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“You will be worried about the debt. That makes sense” You will be worried about the debt. That makes sense. As Philip Aldrick notes in The Times, since last March governments have spent $14trn on trying to mitigate the effects of their virus prevention policies. Global public debt has risen from 84% to 98% of GDP – with our own up from 80% to over 100%. But as public debt has risen, net personal debt has fallen. The Bank of England says that we now have £150bn of “excess savings” (£4,000 per household). The Bank expects around 95% to remain saved. That’s unlikely (I have Covid-19-related excess savings – I plan to spend a hell of a lot more than 5% of them). But we do know people are thinking…

Taylor Swift (pictured) is being sued by an Utah theme park, says David Williams on CNN. Evermore Park claims Swift’s latest album, Evermore, infringes on its trademarks, in which it claims to have invested $37m. Swift’s team dismissed the case as“baseless”, noting that Evermore Park itself is being sued by several construction companies over unpaid bills. A man was ordered to pay £25,000 in libel damages after he accused a law firm of being a “total waste of money” and a scam in an online review, says Jonathan Ames in The Times. Philip James Waymouth hired Summerfield Browne to dispute a £200 fixed fee, but left the bad review on the Trustpilot website, after being displeased with the service. The judge agreed that his review was “untrue and defamatory”, with…

The pound has enjoyed a strong start to the year, gaining 1.7% against the euro and 0.7% against the dollar so far. One pound currently buys €1.14. Analysts at ING think that figure could reach €1.17 later this year and €1.21 in 2022, writes Petr Krpata. “With the risk of a no-deal Brexit out of the way, the pound is now free to reap the benefits of a faster vaccination rollout”. Sterling’s exchange rate against the greenback – known in investing jargon as “cable” – is also tipped to rise to $1.50 this year, up from $1.38 currently. Sterling’s newfound strength isn’t great news for investors. Roughly 70% of FTSE 100 earnings come from overseas, meaning they appear weaker when translated back into a rising currency. That explains why the…

The gap between short and long-term US Treasury bonds – known asthe yield curve – has hit its highest level in over five years, says Colby Smith in the Financial Times. A30-year Treasury yields about 2%, compared with 0.47% for the five-year Treasury. That is the biggest difference in almost six years. The yield curve often makes headlines when it becomes “inverted” (ie, longterm Treasuries pay a lower yield than short-term ones), which is considered a harbinger of recession. Now the opposite is happening. Yield curve “steepening” means long-term Treasuries offer higher yields than short-term ones. With a big fiscal stimulus in the pipeline investors are anticipating strong economic growth and higher inflation ahead.…

Mobile casino-games developer Huuuge Games’s initial public offering (IPO) lived up to its name late last week, says Konrad Krasuski on Bloomberg. The company became Poland’s largest gaming-industry listing on record, raising 1.67bn zloty (£327m). It produces free real-time games for mobile phones where users can play with others around the world. Instead of making people buy virtual gambling chips, it gives players chips for watching video advertisements. The IPO valued Huuuge at 4.2bn zloty (£822m), making it the second-biggest game studio listed in Warsaw after CD Projekt, whose release of video-game Cyberpunk 2077 late last year was plagued by bugs.…

Following Elon Musk’s promotion of bitcoin on Twitter, his company Tesla spent $1.5bn on it in January, say Caitlin Ostroff and Rebecca Elliott in The Wall Street Journal. This is part of a move to invest its reserves in a wider range of assets, including gold, in order to “diversify and maximise returns” on any cash “not required to maintain adequate operating liquidity”. Tesla has also said that “it expects to start accepting bitcoin as payment for its products soon”. Few companies are likely to follow Elon Musk, say Richard Waters and Eric Platt in the Financial Times. The whole point of having corporate reserves is to protect a “company’s financial liquidity”, so any cash on hand tends to go into “very high-quality, short-term fixed-income securities” rather than into a…

• TSB Bank’s boss Debbie Crosbie (pictured) has had her pay cut by 19% for 2020, says the Evening Standard. Her pay fell to £1.17m from £1.44m in 2019 due to bonuses being waived in the pandemic. She was last year awarded £480,000 in shares as a “golden hello” plus a £184,925 bonus. TSB had a £204m loss in 2020. • Future, the magazine publisher behind Country Life and Horse & Hound, has come under fire from shareholders over a proposed bonus scheme that could award its chief executive, Zillah  Byng-Thorne, just over £40m, says the Financial Times. Under the terms of the “value creation plan”, employees will be granted shares in three annual tranches, each capped at £95m, so long asthe share price rises by at least 10% a…

