Indholdsfortegnelse for Issue 993 i MoneyWeek

“There has rarely been a time in which barriers to free movement have been flung up faster” If there is a consensus about anything, it is that the world we emerge to post-GVC (the Great Virus Crisis) will be different from our pre-GVC world. We will, we are told, find that in both big and small ways our world has changed direction. We aren’t so sure. There were already huge shifts in global economies, politics, markets and for that matter, lifestyles, under way. It looks to us as if the crisis will not change their direction. It will just speed them up. That’s true of smaller things: significant numbers of people were already working from home, for example – after the summer more will do it and more often than…

Juventus Football Club players, including star player Cristiano Ronaldo (pictured), are having their salaries cut for an amount equal to the monthly wages of March, April, May and June asthe coronavirus outbreak forced Italy’s Serie Aand other leagues to stop games, says Daniele Lepido on Bloomberg. The deal will save Juventus around €90m for the 2019-2020 financial year. The closure of 2,000 garden centres due to the coronavirus outbreak has left horticulturists with no outlet for their plants, meaning millions of plants, shrubs and trees could be binned in the coming days, says Simon Jack in the BBC. The Horticultural Trade Association is asking for up to £250m of financial assistance as up to a third of producers could go bust due to loss of business.…

It’s not just corporate debt that is worrying market watchers. Bloomberg News reports that a “global consumer default wave” is under way too. The trend is most apparent in China, where an estimated eight million people lost their jobs in February. Overdue credit-card debt is up 50% last month on a year earlier. “Few places have seen a bigger jump in consumer borrowing in recent years than China,” where a housing boom and new online lending platforms drove household debt to a record 55% of GDP last year. The Institute of International Finance says that globally households are carrying $12trn more debt than before the 2008 crisis. European households are particularly vulnerable. Household debt as a percentage of net disposable income sits at more than 200% in Denmark, the Netherlands…

A key labour market indicator in the US has come down with Covid-19. The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment insurance spiked to 3.28 million last Thursday from 282,000 a week earlier. “Nothing in the 53-year history of the [data] series comes close,” says Justin Lahart in The Wall Street Journal. In the worst week of the Great Recession in 2009 665,000 joined the dole. This is a stark early illustration of the impact of the shutdown. What this means for the overall unemployment rate is unclear. Goldman Sachs thinks it will rocket from 3.5% to a peak of 15%; the St. Louis Federal Reserve has said it could reach 32%, eclipsing the 24.9% peak seen in the Great Depression.…

Shanghai has topped the global initial public offering (IPO) league table for the first time in three years, say Scott Murdoch and Samuel Shen in Reuters. In the first quarter of 2020, 33 firms raised $7.31bn on the main market and the start-up-focused Star market, eclipsing New York’s technology-heavy Nasdaq exchange, where 17 companies raised $5.13bn. Shanghai saw January’s $4.4bn listing of Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway, which accounted for most of the money raised on the main exchange. The Star market held up even as the country went into lockdown in February. Eight companies raised $2bn that month and a further five flotations in March mustered $616m.…

• Stelios Haji-Ioannou has watched “too many bad westerns”, says Jim Armitage in the Evening Standard. He insists that easyJet scrap its contract to buy new Airbus planes, or he’ll call meeting to get the board of directors removed “one by one”. This isn’t the first time he’s demanded that easyJet stop buying new planes, and he has so far been “totally wrong” as its expansion “has made it one of the biggest, most profitable airlines in Europe”. What’s more, while it makes sense to put the current orders on hold “this is best done by negotiation, not war”. • Shares in both Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and Abbott Laboratories have soared amid “new hope” in the fight against the virus, reports Hannah Kuchler in the Financial Times. J &J’s…

The current crisis may have boosted Donald Trump’s approval ratings, but punters are far from sanguine about his chances. With £23.4m matched so far on the main presidential election market, Trump is at 2.08 (48%) to win on Betfair. They’re not particularly optimistic about the prospects for Joe Biden (pictured) either, putting him at 2.46 (40%). This probably reflects speculation that he will be replaced, or choose to step down, as Betfair has the Democrats as favourites to win at 1.98 (50.5%), with the Republicans at 2.02 (49.5%). My view is that any bounce Trump will enjoy from the crisis will be  temporary and once things return to normal the Democratic candidate should be on course for victory, though it might be a little closer than I originally thought. If…

Hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman has had “a few rough years”, says Matt Levine on Bloomberg. His woes included a $4bn loss on Valeant Pharmaceuticals (the firm’s shares fell 90% amid drug-pricing scandals and accounting fraud) and a $1bn loss on supplement firm Herbalife (Ackman argued it was a pyramid scheme and shorted it, the stock kept going up). But the coronavirus crisis has been good to him. “You don’t make a 10,000% return in 20 days very often,” yet that’s what Ackman has managed with one well-timed trade. In February, his Pershing Square hedge fund purchased credit default swaps (a derivative that pays out if a bond defaults) on several bond indices. Under these, Pershing Square would pay $27m per month for five years, but would receive a large payment…

The stimulus deal passed by the US Senate last week “doesn’t come close to protecting taxpayers from having to subsidise excessive CEO pay”, say Sarah Anderson and Sam Pizzigati on MarketWatch. Top executives will get to keep the first $3m of annual pay, plus half of whatever above that they took home in 2019. For 2018, 50 US CEOs took home around 1,000 times the pay of the average worker in their corporations. Not that this concerns Donald Trump. “Throughout the crisis, the president has surrounded himself with corporate chief executives at every opportunity and lavished praise upon them.” He believes they didn’t cause the coronavirus crisis, so why should they be penalised? “But CEOs most definitely did cause the economic crisis average American families now face.” They have taken…

marginalrevolution.com The news that medical centres in the US were charging $100-$500 for a coronavirus test sparked outrage on Twitter. But consider it rationally, says Tyler Cowen. The number of testing kits available falls short of current demand. Rationing by price will rule out some of the poor and the frivolous, but not those who can afford it and think they have the virus. Those who think they have it are more likely to be “super-spreaders” and so it makes sense to prioritise them. So high prices are an imperfect but not entirely bad solution. The alternative, to set a government price of zero and ration on principle, might work well in a country like Singapore, with surveillance mechanisms for tracing people who have come into contact with the infected,…

■ “The [global] hedge fund industry’s pitch is that it aims to make money in most market conditions and protect investors’ capital in a downturn,” says the Financial Times. It fell short during the financial crisis of 2008 and now the coronavirus is testing it again. Hedge funds initially fared “fairly well” during the turbulence, with the average fund losing only 1.4% in February, but the steadily worsening turmoil brought on by the pandemic saw a global index fall by 8.6% in March, and nearly 10% for the year. The setback “comes at a precarious time”, with hedge funds already having suffered outflows for 13 of the past 17 quarters. “The current turmoil therefore provides an opportunity – and for many managers, a last chance – to prove their worth.”…

The first point to make is that you should not move right now unless you absolutely have to. If you’re a seller, there’s no need to take your house off the market – people have lots of time on their hands to browse – but just don’t expect any viewings. If you hope to buy but you haven’t yet exchanged, the easiest thing to do is simply to put the process on hold. You might be inclined to try to negotiate a lower price and carry on regardless (making sure the completion date is for later in the year), but bear in mind that unless the seller absolutely has to move, they will probably simply pull out. Holding off and picking up later (when the market impact will also be…

The Covid-19 crisis will inevitably have had an impact on your pension –both on the value of your holdings, as financial markets have fallen, and on your ability to continue saving. But now is not the time for rash decisions. Take your time to assess your position and seek professional advice if necessary. How are my pension savings affected and what should I do? “Beware scammers saying there’s a way around the rules” This depends on what kind of pension you have. If you’re in a defined-benefit or final-salary scheme at work, your pension is guaranteed. The only danger is that your employer goes under and is therefore not around to meet its pension commitments. In which case, the Pension Protection Fund, the industry lifeboat scheme, would step in. It…

These are torrid times for the oil industry. The price of a barrel of West Texas Intermediate, the benchmark US oil futures, has fallen from $60 at the start of the year to under $20, while even Brent crude is around $25. This is due to two factors: an increase in supply owing to the breakdown of the agreement between oil cartel Opec and Russia, and a collapse in demand as the world goes into lockdown. The mismatch between supply and demand is now so great that there are reports of companies getting close to running out of space to store the excess oil. They may even end up paying some customers to take the oil off their hands. Still, dire as conditions are, these prices are unlikely to last…

