Indholdsfortegnelse for 1122 i MoneyWeek

Most prime ministers would look at the most recent stamp-duty receipts and be pretty pleased. In the first eight months of the year, £10.6bn was collected. In August alone, receipts hit £1.6bn, the second-largest amount on record (after £1.7bn in December 2021). Not to be sniffed at. Unless you are Liz Truss, who has a plan for this golden goose. It is (as far as we know – I am writing ahead of Friday’s event) to slash or kill it. This is fabulous news. Long-term readers will know that we consider stamp duty to be the worst tax in Britain (and given the choices available to us here that is saying something). It makes it hard for buyers to save up deposits – they have to come up with the…

“Russia’s aggression... reminds us that the post-Soviet ‘peace dividend’ was... largely illusory... The world is still riven with conflict, and it would be pure folly to keep paring back our military capabilities, especially in terms of boots on the ground. Plans for a beefed-up military, and the budgets that come with it, represent a clear opportunity for investors... military spending is largely countercyclical, in that it doesn’t necessarily follow the commercial business cycle... Assuming the PM is serious about cranking up spending, we shouldn’t sniff at the implied numbers... The UK has the fourth-largest defence budget in the world, accounting for around 2.2% [of] GDP. Truss has pledged to increase that to 3% by 2030... an extra £24.9bn annually based on 2021 statistics... we think that this is one area…

“Forty years after Mike Ashley opened his first store” he is to step down from the board of Fraser Group, the owner of Sports Direct and House of Fraser, says Julia Kollewe in The Guardian. Ashley (pictured) will remain the group’s controlling shareholder with a near-70% stake and keep advising the board. The move cements the authority of his son-in-law, Michael Murray, who has been CEO since May. Many investors will welcome the fact that “controversies should no longer erupt around his bonuses, derivatives bets or treatment of warehouse staff”, says Lex in the Financial Times. But it’s easy to forget that Ashley “enjoyed rapturous applause during Sports Direct’s rapid growth phase”. This support disappeared “as he floundered with his leadership role and sales faltered”, while JD Sports has eclipsed…

U-Haul is“ synonymous with rental trucks used by do-it-yourself movers”, says Barron’s. The group dominates its market, with nearly ten times the number of rental locations as Penske, a major competitor. That makes Amerco, U-Haul’s parent company, worth a look. Alongside its rental operations, Amerco also has a large self-storage business, which doesn’t seem to have been factored into the share price. Oddly, despite its $10bn market value, Amerco “can’t get Wall Street’s attention”. There are no profit estimates for the current fiscal year because there is “virtually no analyst coverage of the stock”. Steve Galbraith of Kindred Capital Advisors sees scope for a 50% jump in the share price.…

Ulf Kristersson, the leader of Sweden’s centre-right Moderates, has been formally asked to form a new government by the speaker of parliament, Andreas Norlén. That new government is likely to include the far-right anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats (SD) either as a formal coalition partner or as support to the government via a “confidence and supply” agreement, says Euronews. In Sweden’s 11 September election, four centre-right and four far-right parties won 176 seats while the centre-left coalition that includes the ruling Social Democratic Party won 173 seats. SD is now the country’s largest party, with more than 20% of the vote. It should, therefore, in theory, be SD leader Jimmie Åkesson who is in charge of forming the government. The only reason this isn’t happening is because the parties that “extended” SD…

When placing a bet, it’s always important to read the small print. A case in point is the betting on who will control the US Senate after the upcoming mid-term elections. With £23,165 matched, Smarkets has the Democrats at 1.58 (64%) to control the Senate, with the Republicans at 2.7 (37%). Yet with £294,248 matched on Betfair, a Republican majority is at 2.88 (34.7%), no majority is at 2.58 (38.8%), while a Democrat majority is out at 3.55 (28.1%). The reason for the seeming difference is that Smarkets focuses on control, while Betfair focuses on majority, which they define as one party getting at least 51 senators out of 100. What’s more, Betfair excludes the two independent senators, Bernie Sanders and Angus King, from their definition of Democrat, even though…

