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“Don’t just do something, stand there.” Coined by The White Rabbit in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, this dictum was later adopted by Ronald Reagan’s speech-writers to underline the importance of governments keeping out of the economy’s way. It’s also a reminder not to rush around doing too much. As the years go by, I find that my eyebrow-waxing appointments increasingly clash with large and loud social events, and have been known to cite an Ebola outbreak in west London as an excuse to avoid a party. Doing nothing, or as little as possible, is also one of the best things you can do when it comes to investment. Resolve not to be drowned by the deluge of financial data we face every day. Since I started typing this letter three…

It has been ten years since the government allowed Aim shares to be held in an individual savings account (Isa), but there’s not much to celebrate, says Laith Khalaf of AJ Bell. Investments in many Aim firms are also exempt from inheritance tax (IHT). Yet returns from the FTSE Aim 100 index have been so poor that “investors would have been better off investing in a global fund and taking the IHT hit”. £100,000 invested in the Aim 100 in 2013 would be worth £120,757 today, beating the post-IHT (though not pre-IHT) value of an average UK smaller companies fund. Yet £100,000 invested in an average global share fund would be worth £140,999 even after IHT. Portfolio tax planning is important, but returns are still key, so don’t let “the…

US Steel is “a cautionary tale to the current global titans about how quickly the world can change”, says Chris Isidore on CNN. Formed in 1901 as a merger of America’s top steel makers, it became the world’s first corporation to be worth more than $1bn and “played a critical role” in helping the Allies win World War Two. But with the US steel industry “a shell of its former self”, the firm could soon lose its independence. Several rivals are keen to buy it for less than $9bn. It may be sad, but with US Steel at “a tricky part of its investment cycle”, a takeover, especially from rival Cleveland-Cliffs, would have clear “strategic merit”, says Jonathan Guilford on Breakingviews. The move would “help absorb some of the risk”…

Could Selina become the next WeWork? asks Israel’s Calcalist. The Israeli group, set up in 2015, is a hotel brand for millennial and Gen-Z digital nomads; it hopes to benefit from the trend towards remote working. It floated in New York via a special purpose acquisition company (Spac) last October, achieving a valuation of $1.2bn. But it has since lost 96% of its value. While revenue has risen, Selina has expanded rapidly and remains in the red; in the first quarter of 2023 it lost $30.3m. A plan to cut costs by delaying new openings and sacking staff has failed to impress the market. The group’s cash balance in the spring was just $23m. It is now raising more money.…

The race for the White House is still more than a year away, but the end of the August before election year is usually seen as the start of the US presidential cycle. By then, most serious candidates have already declared, and started hitting the campaign trail in preparation for election-year primaries. The end of summer also sees the start of the debates between the candidates vying for their party’s nomination. Donald Trump has taken the unprecedented step of skipping the first Republican primary debate, claiming that his polling leads are so great it would be a waste of time. While not completely agreeing the contest is quite that open-and-shut, Betfair still has him as the overwhelming favourite to win the nomination. With £3.06m matched, Trump is at 1.48 (67.5%)…

In Sandton, the financial district of Johannesberg, the leaders of the so-called Brics nations, made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, gathered for their annual conference this week. China’s president, Xi Jinping, perhaps relieved to take a break from fire-fighting a wobbly domestic economy, used the summit for a fresh drive to turn the grouping into an alternative to Western-dominated bodies such as the UN or World Bank. He wants to add more members, launch common infrastructure programmes, and even a linked currency regime to dethrone the dollar. It is an ambitious plan. Can it work? Brics was a term coined 20 years ago by former Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neil to describe the five nations he thought would dominate the 21st-century economy. With their huge populations,…

Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) is a measure of profit that can make it easier to compare the valuation of two companies, or to give a clearer view of a firm’s underlying profitability. It looks at earnings before the effects of capital structure (how the company is funded), taxes and accounting conventions (depreciation and amortisation are charged to earnings, but how companies choose to write down the value of tangible and intangible assets can be very different). So, for example, Ebitda enables investors to compare two businesses on a like-for-like basis by taking their enterprise values (EV), the market value of all their shares in issue, plus net borrowing or excluding net cash, and comparing this with Ebitda. The lower the EV/Ebitda ratio, the cheaper the stock…