Nikolai Kondratieff (also spelled “Kondratiev”) was a Russian economist who was born in 1892 and was executed in a gulag in Siberia in 1938, having been purged by Stalin. He claimed that capitalist economies rise, fall and rise again (this last point is the bit of his theory that got him purged) in long-term boom-and-bust cycles, or “long waves”, lasting around 40 to 60 years. His ideas were championed by Austrian-born economist Joseph Schumpeter (of “creative destruction” fame), who in 1939 coined the term “Kondratieff wave” in his honour. In the theory, the waves are driven by technological innovation and come in four cycles, named for the seasons. In spring, there is a productivity boom along with beneficial inflation, boosting growth and general prosperity. Summer – which tends to be…

“It was first class everywhere. We had a whale of a time, being put up in New York’s Sherry-Netherland hotel for weeks, with Defries’s brilliant legal mind getting all these people to pay huge amounts of money to fund it all. He was the captain of the ship, encouraging us to be as outrageous as possible. Until it all went wrong.” Singer Dana Gillespie (pictured) on living the high life in the 1970s with the help of David Bowie and his manager Tony Defries, quoted in The Times “That was a big risk and it led to many years of sleepless nights.” Tennis coach Judy Murray, mother of Wimbledon champion Andy Murray, on having to take out a £30,000 loan when Andy wanted to train in Spain as a teenager,…

spectator.co.uk Hippocrates prescribed them to allay lassitude, James Bond favoured them as a sign of manliness and in less indulgent times Gordonstoun school insisted on them. Now the “wellness brigade” too has latched onto the value of cold showers, says Laurie Graham. They can, apparently, boost the immune system, improve circulation and give “a wakeup call to the body’s brown fat, which is apparently A Very Good Thing”. But they also bring psychological benefits – reducing procrastination and avoidance of unpleasant tasks. They help you, in other words, to “stop being a wuss”. A study in the Netherlands found that those who took cold showers for just three weeks took fewer days off sick from work simply because they were more likely to “power through”. If you want to give…

Elliott Management has called on Finnish financial group Sampo to “ditch” its stake in the Nordic region’s biggest bank, Nordea, to focus solely on being an insurer, says Richard Milne in the Financial Times. The activist said that Sampo’s huge stake in Nordea was a “significant distraction” and an “albatross” hampering its core business, as well as the reason the group is trading at an unfair discount to its rivals. Elliott said that Sampo should aim to have sold its 15.9% stake in Nordea by the end of the year; doing so would crystallise value of more than €8bn for the group’s shareholders. Sampo declined to comment, but it had already sold a fifth of its stake in Nordea last November, when it claimed that it intended to “explore options…

Did you run up some debts at Christmas? According to National Debt Advice, a third of us borrow money to pay for Christmas gifts, while a fifth of us use credit to finance Christmas food. If you have debt on acredit card that you can’t pay off, it can be moved onto a balance-transfer credit card. These cards offer a 0% introductory period, which means you won’t pay any interest on balances you transfer from other credit cards for that length of time. “When the introductory interest-free period runs out, the interest rate will rocket” When comparing balance-transfer credit cards there are two things to look at: the length of the interest-free period and what the balance transfer fee is. You then need to balance these two elements to find…

We are in the middle of an unprecedented technology boom, especially in the US, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite index doubling in just over two years. Of course, this is not entirely irrational. For example, some companies, notably Facebook, Google and Amazon, have managed to deliver on the promises made over a decade ago. Low long-term interest rates have also increased the value of future profits, while a case can be made that the pandemic has accelerated genuine long-term changes in the way that we shop, consume goods and services, and work. Nevertheless, several stocks have surged so far that it seems investors are willing to throw lots of money at anything that looks vaguely plausible. Perhaps the most egregious example is data company Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW), the largest initial…