It is unlikely to be a popular move. At a time when the cost of living crisis is squeezing living standards on a scale unprecedented in more than 30 years, when inflation is close to 10%, and when many people are struggling to make ends meet, lifting the controls on the bonuses banks are allowed to pay their staff, as new chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng is expected to do, is going to seem like a provocative move. It is still the right one and will give an important signal that the Truss government is willing to make the right decisions even if it means a few bad headlines and some outrage on Twitter. Time to rip up some more rules The cap never made much sense and it has certainly long…

A cash-flow statement is divided into three sections. Cash flow from operating activities (often referred to as operating cash flow or cash from operations) is the amount of cash that the firm generates from the sales that it makes in the course of its regular business. Cash flow from investing activities is cash spent on or generated from long-term assets. This typically includes buying or selling fixed assets (and investments in securities), as well as capital expenditure on maintaining and improving fixed assets. Cash flow from financing activities is payments to the company’s creditors and owners. This includes proceeds from taking out loans or issuing bonds, interest paid on debt, and the repayment of existing debt, as well as money returned to shareholders through stock buybacks and dividends. The combined…

“We spoke to people from Bloomberg and financial consultants to prepare. One of the cast was actually reading Investment Banking for Dummies. But as an actor, if you get a line of intense jargon, rather than knowing exactly what that means you need to know the stakes. I can’t play a trade but I can play what a trade means to the people involved.” Actor Harry Lawtey (pictured) on preparing for the second season of BBC banking drama Industry “I think it was me who sold Charles that crap pen.” Joke by Gerald Ratner, who notoriously described his jewellery firm’s products as crap in 1991, quoted in The Mail on Sunday. King Charles lost his temper over a leaking pen at a signing ceremony “I spoke like this [with a…

economist.com The British are famous for their love of a queue, and the long line to see the late Queen’s lying-instate was perhaps our greatest ever, says The Economist. But is it the best way of doing things? The alternatives have their downsides. A market-based system discriminates against those unable to pay. A lottery might give tickets to those who care less about it than those who don’t get one. Unregulated queues, where people trade their spots or pay someone to wait for them, would probably outrage the British sense of fair play. The queue has its advantages. Anyone who turns up and is willing to wait gets their chance. Being prepared to wait “signals eagerness” and, certainly in this case, is all part of the experience. True, queuers are…

Activist investor Starboard Value has built a 9% stake in Wix, a website-building platform, says Reuters. Wix’s shares have lost roughly 54% of their value so far this year due to concerns that its clients are not willing to pay enough for its products: its platform had 222 million registered users at the end of 2021, but only six million had premium subscriptions. Wix fell to a loss of $111m for the three months to June, compared with a $37.6m profit in the same period last year, as the end of the pandemic led to a slowdown in e-commerce. Starboard has been in talks with Wix’s management about how the firm can improve operations and “believes the company has a significant opportunity to improve its margins and grow further”, says…

My long tips have produced a mixed performance over the last fortnight, with three rising and three falling. Hays Recruitment rose from 116p to 118p, homeware retailer Dunelm increased from 723p to 787p and streaming service Netflix rose from $226 to $243. However, industrial and construction-equipment rental company Ashtead fell from 4,162p to 4,046p, retailer JD Sports declined from 126p to 121p and Pets at Home slid from 324p to 301p. Overall, my long tips are making a total net loss of £863. My shorts have also had mixed fortunes, with three falling and two rising. Remote medicine firm Teladoc slid from $29.97 to $29.34, DWAC, the holding company for Donald Trump’s social-media empire, declined from $24.99 to $22.40, while real-estate investment trust Digital Realty dipped from $118 to $111.50.…

● Students starting university are being warned to pick a bank account carefully and watch out for scams. Find an account with “a generous, multiyear, interest-free overdraft”, says Toby Walne in The Mail on Sunday. He tips the 123 Student Current Account from Santander and HSBC’s student bank account. Freshers are also warned to be on their guard against online scams, which are expected to spike during the next few weeks. The three annual student payment periods in September, January and April “are a prime time” for crooks to attempt to “trick students”, Bernice McNaught of the Student Loans Company told The Mail on Sunday. ● Homeowners are saddling themselves with a “lifetime of debt”, according to Szu Ping Chan in The Sunday Telegraph. Record numbers are signing up for…

