Indholdsfortegnelse for 1165 i MoneyWeek

What goes around comes around (and can knock you off your feet if you’re not careful). Life and finance are full of cycles. But the recurring theme of the past two decades is that economies have not been allowed to complete them. Recessions are necessary correctives to booms, clearing out dead wood and paving the way for a healthy upswing. Years of central banks wading into markets and staving off downturns with easy or free money, however, repeatedly postponed or greatly ameliorated market and economic downturns, causing worse trouble later. Throwing money at the dotcom bubble, for instance, sowed the seeds of the credit boom that led to the financial crisis. “Central banks have spent decades staving off downturns with easy or free money” A zombie apocalypse? The financial world…

“ESG strategies have [drawn] vast amounts of money into funds... [But] a lack of a defined ESG framework means that investors are often shocked to find what is lurking in their holdings (hint, it’s oil, gas, tobacco)... it isn’t as if ESG strategies have delivered great returns for investors... wealth manager Investec found that UK companies with the highest ESG scores... underperformed compared with those with the lowest scores over the long term... putting your money into a FTSE 250 tracker would have given you a better return most of the time than the average ESG fund.... ESG investing now has to [combat] two key critiques. One: it is a poorly-performing fad that lines the pockets of investment managers while claiming to deliver more ‘sustainable’ portfolios. Two: [given a growing…

ARK Investment Management, a major investor in Twitter, has written down its stake in the short-message social-media platform by 47% because advertisers have cut their spending, says Dan Milmo in The Guardian. Rival asset manager Fidelity is also cutting the value of its stake. Executive chair Elon Musk (pictured) has now revealed that advertising on Twitter, “the platform’s main source of income”, has fallen by nearly 50%, which means the business “remains cash-flow negative” – a problem for a company with big debts. It is “remarkable”, says Martin Peers on The Information, that “after shrinking Twitter’s workforce by 80% and stiffing landlords, other vendors and even [former] staff, the company is still not profitable”. Given that an advertising bounceback is “unlikely”, Musk needs to “pay off at least some of…

Severe droughts are becoming more and more common, says Der Aktionär. There are now fears that in a few years’ time Spain’s water supply will no longer cover demand from the agriculture and tourism sectors. All this points to rising demand for desalination plants in the next few years, which bodes well for America’s Energy Recovery plan. Its pressure-exchanger technology makes the desalination process up to 60% more energy-efficient. The technology is also helpful for refrigeration systems, which look set to become another growth area. The group’s earnings per share are expected to jump by 74% in 2024 and double in 2025. Energy Recovery is also debt-free.…

Heatwaves are sweeping the planet from China to Europe and the US, with 2023 on track to become the hottest year on Earth since records began, says Stuti Mishra in The Independent. China recorded a “scorching” 52.2˚C in Sanbao on Sunday, the day 53˚C was recorded in California’s Death Valley. Europe’s record 48.8˚C, set in Italy in 2021, may be broken soon. The heatwave is the latest in a series of “climate extremes” that include record ocean temperatures. Scientists say the warmer waters are contributing to rising temperatures over land, exacerbating the effects of stagnant high-pressure systems, a cyclical weather pattern known as El Nino, and climate change. So how much is down to climate change? According to the World Meteorological Organisation, climate change has led to more extreme…

On Sunday, Spain goes to the polls to vote in a general election. Punters seem to have very little doubt what the outcome will be. With £28,114 matched on Betfair, Alberto Nunez Feijoo of the centre-right People’s Party is the strong favourite to be in charge of the government after the next election at 1.12 (89.2%), with the incumbent Pedro Sanchez of the centre-left Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party out at 6.4 (15.6%). It’s not hard to see why the betting markets are favouring Feijoo – opinion polls have over the past year consistently put his People’s Party in the lead over Sanchez’s socialists. At the moment, the PP has a lead of about 5%-6%, with the far-left Sumar and the far-right Vox effectively tied for third place with around 15%…

When trade secretary Kemi Badenoch formally signed Britain up to the CPTPP Indo-Pacific trade bloc last weekend, it was the biggest shift in trade policy in a generation. Covering countries such as Japan, Australia, Malaysia and Vietnam, the CPTPP represents the world’s single largest trade bloc, with a combined GDP of $12trn, or 15% of global output. It is easily set to outstrip the EU, partly because all its members, with the possible exception of Japan, have much faster growth rates, and also because it is likely to recruit more members, and larger ones as well. China may well join one day, depending on the politics, and so might the US. True, the Pacific is a lot further away than the EU, and apart from Japan and South Korea its…