The Miton Global Opportunities trust (LSE: MIGO) seeks to find deep value and special situations (unusual stock-specific circumstances that could lead to a rerating) in the investment trust market. In the most basic terms, we look to buy good assets for as little as 70p in the £1. Because the trust can invest in any asset class providing it is available within a closed-ended structure, MIGO’s portfolio enjoys enormous diversification. Below are three interesting opportunities that provide an insight into the wide range of situations that we can exploit. Thriving after a near-death experience “Investors are still haunted by private equity’s near-death experience in 2008” Private-equity trusts are still languishing on large discounts to net asset value (NAV) following the global market turmoil we saw in March. We believe that…

“The coin set a new record price for a gold coin at $9.4m” The gold price may have lost some of its shine this year, but the same cannot be said for one gold coin in particular. Last month, a rare 1787 “New York-style Brasher” doubloon set a new record price for a gold coin when it sold for almost $9.4m with Texas-based Heritage Auctions. Another of the seven known to exist had held the record since December 2011 when it fetched $7.4m at auction, but the latest coin is said to be the finest of the lot. While the 1794 “Flowing Hair” silver dollar retains the overall record (it sold for $10m in 2013), the New York-style Brasher is nevertheless revered by collectors. It has even had a film-noir…

Last week, the Reddit crew seemed to open a whole new chapter in financial history. Suddenly, using the internet, a flash mob of “little guy” investors was able to humble the big, rich hedge funds. The hedgies had sold some 140% of GameStop shares outstanding. Some people wondered how that was possible. Others wondered why it was legal, or how the young traders – led by Reddit users Roaring Kitty or DeepF**kingValue – could possibly execute an “infinity squeeze” against the pros. “The Fed performs miracles of levitation, leaving Main Street prone” Even the “infinity squeeze” itself is an object of wonder. In it, buyers drive the price up so high that little is left available for the next buyer (say, a short-seller who needs to cover his bet), who…

Angela Jenner, a former PA from Suffolk, was getting only 86p a week as her state pension up until last year, says Harriet Meyer in The Guardian. Jenner was underpaid every week for more than 12 years, but after hearing about the possibility of underpayment on television she filed a claim to the Department for Work and Pensions and found that she was owed £42,700. Jenner is one of “thousands of women” who could be collectively owed more than £100m in state pension payments after being underpaid for years. The issue affects women who reached state-pension age before 2016 and fall under the older-style pension system that allowed women with a reduced national insurance contributions (NICs) record to claim aslice of their husband’s state pension. This should have been automatically…

Are commodities heading back to the 1970s? For the past ten years raw materials such as oil, industrial metals and foodstuffs have languished in a bear market, says Andrew Bary in Barron’s. Yet the Bloomberg Commodity index jumped by 10% during the final quarter of 2020 and analysts at Goldman Sachs think there could be much more to come. They reckon we are heading for “a much longer structural bull market” that looks poised to “rival” the commodity supercycles of the 1970s and 2000s. The previous decade of disappointment has led to “structural underinvestment” in new mines and energy capacity. That could trigger big price spikes in the decade ahead. More than a Reddit rally The S&P GSCI commodity index plunged by more than 60% between early 2011 and last…

“The big headline ‘cost of Brexit’ figures (eg, “£200bn by the end of 2020”) refer to… an estimate of a cumulative GDP impact versus an alternative Remain scenario… The main driver of the Brexit downside is the risk of introducing trade friction with the EU…So what would the equivalent “cost of Scexit” [Scottish Independence] figure be?... The net effect of UK-wide pooling and sharing [is] a fiscal transfer in Scotland’s favour of £10.7bn a year, or roughly £2,000 for every man, woman and child in Scotland…Scexit risks introducing trade friction between Scotland and rUK – and Scotland exports three times more to rUK than we do to the EU… But Scexit introduces additional downsides: we share a currency, a welfare state and deeply integrated machinery of state within the UK.…

Five to buy Nestlé Shares Magazine With 90% of its revenue depending on the in-home market, the largest food and beverage company in the world has been an “undoubted winner” from lockdowns. In-home revenues were up by 7.1% in the nine months to September 2020; sales of its Purina pet-care products jumped by 10.6%. Still, Nestlé’s shares have lagged for the last six months, thanks partly to cheaper value stocks’ recovery. This is an opportunity to invest in a world-class business for the long term. 99p Headlam Mail on Sunday Birmingham’s Headlam, the UK’s largest distributor of floor coverings, has grown steadily since its inception in the 1990s, investing in its transport network to make it as efficient as possible and building distribution centres nationwide. Figures for 2020 will “not…