● Complaints about data privacy have increased by 160% over the past three years, and it isn’t only large, high-profile organisations facing problems. The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has also punished many small, privately-owned businesses for failures. Areas where the ICO appears to be cracking down on smaller firms include cold-calling, databases and client lists acquired from other companies with no checks on consent, and failures to respond properly to cybersecurity breaches. ● Small businesses are particularly vulnerable to phishing scams, new analysis from insurer Coalition suggests. Such cyberattacks on small businesses (whereby criminals target the company with fake emails in order to commit fraud or plant malware) have soared during the first half of the year. Criminals appear to have identified email systems as a weak point at…

Shares in online wine retailer Naked Wines (LSE: WINE) fell by 40% last week after the firm announced the sudden departure of non-executive director Pratham Ravi, says the Daily Mail. Ravi’s swift departure, just three weeks after his appointment, suggests something has “gone awry”. To make matters worse the company said in June that customer-retention rates had fallen from 88% to 80% in the last financial year, while a review of its operational and financial plans for the next 18 months, which could involve “reigning in the business”, is due in October. The stock has slumped by 88% in 12 months.…

Chamath Palihapitiya (pictured) “was the embodiment of the blank-cheque craze between 2019 and 2021”, says the Financial Times. Now he’s winding up two of his special purpose acquisition companies (Spacs) and returning $1.5bn to investors after being unable to meet a deadline to find private companies with which to merge. Palihapitiya – who was dubbed the “Spac King” – coined the phrase “IPO2.0” for his strategy of taking hot start-ups public by merging with cash shells set up for the purpose, instead of going through a traditional initial public offering (IPO). Yet five of the six firms that he has taken public are trading at least 40% below the Spac’s initial price, including “fallen stars” such as Opendoor, SoFi and Virgin Galactic. But Palihapitiya “seems to have done just fine”:…

Last Friday the pound fell by another 1% to a new 37-year low against the dollar at $1.1351. It is also at its lowest level against the euro since February 2021. Sterling’s latest tumble “is laden with irony” because it came on 16 September, the thirtieth anniversary of Black Wednesday, “one of the most traumatic days in the post-war history of the pound”, says Ian King on Sky News. That saw the Bank of England hike rates and burn through half of its foreign currency reserves in a forlorn attempt to prop up the pound and keep it in the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. In “a chilling repeat of the dismal day” in 1992, sterling has now suffered a “bleak Friday”, says Susannah Streeter of Hargreaves Lansdown. The UK economy…

US real yields, measured by the yield on ten-year TIPS (the equivalent of UK index-linked gilts) have risen above 1% for only the second time in a decade. Loose monetary policy and high inflation sent real yields below 0% during the Covid-19 pandemic. That prompted an exodus from bonds into riskier assets such as stocks, powering the rally. Yet now rising interest rates have reduced equities’ appeal. Real yields as measured by ten-year US TIPS “have surged by more than two full percentage points” over the last six months, says John Authers on Bloomberg. “This is as big a financial shock as any since the global crisis year of 2008... [it] brings more money into the dollar, and puts more pressure on everyone else.”…

Last week “one of the world’s biggest oil companies” marked the “changing of the guard” when Shell named Wael Sawan, its head of integrated gas and renewables, as its next CEO, says Jenny Strasburg in The Wall Street Journal. He replaces longtime CEO Ben van Beurden, who is stepping down early next year. Van Beurden’s nine years in the top job have seen Shell move its headquarters to London from Amsterdam and scrap its dual listing. He also bought gas giant BG for $50bn, a bet that has “paid off handsomely over the past year”. Rising natural gas prices have allowed Shell to spend “billions of dollars in share buybacks and increased shareholder dividends”. But has van Beurden really justified the $90m in total salary and bonuses that he has…

This year’s stockmarket slide has created the longest dry spell in US technology listings this century, says the Financial Times. By the middle of this week 238 days had passed without a tech initial public offering (IPO) worth more than $50m, surpassing the previous droughts that followed the 2008 financial crisis and the dotcom collapse of the early 2000s. The US market has been rattled by rising interest rates as the US Federal Reserve attempts to bring down inflation. This has dented stock valuations and sparked fears of a recession. This year’s dearth of IPOs marks a stark contrast to 2021, when tech stocks dominated a record-breaking listings market.…