“Central banks are divided in four categories: the bad ones, like the Federal Reserve, the very bad ones, like the ones in Latin America, the horribly bad ones, and the Central Bank of Argentina.” Argentine presidential candidate Javier Milei (pictured), quoted on Bloomberg “Still the best thing I’ve done… Can you take children of crime, flip the statistics and make 85% of them thrive, have a job and pay tax? One of those kids, I put two grand in an envelope and paid off a drug dealer under a bridge to get a death threat off him… how do you put that through the [restaurant’s] books?” Restaurateur and cookbook author Jamie Oliver on his restaurant Fifteen, which he staffed with underprivileged teenagers, quoted in The Mail on Sunday “A company…

spectator.co.uk My home city of Brighton is an “increasingly unpleasant” place to live, says Julie Burchill. Thank the Green Party, which until recently ruled the local council. They seem to have been intent on destroying the place, and almost succeeded. Oddly, considering the party’s name, the natural world seems to have been one of their main targets. It had a “slash-and-burn attitude” to local flora and green spaces, apart from weeds which it allowed to flourish. Parking fees were raised to exorbitant levels and gridlock was nevertheless a daily occurrence. Bin-men strikes turned the place into a rubbish dump. The list of “Green idiocies and inefficiencies goes on forever”. Angry cyclists and students were the only constituency pandered to. Now they have been ousted and the smoke has cleared, the…

Starboard Value has built a 9.9% stake in US restaurant operator Bloomin’ Brands, making it one of the firm’s five largest investors, says The Wall Street Journal. Bloomin’ – which owns 1,450 casual-dining restaurants around the world under brands such as Outback Steakhouse – has drawn criticism from several activists in recent years. The group has seen weaker sales growth, share-price performance and valuations than peers such as Darden Restaurants, which was previously on the receiving end of one of Starboard’s most successful campaigns. In 2014, the activist seized control of the board at Darden after a heated battle and pushed through operational changes, as well as spinning off some of its real estate. Darden’s shares have since trebled.…

The broadest way to invest in the recovery of the travel industry is through HANetf’s The Travel ETF (LSE: TRYP). This exchange-traded fund (ETF) invests in a range of shares, including airlines, cruise ships, hotels and even travel agencies (which account for 18% of the portfolio). Although just over half the holdings are in US shares, it also invests in Chinese, British, Japanese and European stocks. The largest holdings include Airbnb, Delta Airlines and Royal Caribbean Cruises. The ETF has a reasonable total expense ratio of 0.69% and the shares in the ETF are on an average price/earnings (p/e) ratio of 13.2. If you want something a bit more focused, consider HANetf’s US Global Jets ETF (LSE: JETS). It is heavily weighted towards American airlines, which account for all five…

The summer holidays are in full swing and many of us will be heading off for a break. Given how stretched transport networks are – especially airlines, which are struggling to rebuild capacity after the pandemic – there’s a risk that your journey may suffer some kind of setback, leaving you waiting for hours. Fortunately, there are some rules that will often give you compensation. Is your flight covered? The situation is complicated because of the potential combinations of airlines and destinations. The EU 261 regulation and the UK 261 regulation that was put into British law after Brexit gives you some rights if you are flying with a UK or EU carrier to or from the UK or EU, though an EU court ruling means some long-haul flights to…

Reforms that have made it easier for married couples to get divorced could mean more people fail to deal with pension assets effectively when separating. New data appears to show that more couples are opting for inferior pension arrangements when divorcing, or even overlooking pensions altogether. That is worrying because for many couples, pension savings represent their most valuable asset other than their family home. Often, moreover, these savings are largely held by one partner. The other spouse is therefore at risk of financial hardship in later life if pensions aren’t considered during the divorce settlement. In practice, there are three ways to deal with pension assets during a divorce. The first option is to leave pension arrangements unchanged, offsetting their value against the couple’s other assets. One partner might…

The largest restaurant chain in France, the home of gastronomy and haute cuisine, is McDonald’s. Perhaps this shouldn’t really be a surprise: young French people like eating burgers as much as anybody else. That’s why La Guerchede-Bretagne, a small town in Brittany, was happy to welcome a branch of the chain earlier this year. “It will keep the young here,” said the mayor. And it’s not just the French that see the good side of McDonald’s. Last year my daughter started bringing our new grandson over to see us quite regularly, and for these visits we had lunch at home and then a take-away snack in the evening. I tried McDonald’s, KFC and Subway for something that I could bring back for us to enjoy. McDonald’s provided the best selection,…

