 4% year on year in 2020 to £6.18bn. The group’s mostly digital operations “should be able to see it through the storm”. 1,742p Elementis Shares Chemicals firm Elementis “ticks all the boxes for an investor looking for an overlooked and undervalued stock set to benefit from the reopening of…

• With profits down by 50% in the last quarter of 2020, HSBC has unveiled a “further... retreat from the west”, say Stephen Morris and Tabby Kinder in the Financial Times. The bank will sell its retail arms and invest $6bn to expand in Hong Kong, China and Singapore. The move reinforces a strategy set last year, which will “shift $100bn of capital to Asia” to “become a market leader in wealth management” there. HSBC’s moves don’t actually go very far, says Liam Proud on Breakingviews. The proportion of the bank’s equity tied up in Asia will rise from 42% to “around half”. And despite the renewed emphasis on wealth management and insurance, the proportion of revenue generated by these divisions will only increase from 29% to 35%. By spurning…

Fresh from his acquittal on charges of inciting insurrection, Donald Trump is planning to use his first public appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Sunday to “send the message” that he is the Republicans’ “presumptive 2024 nominee”, says Mike Allen on Axios. Trump is reportedly meeting with key political aides to plan his next moves and to set up the machinery for “kingmaking” in the 2022 midterms. This includes primary challenges for “some of those who have crossed him”; he also plans to “shower money and endorsements” on the “Trumpiest” candidates. Even Trump’s few Republican critics concede that, at the moment at least, there is little they can do to stop him being the party’s next nominee, says Thomas Kaplan in The New York Times. Senator Mitt Romney,…

• Rio Tinto’s former chief executive, Jean-Sébastien Jacques, (pictured) received a 20% pay rise for 2020, taking his total pay to £7.2m. That year, the Anglo-Australian mining giant came under heavy criticism for blasting the Juukan Gorge caves, ancient Aboriginal rock shelters, costing Jacques his executive performance bonuses, worth an estimated £2.7m, and forcing him to stand down, says the Financial Times. The increase in his pay is due to the surge in the value of unvested shares awarded in 2016 when he took on the role. • HSBC bank is handing its finance chief, Ewen Stevenson, a £147,000 pay rise after deciding to expand his responsibilities as part of the latest executive reshuffle at Europe’s biggest lender. The former NatWest finance chief will see his base salary increase from…

Purchasing power parity (PPP) is a theory that tries to work out how over- or undervalued one currency is relative to another. It does this by comparing the price of identical goods in different economies. The idea is that a similar basket of goods should cost roughly the same wherever you go. Why? Because if goods are cheaper in one country than another, then that country should be able to export them to the other for a profit. In turn, those sales would boost demand for the exporter’s currency, driving the exchange rate higher, and eliminating the difference between the two. As a result, purchasing power between countries should tend towards parity in the long run. The best-known PPP currency indicator is the “Big Mac index”, published by The Economist…

“Homes, probably — I’m not someone who spends on little things. I’m not a jewellery or watch type of person. I like buying a nice car or a beautiful home. I’m more of a big-picture investor.” Actress Priyanka Chopra (pictured) on her biggest extravagance, quoted in the Evening Standard ”Rich people get misery too! It’s something that’s not talked about enough.” Artist Grayson Perry, quoted in The Times “I’ve never seen the restrictions, so for me there haven’t been any. I think it’s a personal perception. What you want to see and what you want for yourself. Sometimes working-class actors are in and sometimes they’re out! Sometimes Etonians are in, and sometimes they’re out!” Actress Jane Horrocks on never feeling intimidated or hampered by her working-class background, quoted in The…

fs.blog In Crossing the Unknown Sea, poet David Whyte suggests we should view our work as a lifelong journey, says Shane Parrish. The greatest rewards lie in what we learn through the process, not in the destination. Just like in a sea voyage, the nature of our work is always changing. There are stormy days and sunny ones. You need to look after the boat. As Whyte learned aboard ship as a naturalist in the Galapagos Islands, this means nurturing a sense of “inner captaincy”. One morning Whyte awoke to find the captain asleep and the boat drifting towards disaster. It would be natural to blame the captain. Yet he was new and less familiar with the boat than Whyte and the other crew members. Experience counts for more than…