A “real” interest rate is simply an interest rate that has been adjusted to take inflation into account. (A “nominal” interest rate is one that has not been adjusted for inflation.) Real rates matters because inflation reduces the value of any future stream of income. Take a bank account into which you plan to place £1,000. If inflation is running at 1% then a 2% nominal interest rate looks respectable – your savings will have more purchasing power a year from now. However, if inflation is running at 3%, your savings will have less purchasing power when you withdraw them in a year’s time, even though the £1,000 will have grown (in nominal terms) to £1,020. Of course, the advertised rate on a savings account will be the nominal one,…

“I’m quite young and I’ve got my whims, but I’m very natural, normal, humble. I don’t really pay much attention to brands and cars. If I like something, I try to buy it, but in the end my father takes care of everything.” Wimbledon champion Carlos Alcaraz, 20, quoted in Vogue “It made me doubly determined to become independent by making money. When the RNIB [Royal National Institute of Blind People] explained that they could teach me to use public transport, I replied: ‘Don’t worry, I’ll have a chauffeur.’ Ugly rich men could get beautiful girlfriends. I decided rich blind ones could too.” Robin Millar, one of the world’s most successful record producers, quoted in The Times. He went blind in his late teens “Why is there so much month…

atlasobscura.com Airline food has long been an object of ridicule, but in recent years it’s become “downright depressing”, says Diana Hubbell. It wasn’t always this way. In the pre-Reagan era, flying still had a “whiff of glamour”. Pan Am passengers in the 1950s dined on stuffed guinea hen; those in first class enjoyed scoops of caviar and eggs made to order. United Airlines ran an executive flight for men only – a gentleman’s club with wings – “where the attendants were single and hot, the gin martinis cold and your cigar provided free”. Today, in the cheap seats at least, you’ll be lucky if you get a dozen almonds, a shrivelled turkey jerky stick and a granola bar. Why were the food options so much better in the past? One…

The number of activist campaigns launched against European public companies has jumped to a record high in 2023, according to data from audit and advisory firm Alvarez & Marsal (A&M). There have been 105 companies targeted by activists this year, including 24 in the UK and 21 in Germany. Firms that “misfired operationally and potentially exhibited signs of poor governance since the onset of Covid” are most likely to attract activists’ attention, says A&M. Companies in the UK are at greater risk than other European countries due to their weak stockmarket performance relative to global peers; 49 UK stocks look vulnerable to activist attacks in the next 18 months. Environmentallymotivated campaigns have also reached a new high, at 12% of the total.…

Interest rates on savings accounts are rising as banks pass the Bank of England’s rate hikes on. But while this is a welcome change for savers after 15 years of near-zero savings rates, there’s one pitfall: tax. The combination of higher interest rates, the freeze on the personal savings allowance and a cut to the additional-rate tax threshold has led to a jump in the number of savers paying tax on the interest they earn. Savings income is taxed at your marginal rate, although tax-free allowances can provide some shelter. For low earners, there’s a tax-free starting rate on savings, which starts at £5,000, on top of your personal allowance of £12,570. Once your other income gets above £17,570, you no longer get the starting rate for savings, but basic-rate…

Cautious small businesses are reluctant to borrow in this economic environment, but demand for one type of credit is still robust. Data from UK Finance, the body that represents the UK’s banking and financing industry, suggests that while there has been a slowdown in traditional lending to smaller firms, invoice finance advances are still rising. That’s important, given the pressure on many small firms’ cash flows. Unlike other types of lending, invoice finance isn’t usually used for investment in the business or for expansion; instead, it can play a vital role in ensuring you have enough working capital to continue functioning efficiently. With invoice financing, a business that has completed work for a client but is waiting to be paid hands over its invoice to a lender. Typically, the lender…

Finsbury Growth & Income Trust invests primarily in British companies, focusing on four core themes: luxury and premium products; beloved, mass-market consumer brands; data and software companies; and providers of wealth-management services in the UK. The pace of technological change is evidently accelerating and in stockmarkets great wealth is being created. But wealth is also being destroyed as new applications displace old ways of doing business. Sometimes these new applications make redundant even recently emerged technologies, and this is why investing in technology has a well-justified reputation for being risky. As portfolio managers we respond to these opportunities and risks in three ways. Firstly, we believe it important to maintain holdings in companies whose products are likely to remain desirable to consumers whatever happens in the digital world. For instance,…