The past four weeks have been disappointing for my long tips, with eight of the nine falling. Builder DR Horton slipped from $128 to $115, IT-services firm Computacenter dropped from 2,258p to 2,052p, and brick-and-tile manufacturer Ibstock dipped from 150p to 147p. Estate agent Savills also went down, from 964p to 842p, and Mitie declined from 100p to 91p. Shipbroker Clarkson fell from 2,861p to 2,705p while Gamma Communications dipped from 1,132p to 1,026p. The only exception was discount chain B&M European Value Retail, which rose from 554p to 574p. My long tips are making a net loss of £7, compared with profits of £1,237 a fortnight ago. The good news is that three of my short tips moved in my favour, while one stayed the same. Ticketing firm Live…

T Rowe Price was born in 1898 near Baltimore, Maryland, and after graduating from Swarthmore College worked as an industrial chemist at DuPont. He switched to work as a stockbroker soon afterwards. He came to dislike being paid a commission based on the number of trades he executed, however, so set up his own wealth advisory firm, Price Associates, which paid as a percentage of assets managed. In the 1950s and 1960s, Price set up several growth-orientated mutual funds. When he retired in 1971, his firm managed $1.5bn in assets. What was the investment? In 1934, while still working as a stockbroker, Price became interested in aircraft manufacturers, believing they would benefit from rising demand for commercial air travel and from the US rearmament programme. He invested, for an account…

2021 Dunleavy Sparkling White, Extra Brut, Somerset £31.95, dunleavyvineyards.co.uk I tasted Ingrid Bates’s new Dunleavy sparkler a couple of months ago and had it queued in my list of forthcoming MoneyWeek candidates when a second encounter with this enchanting wine hurried it up to the top of the pile. I was dining at the fabulous Pasture restaurant in Bristol when I noticed this wine in the by-the-glass collection. While my daughter, Isadora, and her boyfriend, Oliver, dived into the cocktail list, I could not imagine a more appropriate local tipple to kick-start my palate. This tremendous sparkler is made from 100% seyval blanc, and it soothes and titillates in equal measure. Behind the charming label image, created by Martin Parr, lies a lemony, minty, chalky, frothy wine that coaxes your…

The value of digital artworks known as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) collapsed last year after attaining their peaks in late 2021. As the prices have fallen, so the number of lawsuits have risen, says Lily Russell-Jones in The Times. Sotheby’s, a string of celebrities and NFT-creator Yuga Labs is the target of one such suit. In the US filing, a group of collectors have accused the defendants of having “misleadingly promoted” a series of NFTs called Bored Ape Yachting Club (BAYC), depicting whimsical apes in various guises, created by Yuga Labs in 2021, in an attempt to “manipulate the price” of the collection. In August 2021, the cheapest BAYC NFT could be bought for $80,698, according to data firm CoinGecko. The following month, Sotheby’s sold a collection of 101 BAYC and…

Demand for weight-loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy has raised Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk’s market capitalisation by a third so far this year, to around $419bn – a figure higher than Denmark’s gross domestic product, says The Wall Street Journal. The figures aren’t synonymous (market cap is the total value of the company’s shares, while GDP measures the value of goods and services produced), but it does illustrate how Novo Nordisk has accelerated past Danish champions Lego and Carlsberg “to sway the economy of its Nordic homeland”. For example, US sales of the drugs have been so strong, an unusually large amount of dollars have been converted into kroner, raising the Danish currency’s value relative to the euro, to which it is pegged. Central bankers have had to keep interest…

Arm, the Cambridge-based semiconductor group, is preparing “for what is likely to be the biggest stockmarket listing this year”, say Katherine Prescott and Isabella Fish in The Times, as it confirmed plans to float on New York’s Nasdaq exchange. Arm makes “the blueprint for microchips and licenses designs” to the likes of Apple, Nvidia and Qualcomm, charging an upfront fee and then a royalty on the semiconductors produced. Its parent company, Japanese investment group Softbank, last week bought a 25% stake in Arm from its Vision Fund, valuing it at $64bn and setting a potential price floor for the initial public offering (IPO). Softbank’s repurchase of the stake in Arm is good news for Softbank’s Vision Fund, “which has flagged in tandem with souring bets on firms like WeWork, China’s…