Open banking is a great British success story. Launched in 2018, this initiative, backed by the government, regulators and industry, lets third-party providers access your financial information at the touch of a button, but only after you’ve given explicit consent (renewed every 90 days). The idea is to connect various service providers to your bank account and thus benefit from a wide range of products and services that are tailored to your needs because they are based on analysing your data. Around 300 financial technology firms (“fintechs”) and innovative-finance providers have joined the open-banking network and more than 2.5 million British consumers and businesses now use open banking-enabled products to manage their finances, access credit and make payments. One practical measure of success is that so-called API call volume –…

Online sales accounted for 35% of all retail sales in the UK last month, an all-time high. But retailers who assume this percentage will fall back once the Covid-19 lockdown comes to an end may be making a costly mistake. Analyst Retail Economics estimates that since the beginning of the pandemic, one in two Britons have bought a product online they had previously only bought in a shop. People’s shopping habits are changing for good. Building a platform For smaller businesses, this represents a challenge. They may lack the expertise to exploit e-commerce opportunities. And even if they do manage to get online sales and fulfilment operations up and running, they may struggle to attract attention in a crowded marketplace where larger rivals have huge marketing budgets. “Mighty Small touts…

Not only is the weather much warmer than it was a few weeks ago and the evenings noticeably longer, but we are also only a few days away from the start of March, which is generally acknowledged as the beginning of meteorological spring in the Northern hemisphere. However, should you let the change of the seasons dictate your trading strategy? Generally the summer and autumn are viewed as poor times for investors. Some traders still go by the old adage that you should “sell in May and stay away” until the autumn. Surprisingly, the evidence suggests that the stockmarket does indeed perform better in certain months than others, at least when it comes to the US. Taking into account the overall returns in the S&P 500 for the 70 years…

Copper prices reached their highest level since 2013 towards the end of last year, and are expected to continue rising, says Liam Roche in UK Investor Magazine. A 50% increase in demand for copper is expected over the next 20 years as the global recovery gathers momentum and electric vehicles become more popular; they use more of the red metal than conventional cars. Chile-based miner Antofagasta (LSE: ANTO) specialises in copper and is expanding its capacity. Next year it will add 60,000 tonnes to its annual production. The stock has more than doubled in a year.…

Jeff Carpoff, born in 1970, trained as a car mechanic before setting up RoverLand USA, which became one of the largest independent certified Land Rover and Jaguar repair facilities in America. A chance encounter with a client who wanted to have solar panels installed, but was worried about them being stolen, led Jeff and his wife, Paulette, to set up DC Solar, anew company that provided mobile solar-power generators. The company quickly established a reputation as a major player in the solar industry, providing temporary generators for a range of clients, including a concert by the pop star Pink. What was the scam? Between 2011 and 2018, DC Solar decided to fund its expansion by selling its generators to investors through its subsidiary DC Solar Solutions, with the idea that…

Going… Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1982 painting Warrior (left) will become the most valuable Western artwork ever offered in Asia, when it goes up for auction with Christie’s on 23 March in Hong Kong. The painting carries a HK$240m (£22m) upper estimate. It was, says the auction house, painted at the height of Basquiat’s “artistic power”, while the artist was still in his early 20s, marking him out as one of the most important painters of the last half century. The “Christ-like, gladiatorial figure” was “extensively explored by the artist in numerous sketches prior to this work”. In 2017, Christie’s in New York sold a similar painting, La Hara (1981), for $35m, including fees. Gone… Sandro Botticelli’s masterpiece Young Man Holding a Roundel (late 15th-century) sold for $92m, with fees, late last…

• Facebook has declared war on Australia, the first country brave enough to take on this tax-avoiding titan, by demanding it must pay for news, says Amanda Platell in the Daily Mail. The social network’s response was to ban all news feeds Down Under. “So much for the ordinary folk!” And where is the company’s vice-president of global affairs and communications? “Perish the thought” that Sir Nick Clegg (pictured) should “stir from his £7m mansion in the California sun or jeopardise his £1m-plus salary to stick up for the downtrodden of Oztoday, as they are threatened and bullied by Facebook”. It’s not a good look for someone who “rammed his moral principles… down our throats so tediously when he was Lib Dem leader”. We shouldn’t be surprised. “Sir Nick is…