• US toymaker Hasbro has reported a 21% rise in fourth-quarter sales to $1.7bn as demand for toys keeps growing, says Lex in the Financial Times. Still, 2020 was “hardly a banner year” due to store closures and supply disruption cutting “the windfall from online demand”. As the US toy industry “also sources more than 80% of its products from China”, higher airfreight costs have cut profits. And sales “are unlikely to keep growing” once school learning in person begins again. • Good news: tech firm Samarkand, which helps Western businesses sell their brands to China online, has decided to hold its £50m flotation on London’s new small-cap market Aquis, says Jim Armitage in the Evening Standard. Hopefully this will provide some competition for the other junior exchange, Aim, which…

US president Joe Biden is seeking to avert a crisis after the Iranian regime threatened it would be forced to seek nuclear arms if American sanctions are not lifted, says The New York Times. The standoff takes place in the context of a possible return to the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and a group of world powers including the US, which was torn up by Donald Trump in 2018. Biden has promised to rescind Trump’s sanctions, but only if Iran first returns to commitments it made under the 2015 agreement. Iran says it will honour the deal only once the sanctions are lifted. Getting an agreement is going to be “very difficult”, says Robert Gardner in the Financial Times, but Biden’s commitment to the 2015 deal is real. He…

UBS is planning “to increase the bonus pool for its investment bankers by as much as 20% after a surge in trading revenue helped Switzerland’s largest bank post the highest profit in five years”, say Marion Halftermeyer and Patrick Winters on Bloomberg. Asset managers in the Asia-Pacific region, for example, could see their bonuses increase by 10% in the compensation report, due to be published on 5 March. For 2019, the bank paid out around $2.7bn overall in variable compensation. “UBS has navigated the pandemic better than many of its peers as its loan book proved resilient and the investment bank benefited from a surge in trading, with pre-tax profit at the unit more than tripling from a year earlier.” Swiss rival Credit Suisse Group, by contrast, is considering cutting…

Nick Train, fund manager, Finsbury Growth & Income Trust Nick Train is one of the UK’s most successful and best-known fund managers. Last year, his Finsbury Growth & Income Trust, which is 75% invested in UK stocks, fell by 1.7%. However, that was a decent result compared with the average 7.7% drop for the UK equity income sector. Over ten years, the fund has returned more than 230%, making it the top performer in the sector over that period by a considerable margin. So what does 2021 hold? “There’s plenty to be optimistic about,” Train tells Simon Lambert of thisismoney.co.uk. The economy is likely to bounce back as lockdowns end and pent-up demand from consumers is unleashed. “There are fundamental aspects to human behaviour that have not been abolished... socialisation,…

pragcap.com The recent craziness in markets has put short-sellers back in the spotlight, says Cullen Roche. But the arguments advanced against them are fallacious. Pump and dump schemes are far more common than short-selling ones as they are easier to pull off, but people don’t say we should therefore ban buying. The debate boils down to whether short-selling – borrowing shares then selling them in the hope of profit when the price falls –distorts price discovery or hurts the underlying business. The truth is that it surely doesn’t. Stock-markets are mostly secondary markets – stocks trade after all the actual investment has been done. It’s much like a gamble on the horses. The horses run the actual race and the bettors do stuff that reflects the value of those horses.…

Many MoneyWeek readers will have had their first Covid-19 vaccine jab by now; a few will have had their second. The advent of the vaccines is a story of clever biotechnology deployed with lightning speed, illustrating the sector’s rapid development over the last two decades. The Covid-19 virus was only sequenced (genetically mapped) in mid-January 2020 and the first two vaccines approved in the UK were the Pfizer/ BioNTec treatment in early December 2020 and the AstraZeneca/Oxford University one in late December – 11 and 12 months later respectively. The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations says that the normal timescale for vaccine development is between ten and 15 years. Prior to the Covid-19 vaccines, the record for vaccine development was four years for the mumps treatment, which emerged…