Five to buy AG Barr Shares AG Barr, the Scottish group behind the fizzy soft drink Irn-Bru and Rubicon juice, has defied inflation to deliver positive sales momentum in recent months. That is testament to the firm’s savvy management, “world-class manufacturing sites” and “considerable marketing clout”. With cost pressures now on the wane, there is scope for further positive news on earnings. On a forward price/earnings (p/e) multiple of 15.2, the shares’ valuation remains below the ten-year average and they yield almost 3%. 485p BAE Systems Interactive Investor Shares in this defence and aerospace giant have fallen on news of plans to acquire US space outfit Ball Aerospace for $5.6bn. British firms don’t have a successful record of buying companies in America and the deal isn’t cheap, but it makes…

● “BAE Systems’ blockbuster bid for Ball Aerospace is a scorcher,” says Maggie Pagano in the Daily Mail. The defence group is launching the biggest takeover in its history, with a $5.6bn offer for the US maker of satellite equipment. BAE is paying a full price and its shares slipped as investors digested the deal. Management will be under pressure to integrate Ball with its existing space business quickly. Still, it’s worth paying a premium to get ahead in the space race and Ball is well-placed in the US, which already represents 44% of BAE’s revenues. “The big question now is whether the highly protectionist US authorities clear the deal.” ● When Anglo American spun out its thermal coal arm two years ago, it called the division Thungela – Zulu…

“There were a number of surprises in the year’s first half, from [US regional] bank failures to the poor performance of China’s economy after its post-Covid reopening,” says Sonal Desai, who oversees bond investments at US investment giant. “The second half doesn’t look so bad.” US consumer spending is being supported by pent-up demand and household balance sheets are healthy, which bodes well for 2023. However, the long-term picture isn’t rosy. The US Federal Reserve “has been caught wrong-footed by the stickiness of inflation,” Desai tells Barron’s. The central bank was guilty of buying into its own rhetoric about how quickly inflation would fall as a result of higher interest rates. But in reality, it’s proving more persistent and remains well above the Fed’s 2% target. “I see interest rates…

billemmott.substack.com The big trend in government in the world today is industrial policy, says Bill Emmott. Public subsidies and investment has poured into favoured industries. President Biden in the US has led the way. What it means is that the Big State is back. The US Chips and Science Act devoted $52.7bn to supporting the semiconductor industry. The Inflation Reduction Act pours $400bn over ten years into the energy transition and infrastructure. Such large-scale state intervention means favouring national producers over imported goods and services. It is, in other words, protectionist. The era of globalisation, some fear, is over. It won’t last. Public subsidies and investment need to be financed, and doing that will be hard when sovereign debt levels are high and interest rates rise. It would only be…

■ UK investors are investing – just not in Britain, says the Financial Times. British retail investors have poured over £50bn into global equity funds since 2015, according to data from funds network Calastone. But at the same time, they’ve been dumping regional funds, such as those focused on the UK, as well as the Asia-Pacific and Europe. The trend towards favouring funds with a wider remit has accelerated since the middle of 2021, with global funds seeing inflows of £19bn compared with £21bn of net outflows from regional funds, including £16bn from UK-focused funds. So far this year, retail investors have pulled £6bn from UK equity funds, while adding £750m to global equity funds, according to data from the Investment Association (IA), the industry trade body. The IA’s figures…

Most cashback credit and debit cards pay at most 0.25% because the interchange fee – the fee charged by card networks such as Mastercard and Visa and shared with your bank – is capped at 0.3% for credit cards and 0.2% for debit cards. To pay more cashback, the issuer must be making money on other fees, using the card as a loss leader to attract customers or only offer higher rates on certain types of spending (eg, retailer cards such as Asda and John Lewis that pay higher rates in their own stores). However, some American Express cards are exempt from the cap because Amex is both the issuer and network, and so offers the best rates. Amex’s Platinum Cashback Credit Card offers a cashback of 5%, capped at…