In 1918, a pale horse appeared – the Spanish flu. A few months later, some 675,000 Americans were dead. That’s equivalent to about 1.2 million people today. Cities and local communities coped as best they could. But there was no panic. No state of emergency was proclaimed, neither by any state nor by the national government. No testing programmes were put in place. No stores were closed. Steel furnaces ran hot Restaurants served meals. And people went to work as normal. Nor was any “stimulus” given. No deficit was run. No interest rates were cut. No emergency spending, no helicopter money, no bailouts. With no rescue from the federales, the economy must have totally collapsed… right? Nope. That’s not what happened at all. Unemployment grew, mostly because of the soldiers…

According to banking and financial services trade body UK Finance, 122,437 people were victims of push payment fraud in 2019, says Kenza Bryan in The Sunday Times. The number of people tricked into sending money to fraudsters went up 45% last year. Losses rose by 29%, from £245m in 2018 to £456m, with £248.3m of the latter in the second half of last year after banks pledged to repay innocent victims. Push payment scams are bad enough, but even more horrifying are the criminals making threats to infect a target’s family and friends with coronavirus in a bid to get money from them, says Simon Goodley in The Guardian. The number of coronavirus-related email scams has tripled in the past week, with almost 3% of all global spam now estimated…

Are we already over the worst of the market rout? JPMorgan analysts this week declared that “most risky markets have probably made their lows for this recession”. The note coincided with a market rally that has gathered pace over recent days. The S&P 500 is up 17% and the FTSE 100 has gained 12% since bottoming on 23 March. By Monday, global assets had recouped roughly one-quarter of their losses since the market crash began in February. So was that it? Or do stocks have further to fall? The essence of a bear rally Stocks have taken off as though “recovery were at hand”, says Randall Forysth in Barron’s. Yet “anybody who has been around for a... cycle or more” will see the recent “pop” as the “very essence of…

Three to buy CMC Markets The Sunday Telegraph When stocks slump one beneficiary is the spread-betting industry. CMC Markets came into the crisis “in good shape”, with profits up more than fourfold at the last half-year report in September. Recent market swings have seen clients’ trading activity running at twice the normal volume, which should bring a £10m-£15m revenue boost in March alone. On 11 times next year’s earnings the rating is undemanding and cash on the balance sheet accounts for almost a fifth of the firm’s market value, which is a comfort. Keep buying. 166p Hilton Food Shares This global food group’s services are in high demand as supermarkets rush to keep their shelves stocked. Big operators like Hilton have an advantage in the meat-packing business, a consolidating sector…

Investors who rely on dividends for income will have been receiving bad news in the last couple of weeks. As companies struggle to conserve cash to see them through the coronavirus crisis, many have suspended future dividends. Some have even taken the drastic step of cancelling dividends that had already been declared. “Financial stocks are 25% of the UK Equity Income index” Most significantly, banks such as Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds and RBS agreed this week to scrap around £15bn in dividends until at least the end of this year in order to preserve capital and bolster their ability to lend to struggling individuals and businesses. Financial stocks account for around 25% of the FTSE UK Equity Income index, while other major contributors include miners (15%) and oil and gas (8%),…

A deadly virus is spreading across the world at an accelerating rate. Shops, restaurants and pubs have closed down. No one is allowed out of their house and the economy is collapsing. There are moments when it feels like the apocalypse. The world is ending and we are all doomed. Investors may feel the same way. Amid the carnage on the stockmarket one small category has done well – space stocks. It is almost as if people have decided to give up on this planet and try a different one instead. Space stocks are soaring Space exploration is a small sector, of course, but there are definite signs of life. The only pure quoted space stock is Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, which aims to offer the first tourist trips into…