● Naked Wines claims it “connects wine drinkers with winemakers”, says Nils Pratley in The Guardian. “What the e-commerce outfit doesn’t do, it seems, is connect with its poor old shareholders.” Last week it put out two “cryptic” announcements. One said that non-executive director Pratham Ravi had quit, just three weeks after joining as the board representative of a 10% shareholder. The other “hinted at a new strategy, but added an alarming line about ‘active discussions to address our credit facility to reflect any revised plan’”. The shares plunged (see page 30). “Naked’s chairman, Darryl Rawlings, needs to find his clothes and start explaining.” ● “Good looks are in the eye of the beholder. Precious few investors share beauty business THG’s good opinion of itself,” says Lex in the Financial…

Investors in companies with solid earnings should be relaxed about the likelihood of a recession in the UK, says Mark Slater, the manager of the £1.1bn Slater Growth fund. Consider the global financial crisis, when share prices fell “catastrophically”, he told attendees at an event for investors in his fund, reported on Citywire. Earnings rebounded and the two reconnected in a “relatively short period” considering that we think of it “as the worst market period in 50 years”. “It’s not a forecast, you can’t time these things, but it’s reassuring,” said Slater. “As long as we are in at a sensible price, all that matters is that earnings continue to come through.” “Priority spend” sectors, such as cybersecurity – where Slater is invested in NCC – are likely to show…

eyeondesign.aiga.org Remember the floppy disk? Many people not only recall them, but also still rely on them, say Niek Hilkmann and Thomas Walskaar. And not just hobbyists and artists either. Probably half of the air fleet in the world today is more than 20 years old and still relies on floppy disks for some of its avionics. Some medical devices still need them; the embroidery business is perhaps the biggest user. US-based floppydisk.com is a key player in this “small yet profitable contemporary scene”. Tom Persky set up in business in the early 1990s making software that could handle tax calculations for businesses. A sideline of duplicating disks turned out to be “as good as printing money”, and gradually the firm switched over to that. Now 90% of the business…

■ Fundsmith Emerging Equities Trust (FEET) is set to be wound up due to poor performance after Fundsmith said it would resign as manager, says Citywire. The £323m fund has lagged behind the MSCI Emerging & Frontier Markets index since it floated in June 2014, returning 43.6% in net asset value (NAV) terms to the end of August compared with the benchmark’s 67.9%. Shares are currently trading at a 14% discount to NAV, leaving shareholders with a return of just 22.3% since inception. Fundsmith founder Terry Smith ran Feet for the first five years before handing it over to current manager Michael O’Brien. Smith said performance had “fallen below our expectations” and that it was in the interests of investors to wind it up instead of “holding onto the fund…

During the pandemic, there was a boom in special purpose acquisition companies (Spacs) in the US. Also known as “blank-cheque companies” or “cash shells”, Spacs were seen as a way of helping technology firms list on the stockmarket without the costs and red tape of a traditional initial public offering (IPO). However, critics argued that the far more lenient disclosure requirements relating to launching a Spac turned them into a magnet for a wide array of dubious and ill-considered ventures. Already there seems to be a backlash against this type of flotation, with the number of Spacs falling by 80% in the first six months of this year compared with the same period in 2021. One Spac that has been particularly conspicuous in the past few months is AST SpaceMobile…

The amount of money we are putting on our credit cards is steadily increasing as we seek to spread our rising expenses. But are you aware of the extra protection your credit card provides? Under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974, your credit-card provider is “jointly and severally liable” for your purchases. In practice this means that if you pay for something with your credit card the lender is just as liable as the company you made the purchase from if something goes wrong. That means if the item you buy is faulty, broken or doesn’t arrive you can turn to your credit-card provider as they are legally required to help. It also covers services bought with a credit card such as flights, accommodation or a spa treatment.…

New business launches are soaring despite the tough economic backdrop. Companies House says 402,000 new businesses were registered in the first half of 2022: more than 90 start-ups were founded every hour between January and June. Still, while the total marks an 18% year-on-year increase, how many of them will succeed? Around 20% of businesses fail during their first year – and 60% disappear within three years of launch. Those percentages may be even higher in future owing to soaring inflation and slowing growth. However, forewarned is forearmed. Business advisers point to several common mistakes that failed start-ups frequently make. By cutting out those errors from the start, you will give your new venture a better chance of success. Start with a detailed plan Mistake number one is not to…