Five weeks into the new trading arrangements between the UK and the European Union, many owners of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are still struggling to get to grips with the new system. The volume of exports going through British ports to the EU fell by 68% last month compared with volumes in January last year, according to a survey by one trade body, the Road Haulage Association (although the government disputes this figure). “Food manufacturers may need a £180 health certificate” The UK’s largest exporters have the resources and scale to cope with short-term disruption and to absorb additional costs. However, for some smaller businesses, the problems are so serious that they could make EU trade unviable. The challenge is not simply new systems and procedures; many additional costs…

Last Sunday saw the Tampa Bay Buccaneers beat the Kansas City Chiefs in the 55th Super Bowl. Traders who believe in the Super Bowl indicator will be pleased. This is because the indicator suggests that the US stockmarket tends to perform better after a team from one of the two key leagues, the National Football Conference (NFC), beats a team from the other, the American Football Conference (AFC) in the big game. Since Tampa Bay is in the NFC, this should be good news for equities. There does seem to be something to this theory. According to Russ Mould of AJ Bell, on the 27 occasions teams from the NFC won, the stockmarket returned an average of 10.5% in the following year – but an average of only 6.9% a…

EKF Diagnostics (Aim: EKF) is a diagnostic and laboratory-equipment maker. It produces sophisticated kits to test for diabetes and monitor people with the condition, says The Mail on Sunday. EKF’s equipment provides detailed and long-term assessments of glucose levels, which can reduce or eliminate the need for medication. Soaring rates of diabetes — at least 450 million people suffer from the condition worldwide – mean the company will continue growing. Net income has risen by 61% over the past five years. The shares are up by 138% in 12 months.…

Martin Armstrong was born in New Jersey in 1949 and worked from his teens in a coin and stamp dealership. He later branched out into gold trading and economic forecasting, and set up Princeton Economics International. He developed a theory of market cycles, which he claimed occurred every 8.6 years, winning him a cult following. After correctly predicting that the Japanese market would peak in December 1989, he moved into investment management, raising money from Japanese investors who had lost money during the subsequent collapse of the Japanese stockmarket. What was the scam? Armstrong offered to exchange the investment portfolios of Japanese companies in return for what he called “Princeton Notes”. The idea was that he would liquidate the assets in their portfolios, invest the proceeds in the US, and…

2019 Westwell, Ortega, North Downs, Kent £16, westwellwines.com, unchartedwines.com I have taken to calling in vast numbers of bottles to my home because the interminable lockdowns have made wine tastings impossible. Although this is somewhat of a logistical pain, the mountains of recycling are worth it when I come across wines as beautiful as my featured pair. Hidden in a sea of English wine samples were two of the most beautiful labels in our land, on wines made from the little-known ortega grape. Developed in 1948 by crossing Müller-Thurgau and siegerrebe, this white variety has spread from its homeland in the Pfalz and Mosel regions of Germany to other cool-climate winegrowing countries, such as England and Canada. It is not as starry a variety as chardonnay, or even bacchus for…

Going… The Royal Mint is out to break the £1m record for aBritish coin next month when it auctions a rare Henry VII fine gold sovereign (pictured), says The Daily Telegraph. It is the earliest gold sovereign a collector can own of which only four exist. Two are held by museums. The coin was hammered around 500 years ago, before being kept in the Tower of London. It has had numerous owners over the centuries, one of whom was US banking magnate J. P. Morgan, who owned the coin until his death in 1913. Bidding will start at £950,000, representing roughly how much it cost the Mint to source and buy the coin from its last American owner. The current £1m record was set last January with a gold sovereign…

£508m The decline in whisky sales to the US since a 25% tariff was imposed on the spirit in October 2019, the Scotch Whisky Association estimates. The US, usually the largest overseas market for whisky, imposed the tariff as part of a trade dispute with the European Union. 258 The percentage rise in the sale of American gold bullion coins last year, according to the US Mint. Demand for silver coins rose 28% during that time. The Mint admitted it had been unable to keep up with demand. 210,000 The number of “Kew Gardens” 50p pieces in circulation, making the coins, minted in 2009, the rarest of the 50p designs, says the Royal Mint. The 50th anniversary of decimalisation is on 15 February – the changeover is credited with having…