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has “finfluencers” in its sights. The City watchdog says it will rein in social-media celebrities and firms that promote risky products to their followers. Research from consultancy MRM found that almost three-quarters of young people trust financial information provided by finfluencers. “Often these influencers have little knowledge of what they’re promoting,” the FCA said. “This lack of expertise is reflected in the large number of promotions that are either illegal or non-compliant.” In May, the watchdog revealed it had teamed up with the Advertising Standards Agency and Sharon Gaffka, a former civil servant and reality television star, to explain to influencers the risks they run in promoting financial products. As part of its new “consumer duty”, the FCA will hold the products offered by financial…

Britons hold an estimated £1.8trn in savings accounts that are being eroded by inflation, says Nick King in a report by the Centre for Policy Studies. While most of us do have some stockmarket exposure via pension funds, when it comes to buying shares directly (known as retail investing) we are strikingly reluctant. Obsessed with cash and property, UK households have less than 4% of their financial assets in shares, compared with about 5% in many other European countries. In America, an estimated 36% of households’ financial assets are in equities – one reason the US stockmarket is so huge. Britain’s weak equity culture is starving FTSE companies of investment and risks eroding public support for capitalism itself.…

Shares in Richemont, which owns Cartier, tumbled by 10% on Monday, as a slowdown in the US and worries about China’s growth dented confidence in luxury stocks, says the Daily Mail. While the company reported a 19% rise in first-quarter sales amid robust demand in Asia following the lifting of Covid restrictions, investors “fretted” about a 4% slide in revenues in the Americas, with demand in the US “particularly weak”. Meanwhile, the news that the Chinese economy grew by just 0.8% in the second quarter of the year has “also sparked concern about demand for other luxury goods”, with shares in rivals Burberry, LVMH and Hermès declining. Lacklustre growth in China is particularly worrying, says Andy Hoffman on Bloomberg. The luxury-goods industry had been counting on the post-Covid rebound in…

Shanghai Biren Intelligent Technology, a Chinese semiconductor start-up, is contemplating an initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong, says Bloomberg. It wants to capitalise on rising demand for its chips, which are deemed alternatives to those supplied by America’s Nvidia. The US government has stopped Nvidia selling advanced chips to China amid concerns over national security. Biren, set up in 2019, focuses on chips for cloud computing and graphics processing units. For now, the company intends to raise another two billion yuan ($279m), adding to the 4.7 billion yuan ($655m) it has already amassed. Last year the firm was valued at 17 billion yuan ($2.4bn).…

New York Goldman Sachs gloom: Profits at Goldman Sachs “plunged” in the April-to-June period “as the Wall Street giant notched up one if its weakest quarters under CEO David Solomon (pictured)”, says Sridhar Natarajan on Bloomberg. Earnings fell 58% from a year ago, to $1.2bn off the back of an investment-banking “slump”, property markdowns and a goodwill writedown in the consumer business, totalling about $1bn. The bank had been “tamping down” expectations ahead of the release of its second-quarter results on Wednesday, and investors are now wondering whether “a steadier run of earnings gains [lies] ahead”. After all, Goldman Sachs’ 4% return on equity, a measure of profitability”, was “the worst among the top US banks”. Second-quarter earnings at Bank of America (BoA) by comparison rose by nearly a fifth,…

● ”Sainsbury’s is regaining form after several years in the wilderness,” says Ben Marlow in The Telegraph. The supermarket chain’s 2016 takeover of retailer Argos was a disappointment, while it wasted a year and tens of millions of pounds on an attempted merger with rival Asda in 2019 that “never stood a chance of being approved”. Yet under the “unflashy” Simon Roberts, who took the top job in 2020, “there are signs of a quiet resurgence”. Recent updates show it maintaining its market share in the face of fierce competition from Aldi and Lidl, even as Tesco, Asda, Morrisons and Waitrose all lose ground. Still, more needs to be done. Earlier this year, Anwar Pervez, founder of the Bestway cash-and-carry chain, took a 4.5% stake in the group. Roberts should…