We view Asia as a region of great promise. It is home to China and India, two of the largest economies in the world. The middle class is expanding and developing a growing taste for premium products and services. Workforces are becoming more skilled. Urbanisation is increasing, along with demand for infrastructure The region is also at the forefront of emerging technologies, such as e-commerce, 5G-mobile networks, semiconductors and auto electrification. In addition, governments are committing to a lower-carbon future. Our trust seeks out world-class Asian companies that will be long-term winners. Aside from being attractively valued, these firms are well run, have good cash flows and solid balance sheets. A sustainable competitive edge is also pivotal, along with appealing industry characteristics. High standards of economic and social governance (ESG)…

The presiding boss of Richemont, Johann Rupert, is a rumbustious, “thick-skinned…streetfighter”, according to friends. But is he really a “godfather-like” autocrat, as alleged by the activist hedge fund, Bluebell, at a tense AGM in Geneva earlier this month? Submitting resolutions to shake up governance at the Swiss luxury group – where the Rupert family holding company owns just a 9.1% stake but 50% of the voting rights – Bluebell accused Johann Rupert of acting like a “padre padrone” in his quest to marginalise minority shareholders. Some fearsome adversaries The episode has “propelled the family into the spotlight” at a potentially tricky time, says the Financial Times. Although Richemont recently reported a strong set of results, the company, whose brands include Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels and Mont Blanc, is “grappling…

“The Fed signals it’s not for turning,” says the Financial Times. The US central bank is, apparently, sticking with its interest-rate hikes. But as the consequences of that for an economy propped up by cheap credit start to become clear, will Fed chief Jerome Powell stick to his guns? “The lady’s not for turning” was, of course, the line given by Margaret Thatcher (pictured) in 1980 when she told a party conference that she was not about to depart from her conservative programme. At the time, Thatcher’s approval rating had fallen to 23% – a record low. She had cut spending and fired government employees. The unions were against her, and threatening widespread strikes. The universities were against her. The press and even many members of her own party were…

Fears of recession “continue to grip commodity markets,” say Goldman Sachs’s analysts in a note. Yet “physical fundamentals signal some of the tightest markets in decades”. Commodity prices surged earlier this year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but many raw materials have since tumbled back to earth. The price of iron ore is down 36% from its March peak, while aluminium and copper have lost 19% and 20% respectively since 1 January. Wheat futures have returned to pre-invasion levels. Despite this, the S&P GSCI index, which tracks the prices of 24 major raw materials, has still gained 12% since the start of the year because energy prices remain buoyant. The S&P GSCI Energy sub-index, which tracks global oil and gas prices, is up 23% since 1 January. The prices of…

Shares in software company Adobe plunged 17% last Friday after it agreed to pay $20bn in cash and shares for Figma, a start-up that helps specialists designing digital applications work collaboratively, says Callum Jones in The Times. Adobe has made several acquisitions over the past few years, including the management platform Workfront for $1.5bn in 2020 and Frame.io, a video platform, in a $1.3 bn agreement in 2021. But this is Adobe’s largest acquisition – and the biggest purchase of a private tech startup on record. It’s no wonder that Adobe’s “latest effort to keep pace with the times isn’t landing so well”, says Aaron Tilley in the Wall Street Journal. The price is at such a “nosebleed level” that Adobe will pay “50 times the smaller company’s expected annual…

Three to buy Golar LNG The Telegraph Any company that can find a way to transport gas from places where it is cheap to Europe, where it is eye-wateringly high, “can make a fortune”. Golar LNG is a small US company that owns two of the world’s five floating plants for the conversion of natural gas into liquified natural gas (LNG) for worldwide shipping. These plants, called FLNGs, are in short supply, implying scope for huge profits. Golar offers a “neat way to share in the fruits as free enterprise seeks novel ways to counter Putin’s gas blockade”. $27 Iofina The Mail on Sunday Iodine deficiency is the principal cause of brain damage. Aim-listed Iofina produces iodine and sells it around the world, having perfected a way of extracting the…