How Swedes avoided a lockdown Nathalie Rothschild Foreign Policy Sweden, unlike almost all countries in the West, has adopted a“markedly measured” (or “dangerously tame”) approach to the coronavirus, says Nathalie Rothschild. “The Swedish government appears to be betting that its national culture is distinctive enough to pull off public-health policies other countries can’t.” Weeks after the Public Health Agency (PHA) raised the risk of community spread to “very high”, schools remain open, borders are only partially closed and there are no compulsory quarantines or shutdowns of public places. One reason for this is Sweden’s combination of politically independent public agencies, including the PHA, and a high level of trust between citizens and authorities. Swedes trust public agencies (surveys show trust is actually growing), authorities trust citizens to heed advice (everyone…

ippr.org/blog Coronavirus has wreaked havoc in the airline industry, says Carsten Jung. British Airways, easyJet, Ryanair and Virgin Atlantic have all approached the UK government for help. There is a strong case to be made for protecting the industry – about 80,000 jobs are attached to those four airlines, and some see them as too important to fail, both for the labour market and for the wider economy. Others, however, suggest that this was already an industry in decline and that there are better ways to support affected workers. If the industry is bailed out, the government should learn from past mistakes. First, be transparent about the rationale for any bailout, and upfront about the expected costs. This will establish trust and allow taxpayers to assess how the funds are…

Nick Train, a 40-year veteran of investment markets, has been the manager of Finsbury Growth & Income Trust (LSE: FGT) for 19 years but thinks that “the next 19 are going to be more successful, owing to the calibre of the companies in our portfolio”. Under his management, FGT’s investment returns have compounded at 10.4% per annum, twice the pace of the FTSE All Share index, while dividends have grown by 10% a year. The trust has grown to £1.8bn of assets. A concentrated portfolio Train manages a concentrated portfolio of long-term growth companies in the consumer, financial and technology sectors. There are just 23 holdings, all but three of which are UK-listed. The ten largest account for 85% of the portfolio. The long-term average portfolio turnover is just 4.3%…

As the lockdown grinds on, everyone is desperately asking just how long it will last and when we can return to normal. Limited testing of individuals, a lack of hard data and unstable computer modelling are making predictions impossible. Nor can anyone say what is in fact meant by “return to normal”. The longer activity is choked off by government restrictions, the more likely we are to adopt new habits that could change the structure of the post-virus economy irrevocably. Perhaps the key trend set to have a big impact on the way we are going to live in future is working from home. From an investor’s point of view it has the potential to give new impetus to the businesses that facilitate it. A breakthrough for remote working Remote…

Most people assume that economic and financial market recovery will be based on coronavirus cases peaking. Unfortunately, it is much more complicated than that. The crash in global financial markets would have happened anyway at some point, even without the virus. There were clear signs that it was coming. These included stresses in the US repo market that emerged in September and the decline in real and nominal interest rates, which implied that underlying global economic growth was already weakening. The financial crash is what Jamie Lee, Kevin Coldiron and I, in our book The Rise of Carry, call a “carry crash”. A carry crash is not merely a big stockmarket decline but an almost straight-down crash in stockmarkets and credit markets, together with an evaporation of liquidity across all…

The government has announced that lenders have agreed to give homeowners and landlords a three-month repayment holiday on their mortgage to combat the financial turbulence many of us face. “You won’t have to go through any kind of means test or provide evidence that you have been affected by the coronavirus crisis to claim,” says David Byers in The Times. It is an unprecedented move that could prove invaluable for homeowners who have no idea where their next pay packet will come from. “Lenders don’t think the government has been clear about the downside” But it is not free money. Don’t be fooled by the term “holiday”: you will pay for this break down the line. This is causing concern for lenders who don’t think the government has been clear…

A week after announcing unprecedented support for employees at risk of losing their jobs, the government bowed to pressure to offer similar help to millions of self-employed workers. But Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s Self-Employment Income Support System is complicated and many self-employed people will miss out. The scheme offers support to self-employed workers, including those in partnerships, who have suffered a loss of income because of Covid-19. They’ll be eligible for a taxable grant worth 80% of their average monthly profits over the past three years, up to a maximum of £2,500 a month. There is no need to apply for this support. HM Revenue & Customs will use its records to identify who is eligible and then contact them to invite online applications. The money will initially be available for…