“Large technology companies have in a sense become victims of their own success,” says Terry Smith, the manager of Fundsmith Equity, which at £24bn in assets is the UK’s largest fund. “Their growth over the past decade means that they are now such a large part of the economies in which they operate that they have become inevitably more cyclical.” At the time of the global financial crisis, Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta had combined sales of $125bn; today the figure is almost $1trn. Thus growth is inevitably slowing as the economy does; Meta’s sales increased by 20% last year, but will be closer to 8% this year. Despite that, the stock has been the top performer in Fundsmith’s portfolio over the first six months of 2023, as it rebounded…

managementtoday.co.uk Apple’s CEO Tim Cook is said to read every email sent to him by customers, says Hasdeep Sethi. This “raised eyebrows” as the reality is that not many firms, let alone their CEOs, make good use of this freely available data. That’s understandable from a practical point of view – who wants to wade through thousands of emails in the hope of finding one nugget of insight? This is where artificial intelligence (AI) could be a help. It’s suited to extracting insights from such “unstructured data”. It could, for example, read 50,000 emails from customers to identify their top ten areas of concern. These insights, and any others a business might be interested in, can help better understand customers’ needs and areas for improvement. Such an approach is likely…

■ Alternative asset manager Gresham House is being bought by US private-equity firm Searchlight Capital in a £470m deal, says Citywire. The deal is the latest in a string of mergers in the sector as managers try to bulk up in the face of increasing competition from passive funds and low-cost exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Gresham has become a leader in alternative asset classes – most notably sustainable funds in sectors such as energy storage and forestry – as well as a successful manager of venture capital trusts (VCTs). Assets under management totalled £7.8bn at the end of 2022, with adjusted operating profit rising to £27.1m versus £20.2m in the previous year. One of the company’s largest funds is the Gresham House Energy Storage investment trust, with £842m of assets under…

We set up the MoneyWeek investment trust portfolio in 2012 after readers suggested putting our money where our mouth was. We picked a portfolio of six London-listed investment trusts to give investors a global, all-weather portfolio with a wide array of investment styles and asset classes. We’ve always preferred investment trusts to unit trusts – they tend to be cheaper, and research shows they outperform over the long term. The closed-ended structure of these vehicles also makes them more suitable for holding illiquid assets. Gearing boost returns What’s more, investment trusts, which are structured as companies, can borrow money to boost returns – something the latest entrant to the portfolio, AVI Global Trust (LSE: AGT) has been taking advantage of to increase its exposure to Japan and reduce foreign currency…

High fees on old pensions could be draining money from your retirement savings, says This is Money. Over the past eight years, charges on pension funds have dropped rapidly, thanks to changes introduced in 2015. These changes capped charges on default funds in workplace pension schemes at 0.75% per year. Savers can get an even better deal if they pick their own funds, by selecting cheap tracker funds and holding them on a low-cost platform such as Vanguard, which charges an annual account fee of just 0.15% – it’s realistic to get a total all-in cost of well under 0.5% per year. However, while fees were capped in 2015, there was no obligation for providers to lower fees for those investors who’d opened accounts prior to the change. As a…

Could an energy audit save your business money – and help it meet carbon-emission reduction targets? The Energy Savings Trust (EST), an independent charity, believes so. It points to data suggesting that businesses following recommendations made during an energy audit can reduce the amount of energy they use by an average of 18%. However, small and medium-sized enterprises should tread very carefully with these audits. The EST also points out that there are currently no agreed standards for conducting an energy audit and that the results of such exercises are inconsistent. As a result, some projects may be of higher quality than others, and businesses may not always be able to realise the benefits promised. In Scotland, for example, the Scottish government sponsors its own energy-audit programme. Firms can then…

Fighting for Life The Twelve Battles that Made Our NHS, and the Struggle for Its Future Isabel Hardman Viking, £20 The NHS will be 75 years old in August, and it’s hard to think of an institution that “arouses so much emotion”, says Karol Sikora in The Telegraph. The generally positive feelings that most British people profess to hold about the NHS, however, are gradually being eroded by most people’s increasingly bad experiences. Twelve-hour waits in A&E and six-week delays before being able to see a GP are now common. Some poor souls hobble around for two years waiting for hip surgery. In this book, political journalist Isabel Hardman, an assistant editor at The Spectator, takes a look at “where the health service came from, and where it’s going”. Hardman…

US Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell says there is “a narrow path to a soft landing”, according to Michael Feroli of JPMorgan. A soft landing describes a scenario where inflation moderates without upending the wider economy. That path seems “a little wider now”. Annual US inflation fell to 3% in June, its lowest level since March 2021 and sharply down on May’s 4% figure. While UK inflation remains high (see page 12), US price rises have fallen substantially since last year’s peak of 9.1%. Disinflation was driven by falls in energy prices and air fares that could “prove ephemeral”, says Jeanna Smialek in The New York Times. Core inflation, which strips out volatile food and energy costs, fell to 4.8% from 5.3% the previous month – good, but still too…