Savers hoping for a comfortable standard of living in retirement now need to find £4,200 of extra income each year, according to new research. Pensions industry guidelines last year suggested it would cost £43,500 for a single pensioner to lead a comfortable life before tax. But the high inflation of the past 12 months has seen that figure increase to an annual £47,700. By comfortable, pension experts mean that someone would be able to take foreign holidays each year, maintain their home and car, and go out regularly. Taking into account the value of the state pension – £10,600 in the current tax year – you now need to find £37,100 of private-pension income to reach this point. The Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association, which makes these calculations, says more…

Sometimes a company in an obscure market can prove to be a great investment. One such company is Howden Joinery Group (LSE: HWDN). Because Howden makes kitchens for small builders, rather than selling directly to consumers or large homebuilders, relatively few people know about it. The building-materials industry in general has a reputation for low margins and a cyclical dependence on the housing market, which is in poor shape at present; high interest rates have punctured the housing bubble. No wonder, then, that Howden’s shares have been volatile. They plunged when the pandemic started, surged in the DIY boom during lockdown, but then fell by nearly 50% in 12 months from their September 2021 peak. Despite rising again over the past nine months, they are essentially back where they were…

The threat to our climate and biodiversity is severe, yet the world has never been in a stronger position to address it. Renewable-energy costs have fallen for solar, wind, and batteries. Funding for climate technology has grown. Engineers are supported by increasingly sophisticated technology, software and computational power. Governments and regulators are pushing for action. The world knows what needs to be done and there is an action plan for carrying out the transition. The Jupiter Green Investment Trust finds the firms developing and implementing solutions for the world’s most pressing environmental challenges. The trust follows six core investment themes: clean energy; green mobility; the circular economy; green buildings and industry; sustainable agriculture and land ecosystems; and sustainable oceans and freshwater systems. We are more convinced than ever that environmental…

Russia’s failed Luna-25 space probe, which crashed into the moon at the weekend, isn’t the only Russian state asset to have endured a hard landing recently. On 14 August the rouble fell to a 16-month low against the US dollar at 100 to the greenback. The fall prompted the Russian central bank to raise interest rates by 3.5 percentage points to 12%. The move had only a modest effect. Trading at 94 to the dollar this week, the rouble is still down by a third against the greenback over the past year. Decisive interest rate hikes are a trademark of Elvira Nabiullina, the technocrat who oversees Russian monetary policy, says Anatoly Kurmanaev in The New York Times. The central bank raised rates to 20% shortly after Russia’s February 2022 invasion…

“Growth will be… harder to achieve in the future… [Ageing populations are driving a]… shortage of workers… and thus [higher] real wages… Over the past 20 years… geopolitics have [taken a back seat, but today] globalisation… has stalled… the world has moved into an era when inflation is more likely to surprise on the upside… Central banks will [thus] have to keep interest rates higher than they did during the 2010s… higher rates should reduce [stock] valuations… [In short] big factors seem to be creating significant headwinds for global markets over the long term. Demography will mean slower growth; energy supplies may be more disrupted; the hangover of debt will be more costly if... interest rates are higher; and all this will be exacerbated by geopolitical shocks. [It will] be…

Homebuilder Crest Nicholson’s profit warning, coming at the same time as data showing a continued drop in both asking prices and sales volumes, shook the housebuilding sector this week, says Jasper Jolly in The Guardian. It now expects to make a profit of £50m in the year to 31 October, down a third from projections of £74m two months ago. Higher interest rates, a shaky economy and the cost-of-living crisis are undermining the residential property market. Nonetheless, say Maxine Kelly and Akila Quinio in the Financial Times, analysts think that “the scale of Crest Nicholson’s expected profit miss” will unnerve investors, especially since the housebuilder has already reported a 60% decline in half-year profits. Crest admitted that “trading conditions were unlikely to materially improve” before the end of October, and…

Glass may be fragile, but the glass market is highly resilient, says WirtschaftsWoche. Italy’s Zignago Vetro has been producing glass bottles and jars since 1950. The food and drinks industry accounts for about half its revenue, while the cosmetics and perfume industry makes up most of the other half. Since 1988 sales have expanded by an annual average of 8%; last year they reached €641m. Ebitda has expanded at a similar clip. Sales and profits have dipped only when global growth has plunged – during the financial crisis and the Covid-induced recession. Zignago enjoys impressive loyalty from customers: more than 90% have been with the group for two years. The shares yield 4%.…