The latest figures from the US Congressional Budget Office were shocking… but not surprising. The budget deficit will total $2.3trn – 10.3% of GDP –in 2021 and total $12.3trn (4.4% of GDP) over the next decade. Debt will reach a new record as a share of the economy, growing from over 79% of GDP at the end of 2019 to more than 102% by the end of 2021. It will grow another $13.6trn by the end of 2031, ultimately reaching $35.3trn. It could be even higher if policymakers enact $2trn of additional fiscal relief. “The government is flat broke. It has not a penny to fulfil its core functions” We remind you that these figures are just part of a Big Picture. It is the picture of a degenerate empire…

€5,000 The price per kilogram of white truffles, which are mainly found in Italy and the Balkans. Scientists from the French National Institute for Research into Agriculture, Food and the Environment (Inrae) say they are a step closer to cultivating them in France and Britain. £500m The latest round of funding, announced by the government last week, to repair local roads in England –enough, it says, to fix ten million potholes. It forms the second instalment of a £2.5bn, five-year “potholes fund”, announced £4.8bn How much Barclays bank has set aside to cover loan defaults amid the economic fallout from government policy in the wake of Covid-19. The bank, which provided £27bn in emergency loans to businesses during the pandemic, nevertheless said it would resume dividends. £40.66 The cost to…

John Lewis has seen home accessory sales leap as workers “zoom-scape” their walls for video meetings, says Sam Meadows in The Daily Telegraph. Sales of picture frames, art, and mirrors from the department store chain are up by 80%, 113% and 65% respectively on last year. “Attractive” lamps and plants are also in demand. Rapper and entrepreneur Jay Z (pictured) sold a 50% stake in his champagne house, Armand de Brignac, to luxury goods group LVMH, says Ali Mitib in The Times, for an undisclosed sum. Armand de Brignac sold more than 500,000 bottles in 2019, but 2020 was a “difficult year” for the industry as nightclubs and restaurants shut, and big celebrations were cancelled.…

“Software powerhouse” Oracle has been in a rut, but things are “about to change”. The company has reinvented itself for the cloud-computing era, betting on acloud-only version of its core database-software business. Sales growth is already strong. But the firm is “certainly not being valued” asa cloud-software giant. The market “assumes Oracle is not going to grow at all”, but once it “begins to understand Oracle’s cloud transformation… the upside is considerable”. There might be some risks involved as the company takes on “gigantic rivals with deeper pockets”, but Oracle’s shares “look remarkably cheap, making buying them a risk well worth taking”.…

Uber’s share price has been “sent into reverse” thanks to a “landmark” judgement over the employment status of the ride-hailing app’s UK drivers, says Simon Freeman in the Evening Standard. The UK Supreme Court has decided to uphold a 2016 ruling by an employment tribunal that drivers on its platform should be classified as Uber workers rather than self-employed. This means that Uber’s drivers in the UK are entitled to “a minimum wage, overtime, sick pay, holiday pay, pensions” and possibly retrospective compensation. The ruling is definitely bad news for Uber, as it threatens its entire business model, says Morgan Schondelmeier in The Daily Telegraph. Not only will drivers be entitled to rights such as paid holidays and regular breaks, but the Supreme Court has also ruled that a driver…

The government says people will “not face major restrictions if they refuse” a vaccine and is considering recent negative Covid-19 tests as an alternative to “vaccine passports”, says Jim Pickard in the FT. Despite Boris Johnson’s concerns about the ethical issues of Covid-19 status certification (via an app or documentation), people may be asked for proof that they are disease-free for admission to workplaces, stadiums or restaurants. Michael Gove is to lead an official review into the issue and is due to report back by 21 June. Johnson was right to order the review, says The Times. Some businesses have already said they are planning to insist employees have one, although it is “almost certainly illegal” to discriminate on this basis. The government is unlikely to want to change the…

An anomaly in the US Constitution is the status of Washington DC. Its population of 702,455 makes it larger than Wyoming and Vermont, yet it is a federal district under the control of Congress, rather than a state. This is a legacy of the days in which it was just asmall town inhabited by lawmakers. It means that, with the exception of a single non-voting delegate in the House of Representatives (currently Eleanor Holmes Norton, pictured), its residents are denied any representation in Congress (though they do get three electoral college votes). There has recently been a big push to try to fix this anomaly. Some have proposed giving most of the city’s territory (apart from the Capitol) to another state; a popular solution is simply to turn it into…