The Nasdaq 100, comprising the biggest 100 companies on the technology-heavy Nasdaq exchange (which contains 3,000 stocks) has soared by 44% this year thanks to a rally by the “magnificent seven”: Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Tesla and Meta, says Matt Phillips on Axios. Combined, the group has grown to account for 55% of the index, so investors who buy the Nasdaq 100 are no longer getting the diversification they expect. Nasdaq is cutting Big Tech down to size, says Eric Savitz in Barron’s. On 24 July the index plans a “special rebalancing”: Nasdaq’s new rules should cap the aggregate weight of stocks with a weighting of 4.5% or more at 40%.” It is only the third time the Nasdaq has done a special rebalance and the first since May…

Shares in Microsoft and Activision bounced after the US courts rejected the Federal Trade Commission’s attempt to block the firms’ merger, says The Telegraph – “clearing a path for the companies to close the largest gaming deal in history”. With the European Commission having already approved the deal after Microsoft pledged to offer Activision’s games on rival cloud streaming services for at least a decade, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is the only global regulator blocking Microsoft’s $69bn (£52bn) takeover of Activision. Microsoft’s case that the merger won’t reduce competition will be buttressed by its “unexpected truce” with Sony, previously one of the biggest opponents of the Microsoft-Activision deal, says Robyn Mak on Breakingviews. In what is being seen as a “new dawn in videogames”, Sony and Microsoft…

Five to buy Futura Medical The Sunday Times This Aim-listed pharmaceutical minnow may have an ace up its sleeve. Its topical Eroxon gel is the first erectile dysfunction (ED) treatment to be approved for sale without a prescription (unlike rivals such as Viagra). Trials show the gel worked for 65% of users. The first new ED treatment to hit the market in 20 years, Eroxon should grab a slice of a $3bn global market that is growing as the population ages. Futura focuses on the science, outsourcing marketing and distribution to reduce risk. The stock is “worth a punt”. 52p Judges Scientific The Telegraph This scientific-instruments group specialises in acquisitions, having bought 20 companies between 2005 and 2022. Its record is impressive, with returns on equity topping 26% last year…

Tobias Ellwood, chairman of the House of Commons Defence Committee, “could face a vote of no confidence in his leadership” after releasing a “breathtakingly naive” video praising the transformation of Afghanistan since the Taliban regained power in 2021, says Rachel Wearmouth in The New Statesman. In the “widely-criticised” video, which has been described as “bizarre”, and gone down “like a lead balloon” with fellow MPs, former defence minister Ellwood argues that security has “vastly improved” under the Taliban regime. He thinks the UK should reopen the British embassy in Kabul and “re-engage” with the regime. Our discomfort with talking to the Taliban is understandable given their “widespread repression”, especially of women, says Tobias Ellwood in The Telegraph. But the reality is that under the new government security has improved, people…

Markets seem optimistic that the global inflation surge is over. UK inflation has dropped to 7.9%, the lowest for more than a year; US inflation has fallen even more to 3%. The trends in Europe have been a little more mixed, but mostly positive: Spain’s rate is now down to 1.9% – a spectacular fall from almost 11% a year ago. In response, investors are increasing their bets that central banks will soon be cutting rates, and beginning to rotate back into interest-rate sensitive sectors. Take real estate investment trusts (Reits), for example. British Land rose 9% on Wednesday and many of its peers posted gains of 6% or more. Many US Reits have rallied by 20% or so over the past month, despite plenty of bleak headlines about how…

Trustbuster zealotry goes too far EditorialThe Economist Trustbusters both in the US and Europe have “made no secret of their distaste for big firms and big deals”, says The Economist. But while their “zeal” is welcome and competition is, of course, vital (corporate profits have been 20%-40% higher in the past decade than the preceding three and this is a sign of growing market power), their “expansive agenda” also raises questions, not least whether it has distracted regulators from “tackling genuine hurdles to competition”. Bigness “need not be bad”. The five largest tech firms fund 25% of all research and development in the US. Growing corporate concentration appears to have been caused mainly by “growing economies of scale from technology, not market power”. Mergers and acquisitions can help develop markets…

edconway.substack.com The quest for a better measure of economic progress than GDP has been going on pretty much since GDP was invented, says Ed Conway. Some have suggested life expectancy as an alternative. My suggestion would be to look at the amount of steel a country has. Steel is everywhere. When you travel by train, you are travelling in a steel tube along steel rails using steel escalators and steel lifts to get you to the platform. The more infrastructure you have in your country, the more cars and trains and hospitals and schools, the more steel you have. Simply adding up how much steel there is in use, for which good data exist, and dividing by the number of people, will give you a pretty good sense of how…