The “mass exodus to online shopping” during the pandemic buoyed sales at online grocer Ocado by 32% in 2020, says Liam Roche in UK Investor Magazine. Full-year losses also narrowed from £214.5m in 2019 to £44m. Chief executive Tim Steiner said the shift to online grocery shopping is likely to stick. The number of UK shoppers who do their weekly shop online has doubled since March. A record 124 new distilleries were established in Britain in 2020 as demand for gin, whisky and rum continues to increase, says Will Humphries in The Times. That’s a 28% increase on 2019, despite predictions that the “gin craze” of the last few years would abate. Around 86 million bottles of gin, worth £2.2bn, were sold in Britain in 2020, compared with 2017’s sales…

Crises can be buying opportunities, says WirtschaftsWoche. Cresud, a Buenos Aires-based agricultural-commodities and property group, was drowning in debt in early 2020, but has since quartered its net borrowings to around $1bn with the help of asset disposals. It now looks poised for a long-term upswing. The group owns 800,000 hectares of farmland in Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil; through its subsidiary IRSA. It is also the country’s top property group with a portfolio including shopping centres and hotels. With soft commodities and inflation expectations climbing, and both of its businesses traditional hedges against rising prices, Cresud is a buy for the brave.…

In a “surprise move”, Amazon announced last week that its founder Jeff Bezos is stepping down as CEO, says James Titcomb in The Daily Telegraph. Bezos will move to the role of executive chairman in the third quarter of this year, allowing him “more time for interests in other areas”. Andy Jassy (see page 35), the current head of Amazon’s successful cloud-computing division, will replace Bezos as CEO. The announcement came as the company posted record sales, surpassing $100bn in a single quarter for the first time as it benefited from lockdowns that have “pummelled physical retailers”. Bezos won’t disappear, say Nils Pratley in The Guardian. As chairman he “will still run the board” and have “freedom to roam wherever he wishes”. If Bezos and Jassy disagree, “everybody knows who…

The government is planning an NHS “shake-up” in England, says Andrew Gregory in The Times. Ministers have been trying for years to “water down” some of the changes introduced by Andrew Lansley when he was health secretary in 2012, which “handed clinicians more control over budgets and increased the role of private companies”. Andy Cowper, editor of Health Policy Insight, described the draft white paper as a “massive political land-grab” that puts the health secretary “unambiguously” back in charge. If the reforms are enacted, as expected, in 2022, Matt Hancock, if still in office, will effectively be able to “overrule NHS executives” and “run policy inside NHS clinics”. Hancock hopes to rally support with a populist pledge to “roll back privatisation”, says Ian Birrell on inews, but the problem isn’t…

As Joe Biden has been US president for only a few weeks, it may be a little premature to start talking about the outcome of the next election. Indeed, Betfair punters have matched only £61,140 so far on the identity of the winner in 2024. Still, a striking fact is that the betting markets are assuming that Biden will be a one-term president, with odds as long as 5.8 (17.2%) on him being re-elected; bookmaker Paddy Power put his odds even longer at 5/1 (16.7%). Indeed, if you look at the odds closely, Biden isn’t even the favourite to win the Democrat nomination in 2024, with Betfair putting him at 3.45 (28.9%). Betfair punters have vice-president Kamala Harris (pictured) as favourite to be the Democrat’s choice, but they aren’t that…

Access to far more information, the ability to make quicker decisions, lower costs – there are lots of reasons for thinking that smartphones will make us better investors. As we tap away on the screen in our pocket, tracking news and prices in real time, anyone should be able to match the resources and knowledge base of the biggest institutions in the world, and their returns as well. That might sound plausible in theory. It turns out to be completely wrong. Debasing the golden rules The US National Bureau of Economic Research has just published a fascinating study from the Kelley School of Business. It took 15,000 retail trading accounts from a couple of the major German banks and then looked at how customers changed their behaviour once they switched…

The good news on vaccines appears to be flowing fast (see page 24). But what does it mean for the global economy? The last big recession most of us will remember was the 2008 financial crisis. In many ways, we had barely recovered from that one (and some would argue that we hadn’t) when Covid-19 struck. And in terms of sheer scale and speed of collapse, this one was worse. Yet history gives grounds for optimism, claims a new study. The two types of economic crisis “Financial crises are almost uniquely damaging events” In his Klement on Investing newsletter, Joachim Klement highlights a paper by two European Central Bank researchers, Natalia Martin Fuentes and Isabella Moder, called “The scarring effects of past crises on the global economy”. The pair looked…