Thailand’s populist former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra arrived in Bangkok after more than 15 years in exile as his party returns to government “in a controversial pact with its military rivals that keeps reformists out of power”, say Rebecca Ratcliffe and Navaon Siradapuvadol in The Guardian. Thaksin (pictured), who was removed in a military coup in 2006, will officially spend eight years in prison, although there is widespread speculation of a back-room deal that will allow him to avoid serving a full term. His arrival coincided with a “high-stakes parliamentary vote” that confirmed Srettha Thavisin of Thaksin’s Pheu Thai party as prime minister in coalition with “pro-monarchy military-backed parties”. The parties connected to Thaksin “continued to command widespread support” following his removal from power, especially among poorer Thais, who Thaksin…

The temptation to do too much that Andrew talks about in his letter this week isn’t just limited to trading. It’s very easy to try to forecast too much in situations where it adds no value. Take the flap we’ve seen in recent days over soft economic data, such as the UK purchasing managers’ index release on Wednesday, which was taken as evidence that the economy is heading into recession. I confess that I pay no attention to soft statistics like this – they are part of the “deluge of data” that Andrew mentions. My heretical view is that if they were never published again, no investor would be worse informed. Most statistics tell us nothing we don’t already know until it’s too late to matter. Yes, some parts of…

AI sets off a scramble for data Editorial The Economist Fast-developing artificial-intelligence (AI) tools rely on “oodles” of data, says The Economist. Having “already helped themselves to much of the internet”, often without permission from copyright holders, AI firms are now “seeking out new data sources to sustain the feeding frenzy”. Companies with “vast troves of the stuff” are “weighing up how best to profit from it”. The result has been a “flurry” of dealmaking. In July, OpenAI “inked a deal” with Associated Press to access its archive of stories. Google is in discussion with Universal Music to license artists’ voices to feed a song-writing tool. There are rumours that AI laboratories have approached the BBC and JSTOR, a digital library of academic journals. Meanwhile, companies with data are raising…

aier.org Competition in a market economy can clearly be beneficial, says Kimberlee Josephson. It challenges incumbent firms and incentivises improvements. But competition for competition’s sake is not always necessary. If you are wearing an item of clothing with a zip, the chances are you’ll see “YKK” stamped on it. YKK is the world’s largest manufacturer of zips and it has been dominating the market for decades. Consumers do not care that there is only one primary zip maker. They only care that they work. If market needs are being met, competition isn’t a concern. In fact, limited options may be proof that resources are being allocated properly. As Milton Friedman pointed out, you don’t need more than one telephone pole producer in each town. The dominance of incumbent firms is,…

There’s an incredibly strong argument that none of us knows or can control anything about the future of markets and economies. The only thing we do know and can control is that over-trading and paying excessive fees are guaranteed to destroy our wealth. So in order to reduce the chances of fees and costs eroding our wealth, we can choose to keep it simple and invest in broad funds, such as global equity tracker funds. For some people, this form of simple portfolio management works a treat. But is it possible to earn better returns by being a bit smarter with passive fund selections, choosing different factor exchange-traded funds (ETFs) instead of traditional market-weighted trackers? Adding diversification There is a significant school of thought, backed up by copious academic research,…

Asked to guess what has been the best-performing sector in global equity markets so far this year, many people might say technology, especially given the pervasive coverage of artificial intelligence (AI) in the media. While this is a logical answer, it’s wrong. The real success story has been the travel sector. Shares in booking sites, entertainment, airlines, cruises and hotels, in both the US and Europe, have easily eclipsed the technology-led Nasdaq index in 2023, notes Ben Laidler, global markets strategist at eToro. Of course, just because travel shares have done well doesn’t mean they will keep soaring. However, Laidler thinks that the sector still has ample scope for growth. The industry is certainly doing much better than it was during the Covid pandemic, when most travel ground to a…