What happens to a company when a CEO dies? The apparent suicide of Robert Maxwell in November 1991 preceded the bankruptcy of Maxwell Group by just a month. By contrast, the death of Steve Jobs, (widely regarded as the key factor behind Apple’s revival) in October 2011 didn’t prevent Apple’s shares from continuing to soar, allowing it to become one of the largest listed companies in the world (although technically Jobs had stepped down as CEO a few months before). A 2016 study by Timothy Quigley and Robert Campbell of the University of Georgia, and Craig Crossland of the University of Notre Dame, looked at 240 unexpected deaths of CEOs between 1950 and 2009. The study found that the market reacted negatively to an unexpected death, with shares in the…

Philip Musica was born in New York City in 1884 and dropped out of school at the age of 14 to help out at his father’s grocery store. Within two years he was in charge, handing everyday operations to his younger brother while he set about undercutting competitors by dodging tariffs on imports. Thus began a three decade career as a swindler. He had two spells in jail for bribery and forgery in 1909 and 1913, getting his second sentenced commuted by volunteering to work as a government agent during World War I. In this period he changed his identity several times, eventually settling on Dr F. Donald Coster, and founding the Adelphi Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Company, as a front for bootlegging. By 1926 he had made enough money to buy…

“The internet has proved not only an efficient research tool [for buying art online], but also often provides an acceptable substitute for the real thing, ” says Colin Gleadell in The Daily Telegraph. For art collectors currently unable to leave their homes, “there is an incalculable amount of art out there to sift through on your screens”. Artfinder is a “friendly and unpretentious” online platform that connects buyers with independent artists and the prices are affordable. “I wouldn’t recommend any of it –just as I could not recommend buying art off the Hyde Park railings,” says Gleadell. You may like what you have bought, “but I would wager you will never get your money back in a discriminating marketplace”. So buyer beware. Also beware the rapid expansion in the online…

Councils are scaling back on parking restrictions due to the coronavirus outbreak, meaning motorists are to be allowed to park for free across the country, says Jaymi McCann in The Daily Telegraph. The news comes after hospitals announced parking charges would be waived for NHS staff during the pandemic after outrage erupted when health workers received fines. Shares in Silicon Valley video conferencing app Zoom (see page 24) have soared amid the lockdown, from $70 in January to $150 this week, turning its founder and chief executive Eric Yuan into one of the world’s richest people. Yuan, who owns 20% of the company’s shares, has seen his estimated net worth grow by more than $4bn since the Covid-19 crisis started, to $7.9bn.…

The daily rate of growth in Covid-19 infections in Italy, the European country worst affected, had slowed to around 4% early this week, a considerable improvement from the peak of 14% seen on 19 March. In Spain, the second worst-hit nation, new cases are climbing by 12%, down from 20% before 25 March. Judging by Japan, Korea and China’s experience, says Nike’s CEO John Donahoe, containing the virus takes five to six weeks; then there is a recovery period when things slowly return to normal. He notes that 80% of Nike’s stores in China have opened their doors again. Another encouraging sign this week was the surge in China’s PMI indices tracking manufacturing and services. The two gauges rose from 36 to 52 and 30 to 52 respectively in March,…

France’s pharmaceutical giant Sanofi could be a major beneficiary of the coronavirus crisis, says WirtschaftsWoche. Its arthritis treatment Sarilumab is being tested on 400 patients in New York in a joint venture with US biotech Regeneron; a similar drug appeared effective against the virus in Chinese patients. Sanofi is one of the three leading global producers of vaccines so it would be able to make one in huge quantities and distribute it rapidly. Covid-19 aside, however, there is plenty to like here. Sanofi boasts a pipeline of 39 drugs to battle ailments ranging from cancer to diabetes. The company has hiked its dividend for 26 successive years and currently yields almost 4%.…

Shares in the property company Hammerson, which owns several shopping centres, have plunged by a fifth in the past few days. The group was paid only about a third of the quarterly rent it was due last week “as cash-strapped retailers struggled to survive” the crisis, says Julia Kollewe in The Guardian. It has been “deluged with requests for rent deferrals, cuts or waivers”: most retailers have been forced to close. Hammerson has scrapped its dividend to conserve cash. No wonder, says Miles Costello in The Times. The lockdown is “deepening” what has already been a “prolonged crisis” for many commercial landlords, who are “battling” to respond to the downturn in trading at bricks and mortar stores. They are “facing a squeeze” from both sides. Tenants are “baying for rent…