It pays to be a European investment banker right now; less so if you work in another part of the business, such as retail banking, say Owen Walker, Stephen Morris and Attracta Mooney in the Financial Times. The former, such as those at Credit Suisse and Barclays, are set to enjoy increased bonuses after a bumper year of trading and deal making; the latter will see their payouts cut or cancelled altogether. Staff at Italy’s Intesa Sanpaolo and Germany’s Commerzbank have had their payouts cut by as much as half; Lloyds has cancelled payouts for last year. That leaves bosses facing “a tricky balancing act” between rewarding staff who capitalised on the boom in trading, listings and deal making, while acknowledging the bleak economic environment and “seeking to avoid tarnishing…

“Inflation is already here and everyone knows it,” hedge fund manager Kyle Bass tells CNN’s Julia Chatterley. Official US inflation figures have been distorted, he says, by collapsing rents in cities such as San Francisco and New York (as workers move to remote working in cheaper areas). But elsewhere in the US, inflation is already obvious. The surging cost of raw materials such as copper and lumber means “the price to build things is doubling year-over-year”. This will only continue – Bass expects US president Joe Biden’s administration to not only push through the $1.9trn stimulus package already announced, but another $3trn to spend on infrastructure. “People need to be thinking longer term about what they own.” Could cryptocurrency bitcoin be a “stimulus asset”, as another hedge fund manager, Jeff…

adamsmith.org/blog “Much is made these days about how we’re all obese and falling over like weighty flies at great cost to the NHS,” says Tim Worstall. This has led some to call for government action, placing restrictions on food prices and so on. This makes no sense. Obesity in fact “saves the NHS money”, by leading us to an earlier grave and saving on the costs of elderly care, for example. And it should be “up to each one of us how we live our lives and meet our end”. We should be aware, too, that historically being overweight was a sign of authority and wealth. This is the first time in history that the majority of people have been rich enough for their weight to be a problem. We…

The past fortnight has been kind to my long tips, with three out of four appreciating. Media group ITV went up from 108p to 114p, transport group National Express advanced from 301p to 316p and cruise-ship company Norwegian Cruise Lines climbed from $25.01 to $28.56. However, pub group Mitchells &Butlers not only slipped from 348p to 323p, but it also briefly fell below 300p, which would have automatically closed the bet. Still, the net profits on all four tips increased from £5,610 to £5,800. My short tips were more of a mixed bag. Electric lorry-maker Nikola fell from $23.50 to $20.92 and online grocer Ocado declined from 2,688p to 2,296p. Cloud-computing firm Snowflake fell below the $280 level that I suggested should trigger a short, and is currently at $270,…

Like most airlines Jet2 (LSE: JET2) has struggled throughout the pandemic and its balance sheet has suffered serious damage. The shares slipped again last week after the group announced a £422m share issue to help it ride out the crisis, says Tom Witherow in the Daily Mail. Jet2 said the new round of funding gave it enough liquidity to see it through “an extended and unpredictable shutdown” but remained cautious when it came to the upcoming summer season as the government has advised people not to book flights or travel. The stock has slipped by 37% over the past 12 months.…

This bespoke silver double ended spirit measure is not only elegant, but will also show you just how small a double shot actually is compared with the measures we slosh in ourselves at home. It can b be engraved with a name or a personal message. £499, designsinsilver .co.uk A crystal cocktail shaker by designer Eliská Sapera, known for her ability to combine contemporary luxury with traditional aesthetics. This classic piece will make a stylish addition to your cocktail bar. £140, wolfandbadger.com Chill your wine to the perfect temperature with this wine cabinet made by specialists Dunavox. It holds up to 54 bottles in two compartments that can be maintained at different temperatures. £799, elitefridges.co .uk This limited-edition Baccarat Haute Couture Beaune decanter has been blown by glass masters in…

It’s not just new technology (see left) that is getting collectors excited. Old “retro” computers are too. “‘Retrocomputing’, [as] the hobby is called, is hardly just a way to pass the time,” says Kim Key in The New York Times. “Instead, as enthusiasts see it, it’s a means of communing with the past.” Demand for cumbersome, old vintage kit is rising, with collectors flocking to online message boards to trade spare parts. “You get into this mind-set of what it must’ve been like to be somebody in the late 1970s, having spent thousands of dollars on this thing that barely does anything more than a calculator,” Clint Basinger, who runs YouTube channel Lazy Game Reviews, tells the paper. “It’s like a time machine to me.” Before the pandemic struck, vintage…