US president Joe Biden sent a “strong warning” to China this week, saying in an interview that the US would defend Taiwan from a Chinese attack, says Demetri Sevastopulo in the Financial Times. The remarks drew swift condemnation from Beijing; the White House too issued a statement clarifying that the US policy of “strategic ambiguity” on Taiwan remained the same. Biden’s comments came after China had fired ballistic missiles over Taiwan and the US Senate foreign relations committee had passed a bill to authorise $6.5bn in military funding for Taiwan. Biden’s words may not technically represent official policy, but they are still dangerous, says Jesse Johnson in The Japan Times. His seeming “unconditional commitment” to defend Taiwan risks creating the perception that he is issuing a “blank cheque”. Combined with…

Many tech companies issue stock to employees to give them a stake in the performance of the company. This has been highly effective in a tech bull market and a key incentive to employees. But stock-based compensation (SBC) presents three problems for analysts and investors. First, firms add back SBC to calculate adjusted earnings. These are therefore overstated. Payroll costs would be higher without SBC. Second, because the SBC expense is a non-cash item, it is added back in the calculation of operating cash flow. Cash-flow multiples are therefore understated. Buybacks are often used to offset the resulting dilution, but this cost is not reflected in free cash-flow (FCF) multiples. Third, valuations should at least factor in the impact of the options outstanding on market cap, but analysts often forget…

Wanted: work for grown-ups Sarah O’Connor Financial Times A TikTok video this year about “quiet quitting” has sent “employee motivation experts into overdrive”, says Sarah O’Connor. According to Gallup, about half of Americans are “quiet quitters”, defined as people who are “not going above and beyond at work and just meeting their job description”. I don’t think it’s a problem at all. Firstly, it is “neither new nor a trend”. The Gallup survey also found that just under a third of workers were “engaged” and almost a fifth were “actively disengaged”. It defined the “quiet quitters’ as the group who are neither. These proportions haven’t changed much since 2000. Second, if staff turn up and do what is asked of them, they aren’t “quiet quitting”, they’re “working”. If everyone is…

theconversation.com Last week marked the anniversary of Black Wednesday – the day on 16 September 1992 when Britain was forced to leave the Exchange Rate Mechanism, a framework set up by the then EEC to keep its members’ currencies in a trading band of similar values, and a forerunner to the euro, says Alexis Stenfors. The lessons from that day still matter now. Margaret Thatcher had resisted the idea of joining as she didn’t want monetary policy subordinated to Brussels. Her successor, John Major, committed to defending the pound at all costs to stay in the ERM. His government raised interest rates from 10% to 12% and then to 15%, even in the teeth of a recession, in an attempt to do that. But it failed, dealing a huge blow…

To me the current market malaise feels like a necessary readjustment to worsening prospects, rather than a major movement of the tectonic plates. Still, I suspect it’s better to be cautious and plan for the worst. In that spirit, I’ve been taking stock of what has worked for listed funds over the year to date. The first group contains the funds that have benefited from very specific tailwinds offered by the current economic situation. This includes renewable funds, such as Greencoat UK Wind (LSE: UKW), Bluefield Solar (LSE: BSIF), Foresight Solar (LSE: FSFL), NextEnergy Solar (LSE: NESF), Ecofin US Renewables (LSE: RNEP) and JLEN Environmental Assets (LSE: JLEN). These have year-to-date growth in net asset value (NAV) of 19.4%, 19.3%, 19%, 21.9%, 20.6% and 27.5% respectively, according to data from…

“Gold was present in the dust that formed the solar system four-and-a half billion years ago” Gold and gold miners are back in a downtrend. Occasionally, there are glimmers of hope, only for the sellers to come piling back in. The slide began shortly after the commodities spike in the spring following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and it has been relentless. Your author shakes his head. Isn’t gold supposed to go up during times of war? Isn’t it the go-to asset in times of inflation? Apparently not. However, if one views gold as simply another currency, then its performance has not been as bad as the headline numbers suggest. It has not done as well as the dollar, but it has outstripped the pound and the euro. Even though…