Europe now accounts for more than 50% of the world’s 601,520 coronavirus cases, with Italy surpassing China’s total confirmed cases and deaths this week. At the start of Italy’s national lockdown, videos circulated of entire streets singing in solidarity, says Miles Johnson in the Financial Times. A month on, “goodwill is beginning to fade”. What happens next is a portent for countries that locked down later. Tensions are most evident in Italy’s poorer south, where armed police have been deployed to supermarkets to stop people avoiding paying for food. In Spain, which has the second most severe outbreak, there have been “scuffles” over lockdown measures and more than 1,000 people have been detained. Sanctions range from “light fines” to prison. Elsewhere in Europe, enforcement has been severe. Increasingly, people are…

A dividend yield is simply a company’s total annual dividend per share – the amount of money it has paid or will pay to shareholders in a year – divided by its current share price and expressed as a percentage. For example, if a company paid a single dividend of 10p per share this year and its shares are trading at a price of 1,000p, the dividend yield would be 10p ÷ 1,000p =0.01 (which is 1%). If the firm paid a dividend of 5p after half a year (usually called an interim dividend) and a further 10p at the end of the financial year (a final dividend), you would add the two together and get (5p + 10p) ÷ 1,000p = 0.015 (1.5%). Dividends are not fixed: a company…

• The former head of Credit Suisse, Tidjane Thiam (pictured), has had his pay for last year reduced by 17% to CHF10.2m (£8.7m), from CHF12.3m in 2018. Thiam had agreed to a cut to his short-term bonus. He resigned from the bank in February after it emerged Credit Suisse had spied on two of its former staff, although Thiam denies any knowledge of it. Still, his “management style” was found wanting, says The Times. “It was decided he should go.” • Tim Boyle, the president and chief executive of sportswear brand Columbia Sportswear, has cut his own salary to $10,000. He is reported to have received $3.3m in 2018, says CNN. Around ten senior executives have also taken pay cuts of 15% to ensure that the company’s 3,500 retail employees…

“You feel more empowered as a woman when you can pay for your own things. That’s what my mum put in my head from a very early age – don’t rely on anyone in life. Make sure you can stand on your own feet, so you don’t have to ask for anything.” German supermodel and television presenter Heidi Klum (pictured), quoted in The Times “In bear markets, stocks return to their rightful owners.” Dictum attributed to J.P. Morgan, quoted in a Price Value Partners newsletter “It’s made him pull his finger out and work for a living at last. He’s selling more records and way more tickets than me so good luck to him, ride it until the wheels come off.” Noel Gallagher on his brother and former Oasis bandmate’s…

Markets have plunged and companies have cut more than £4.8bn of dividends. But despairing income investors should look at investment trusts, says Laura Suter of investment platform AJ Bell. Trusts’ structure means they can hold back income during the good times to bolster payouts in turbulent periods. Alliance Trust and Scottish Investment Trust, for instance, both have two years’ dividend payments stored away. Note too that only four trusts have managed to produce an above-inflation dividend rise every year for the past 20, a period which included the global financial crisis. They may thus be well prepared for the current volatility. They are Caledonia, Bankers, JP Morgan Claverhouse and Perpetual Income & Growth.…

The emphasis here is on businesses that should benefit from a growing long-term trend of people working remotely as well as during the current lockdown. A reliable working-from-home “all-rounder” is Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT). The business model and management is highly rated and it doesn’t come as a surprise that at the time of writing it is one of those rare stocks with a share price in positive territory so far this year. Investors can profit from the group’s rapid development of a serious and leading cloud service that is needed by businesses to connect all their staff, customers and devices. Almost all homeworkers will be using those revenue stalwarts Office and Windows. They may well use Microsoft’s Skype for communication, as well as its Teams product for staying in touch…

The end of the tax year is nigh. You have until midnight on 5 April to take advantage of various tax allowances or risk losing them. “Many savers may be nursing losses as a result of the recent heavy stockmarket falls and not feel inclined to think too much about putting their finances in order… but at a time when money is likely to be tight, it makes sense to make the most of any opportunities to save tax where you can,” says Mark Atherton in The Times. You can put £20,000 into an individual savings account (Isa) every year divided between cash and investments. Many markets now appear cheap enough to yield healthy long-term returns. Next, consider if you have any gains outside your Isas you want to cash…