● Banks are lining up some attractive offers for new student customers ahead of the academic year. Santander has one of the best student bank accounts on the market, offering a guaranteed overdraft of £1,500 at 0% for three years, providing users pay in £500 each term. New account holders can also claim a free, four-year 16- to 25-year-old Railcard worth £100, which takes a third off rail tickets. NatWest and RBS student accounts start with a definite £500 overdraft at 0%, which users can request (not guaranteed) to be increased to £2,000 after the first year. New users can also pick up £100 cash for opening the account, and a four-year Tastecard to get money off meals out. HSBC offers a guaranteed £1,000 overdraft at 0% in the first…

● Nest, the UK’s biggest private pension scheme, is to start moving up to 20% of some savers money into privately owned companies. The shift is part of an agreement between pension providers and the government, which will see many schemes shift money into potentially high-growth businesses looking for capital to expand. There is the potential for savers to earn outsized returns from these companies – often small, early-stage businesses – but such investments also carry increased risk. ● Expatriates angry that their UK state pensions have been frozen are planning to stage a protest in Westminster in September. Around half a million Britons have moved to countries around the world where there is no reciprocal deal with the British government on raising state pensions each year. As a result,…

It has been 100 years since the four Warner brothers set up their film business in Los Angeles, a centenary marked this summer by the release of the blockbuster Barbie. It has eclipsed every other release in 2023 and raked in more than $1bn at the box office so far. Warner Bros Discovery (Nasdaq: WBD) has created a mainstream global media phenomenon, a product franchise set to deliver beyond this first film for years to come. It’s a reminder of the marketing juggernaut that this $31bn entertainment giant can muster at its best. Ahead of the release, WBD made a four-part television series, Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge, showing teams competing to make perfect homes, that aired in nearly 150 countries; it ran the Barbie-inspired Summer Baking Championship on its Food Network;…

This year saw the 25th anniversary of the introduction of “circuit breakers” in the US stockmarket. This followed the “Black Monday” crash on 19 October 1987, when $1.7trn was wiped off global markets, and there were fears that the entire US financial system could collapse. The basic idea is to pause trading once the market falls by a specific amount. The idea is to give traders a breathing space that would prevent a fall in the market turning into a blind panic. At present the rules state that once the S&P 500 falls by 7% from its opening price, trading is halted for 15 minutes (unless it is late in the trading day). There is another brief interruption once the S&P 500 goes down by 13%. What’s more, if the…

The collapse of discount retailer Wilko is bad news for staff, customers and Britain’s high streets, says The Telegraph. But it marks “a symbolic changing of the guard”. For the billionaire brothers behind rival B&M Value Retail, the travails of 93-year-old Wilko are an opportunity. Whether or not B&M emerges as a formal rescuer, it is poised to grab market share – continuing the rapid ascent of a toilet-seat to snacks empire that has seemingly come from nowhere to become one of the UK’s biggest retailers. Having bought the business in 2004, brothers Simon (top picture) and Bobby Arora (bottom) have transformed B&M, which was founded in Blackpool in the late 1970s, into a £5.4bn giant. They tend to avoid the limelight, but of late it has proved impossible, says…

The Porsche 718 Spyder RS 2023 is “the last combustion-engined Boxster” – just let that sink in for a moment, says Richard Meaden in Evo. Porsche’s next entry-level sports car will be powered on batteries. So, it follows that this era-ending send-off is the “fastest, sharpest, most powerful, most expensive and most extreme Boxster ever made”. It shares certain features with the Cayman GT4 RS and they are “welcome”. The basic powertrain, brakes and suspension are the same, but “considerable effort” has been expended on giving the 718 Spyder RS character-defining changes, such as those to the springs, dampers, steering response and aerodynamics. That makes it sharper and faster, while still being intended for the road. As for the “vital statistics”, they make for “compelling reading”. The car has been…

Going… Elon Musk’s X (Twitter rebranded) is selling “a bunch of stuff… in what feels like a comically unhinged estate sale”, says Jess Weatherbed on The Verge. A barn from Montana, repurposed as a seating booth, is among the odder lots at the HGP online auction from 12-14 September, as is a 12-foot-long mural of Robin Williams formed from the screenshots of celebrity tweets paying tribute to the late actor. There are also various items in the form of Twitter’s “Larry” bird logo, including a coffee table and the giant logo currently pinned to the side of X’s headquarters. Another oddity is a 34-foot agamograph, an image that changes depending on the angle of view. Here, a wide-eyed emoji changes to “What’s happening?” – a question employees at the social-media…