The accepted wisdom of fund managers is to avoid most new issues when they are plentiful, but invest when they are few and far between. On that basis, Ashoka WhiteOak Emerging Markets (LSE: AWEM), which raised just £31m in its April flotation, is a surefire winner, since it is the only new issue in the investment-trust market since 2021. The performance of emerging markets since 2012 has been dire. They have underperformed developed markets by around 60%, losing nearly all the outperformance not just since 2000, but also since 1987, when the first broad emerging-market indices begin. Since then, there have been two huge booms (1987-1994 and 2002-2011) followed by two huge busts. These busts can be attributed to the reversal of speculative fund flows to emerging markets in the…

● If you’re thinking about trying to reclaim overpaid tax using a tax reclaim service, you should think very carefully about what you’re signing up for, says The Guardian. These businesses can sign you up to a deed entitling them to receive all your refunds of overpaid tax for up to four years. As this market is not regulated, tax-reclaim businesses can be set up by anyone, and they usually demand huge fees for processing any claim. Fees of 50% of the total amount reclaimed are common. While these services claim to make it easier to reclaim any overpaid tax, it’s important to note that claiming tax refunds is free through the HM Revenue and Customs (HRMC) online portal, so in most cases taxpayers don’t need to sign up for…

● Businesses still using analogue telecoms services are running out of time to switch to digital alternatives. In 2025, the telecoms sector will switch off the analogue, copper wire-based phone network, meaning that services still dependent on this network will no longer be available. That includes both telephone services and systems connected to your lines including alarms, CCTV and even some older electricity meters. Talk to your telecoms provider now about how you might be affected. ● All small businesses in London should be eligible for a scrappage scheme linked to the Ultra-Low Emission Zone (Ulez) by the end of the month, according to Transport for London. The scheme offers support of up to £9,500 for drivers scrapping a vehicle in order to buy a cleaner replacement that doesn’t incur…

After graduating with an MBA from Stanford, Bob Kagle of Flint, Michigan, joined management consultants Boston Consulting Group in 1980, before moving to venture capitalist Technology Venture Investors in 1983. In 1995 he decided to strike out on his own, setting up Benchmark with Bruce Dunlevie, Andy Rachleff, Kevin Harvey and Val Vaden. What was the investment? In late 1996 Dunlevie was approached by Pierre Omidyar, founder of online auction site AuctionWeb (later renamed eBay). Dunlevie was sceptical, but after spending time on the website he and his team became convinced that it could be a success. In the summer of 1997, Benchmark agreed to invest $6.7m in funding in return for 22.1% of the company. What happened? The next year eBay saw exponential growth in the number of listings,…

2020 Rocafosca, Priorat, Costers del Priorat, Spain £26.95, jeroboams.co.uk This week, six of the best from one of London’s finest merchants, Jeroboams. My lead wine, Rocafosca, is all about the black slate soils in which the mighty grenache and carignan grapes are grown. More often than not, Priorat reds are massive, elemental and brutally tannic. However, this is a sensual, bright, uncommonly juicy creation. Next, two incredible and unexpected rosés, with 2022 Kret Pinot Grigio Ramato Friuli Italy(£15.95) drawing its coral-hued tint from its gunmetal grey/pink skins. This is such a beautiful wine, and it slips down far too easily! 2022 Etna Rosato de Aetna Terra Costantino Sicily (£22.95) brings volcanic soils, Ionian breezes and the haunting nerello mascalese grape to the fore, making this a super-dramatic drop with keen…

East falls for it If West had led the Queen of Spades versus Six Hearts, declarer would have had an easy time, winning the King, cashing the Ace-King of Trumps, then running Clubs, and restricting the defence to their Trump trick. However, West’s partner had not doubled the Four Spade control bid and he led the Knave of Diamonds. Needing to dispose of his Diamond on the fourth Club, declarer would be fine if the defender with the third Trump also held at least three Clubs. But what if that player held just two Clubs? Winning the Ace of Diamonds, he cashed the two top Trumps, then played Clubs as follows: King, low to the Ace, then low. By creating the impression declarer was ruffing the third round, East made…