• The virus has succeeded where countless campaigners have failed. It has secured the cancellation of next month’s controversial IR35 reforms, albeit temporarily. Ministers had been insisting that the reforms, which make employers responsible for determining the tax status of their contractors and freelance workers, would go ahead on 6 April, despite warnings that the changes are unfair and poorly understood. But the Treasury now accepts that sticking with the timetable would add unnecessarily to the burden facing self-employed contractors and freelancers. The IR35 changes won’t be introduced before 6 April 2021. It’s not all good news for those concerned about IR35. For one thing, the postponement has come too late for many people, with a significant number of employers already opting to avoid contractors altogether, insisting that those undertaking…

As you’d expect, these past four weeks have been dismal for the six long positions that I tipped before the crisis, all of which plunged. The good news is that in most cases stop-losses limited the carnage. This meant that Bausch Health Companies was closed out at $24, Volkswagen at €153, Taylor Wimpey at 130p, DS Smith at 300p, National Express at 353p and United Rentals at $117. The upshot? My total losses on the closed positions were £4,340. International Consolidated Airlines Group, which I tipped a fortnight ago, has also fallen from 262p to 200p, a loss of £930. However, the losses incurred on the long side have been balanced by the fact that the bear market has greatly increased the value of my short positions. Indeed, if you…

2018 Lagrein, Tramin, Alto Adige, Italy £19.99, selfridges.com First the facts to set the scene for this remarkable wine. Cantina Tramin was founded in 1898 and it has 310 member winegrowers who stick rigidly to its carefully tuned vine-growing mantra. With 260 hectares of vineyards, situated at between 250 and 850 metres altitude, the fruit resource here is nothing short of incredible. In 2011, this remarkable cooperative totted up its 20th Tre Bicchieri award in the Gambero Rosso, which means that this is one of Italy’s most elite wineries despite it being a name that only the most committed of Italian wine lovers would have come across over here. Most famous for its crystalline white wines, in particular the extraordinary Stoan (£20.49, Strictlywine. co.uk), a mind-expanding chardonnay, sauvignon, pinot blanc…

“Collectors are bored,” Gregory Edmund of auction house Spink tells This is Money’s George Nixon. “They are trapped at home, unable to get any mental stimulus other than depressing news stories… so they flocked to our online-only… sale platform and merrily bid away.” That was perhaps one reason for the successful sale of over 500 coins. Another, Edmund points out, is the great “trust in modern technology” as part of “our changing consumer spending habits”. Many of the coins were also gold, which, due to turbulence in the stockmarkets, “suggests investors are once again looking to the commodity”, says Nixon. A £3 gold coin (ie, 60 shillings – pictured) was  the highlight of the sale. Known as a “triple-unite”, depicting King Charles I, it was struck at Oxford in 1643…

• “Madonna has posted an, er, inspirational Instagram video of herself pontificating on the Covid-19 plague while luxuriating in a bath full of rose petals,” says Jane Moore in The Sun. “As you do.” The singer (pictured) wrote: “That’s the thing about Covid-19. It doesn’t care about how rich you are, how famous you are, how funny you are, how smart you are, where you live, how old you are, what amazing stories you can tell. It’s the great equaliser and what’s terrible about it is what’s great about it.” That’s easy for “the Queen Of Pop” to say, with her vast mansion and multi-million-dollar nest egg to see her through these trying times… [Being] in lockdown is far nicer when you’re wealthy.” It’s a very different story when there’s…

$15m The reported cost per episode of making The Mandalorian, featuring the character dubbed “Baby Yoda” by fans. The much-hyped Star Wars TV spin-off was released in Britain last week with the arrival of Disney’s television-streaming service, Disney+. £160m The value of an emergency fund set up by Arts Council England for theatres, museums and artists in England, who have had to close or stop working due to the spread of coronavirus. Individuals can access grants of up to £2,500 each. £1.5m How much councils spent on rooms at Travelodge last year to house people waiting for permanent accommodation. The hotel chain was criticised last week for closing some hotels, making tenants homeless. The government promised nobody would be evicted due to coronavirus, but this does not apply to the…