All traders know the adage “sell in May and go away, come back on St Leger day” (the day of the St Leger Stakes horse race in early September). The idea is that the market tends to be very quiet during the summer period as traders go on holiday (leading to reduced trading volumes) and Parliament goes into recess (so there are no major political developments), while firms are saving up their major product announcements for Christmas. The sense of drift appears to hamper stocks. According to Russ Mould of AJ Bell, since 1965 the FTSE All-Share index has done poorly between the start of May and St Leger’s, falling by 0.1% on average. Similarly, there is evidence to support the “Halloween effect” in the United States. Between May 1957…

If you’re a homeowner who is due to remortgage next year, your heart may be sinking with every interest rate rise. But should you join the increasing number of people swallowing an early repayment charge in order to lock in a rate today? The base rate was 0.1% in December. By the start of this week it had reached 1.75% and this week saw another increase. Some analysts think the base rate could climb to 4% by the summer of 2023, as Ali Hussain points out in The Times. The mounting fear of rocketing rates is prompting more and more people to pay an early repayment charge so they can leave their current mortgage deal and lock in a long-term fix at today’s rates. The Times cites a borrower who…

New business founders can set themselves up in two ways. The first option is to operate as a sole trader: you run your business as an individual. The alternative is to establish a limited company, a legal entity registered at Companies House that is separate from you personally. Setting up as a sole trader is simpler and cheaper. Unlike with a limited company, you won’t need to register your business with Companies House or pay an accountant to help you compile and file company accounts; you’ll also manage your tax affairs through your self-assessment tax return. However, sole traders face greater risk – they are personally liable for any legal or financial exposure. But with a limited company it’s the business that is liable and you are protected. There is…

Oil and gas giant BP (LSE: BP) has profited handsomely from rising energy prices. Earnings for the second quarter reached $8.5bn, up from $2.7bn the year before. The energy business is unpredictable and fossil-fuel companies have become unpopular, but “whether we like it or not, the demand for oil and gas is here to stay”, says The Motley Fool. The government has ruled out windfall taxes, while the world’s appetite for oil is not set to peak until at least 2028, meaning there is ample scope for further share-price growth. A 4.5% dividend yield also bodes well. The shares are up by 54% in a year.…

Elon Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, in 1971, and became interested in computers at a young age. After briefly studying at the University of Pretoria, he moved to Canada in 1989 to avoid military service, and took various jobs. Later he studied at Queen’s University, Ontario, before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania, doing degrees in both physics and economics. On graduation he turned down an offer to do a PhD at Stanford and co-founded software company Zip2 with his brother Kimbal and Greg Kouri. He eventually sold the firm for $307m and then founded X.com, which would later become PayPal. Musk got $176m for his stake in PayPal in 2001. What was the investment? In July 2003 Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning set up Tesla, an electric-car…

2021 Kumeu River, Hunting Hill Chardonnay, Kumeu, New Zealand RRP £49.75, laywheeler.com; bbr.com; jeroboams.co.uk; mrwheelerwine.com; tanners-wines.co.uk; leaandsandeman.co.uk; swig.co.uk; uncorked.co.uk Winemaker Michael Brajkovich celebrated his 40th vintage in 2021, and his brother, Paul, flew over to London to present their suite of brand new 2021 releases. Renowned for making some of the most exquisite chardonnays in the southern hemisphere, the range of wines, from the inexpensive, everyday drinker “Village Chardonnay” to the very-special-occasion, long-lived “Maté’s Vineyard Chardonnay”, looked exemplary. You can read about my thoughts on every wine in this portfolio on my website, but for me, the standout bottle was Hunting Hill. This elite cuvée is fast becoming a not-so-secret-weapon. Production is markedly down in 2021, thanks to Jack Frost spoiling what was otherwise a textbook vintage. Hunting Hill knocks…

£50,000 The average student debt upon graduating. University tuition costs are running at around £30,000, without including rent, bills, food and “some fun nights out”, says The Times. One in five graduates will earn less than if they had not gone to university, according to a 2020 report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies. $10.09m The amount basketball star Michael Jordan’s jersey fetched at auction, more than double the initial estimates, says The Guardian. Jordan wore the top in the 1998 NBA finals, and the sum set a new auction record for a piece of game-worn sports memorabilia, according to auction house Sotheby’s. $165,000 How much photographs of Elon Musk sold for at auction, says The Independent. The collection of pictures and mementoes were sold by his college girlfriend. The…