There’s more to diversity than colour Oliver Shah The Sunday Times Last week, the recruitment firm Green Park revealed that, “for the first time in six years, there were no black executives in any of the top three roles across the FTSE 100”, says Oliver Shah. And although the number of female and non-white directors is climbing, it’s important to recognise that the “roots of the problem” relate not just to ethnicity or gender, but also to class and social mobility, which are “harder to define”. The “core of non-diverse groups is homogeneity of thought, not appearance”. Big company boards are still “fairly old-fashioned” and the “rarefied air of Mayfair or the City” is “friendlier” to the rich man than to the working-class man or woman of any colour. In…

thereformedbroker.com The GameStop drama was presented as a battle between David and Goliath, says Joshua Brown. But on Wall Street, David never wins. The hedge-fund industry manages $3trn. Funds are backed by banks and brokerages, which are backed by the Federal Reserve – so the money is infinite. You can’t “squeeze” it. It will crush you. The “louder and more bellicose you get on the internet”, the harder it will fight back. The hedge funds may have had to beat a retreat for a while, but they have reloaded and will be back. “I promise you they will all be in the Hamptons this summer.” There are, however, proven strategies that David can take in the face of Goliath. Avoid Goliath entirely and focus instead on “building a stronger, smarter,…

Only a decade ago investing in fast-growing private, non-listed companies was largely the preserve of institutional investors willing to put millions of pounds to work over long timescales. But today the funds targeting private companies are proliferating so fast that one could forgive investors for being slightly confused. Here is an overview of the various structures and strategies. Tax-efficient VCTs Arguably the most accessible structure, and certainly the most tax-efficient, is the venture-capital trust concept we discussed a fortnight ago. These trusts have been redesigned in recent years to focus more on genuinely risky, fast-growing companies – hence the generous tax incentives, which include upfront 30% tax relief. But VCTs also have their downsides. Performance has been extremely varied, and many funds continue to trade at sizeable discounts to net…

• Disputes between small businesses and financial services companies have increased sharply as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. From complaints about insurers refusing to pay out on business interruption cover to banks managing loan deals unfairly, many firms feel unjustly treated. But not all small businesses realise help is available. A major expansion of the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) last year means that 99% of firms are now eligible to use the independent regulator if they are unhappy about how their complaint has been handled. The FOS covers disputes with a wide range of financial services companies, including banks, insurers and pension companies. If you have a dispute with one of these firms, you must go through its complaints procedures first; if you can’t resolve the issue, you can…

Four of my five long tips have gained in the past fortnight. Media group ITV went up from 102p to 108p and transport group National Express rose from 244p to 301p. Pub group Mitchells & Butlers increased from 277p to 348p, while cruise-ship company Norwegian Cruise Lines climbed from $23.97 to $25.01. However, while building company Bellway advanced from 2,803p to 3,114p, it briefly fell below the stop-loss level of 2,750p, so you would have had to close it there, taking profits of £780. Still, even excluding the profits on Bellway, my four longs are making a total net profit of £5,610. The short tips were more of a mixed bag. Online insurance broker eHealth slipped from $82.97 to $57.37. Electric lorry-maker Nikola advanced from $20.74 to $23.50. Online furniture…

Hollywood Bowl (LSE: BOWL) is a bowling operator in the UK. The company has “endured a bruising pandemic”, says Nilushi Karunaratne in Investors Chronicle. The five-month closure of its venues during the first lockdown, coupled with restricted opening from mid-August, saw its pretax profits “almost completely wiped out” in the year to 30 September. Things are unlikely to have improved since, as centres closed again at the beginning of December. Momentum may return once services begin to open up, but for now the stock is down by 36% in a year.…

The Lumen is a portable hand-held device to “hack your metabolism”. You blow into the gadget and its carbon dioxide sensors determine whether your body is using fats or carbohydrates as a source of energy. Knowing that can help you decide what and when to eat to burn fat and enhance your workouts. The device links to an app to track daily metabolic activity and its effects on sleep, exercise and nutrition. £299, lumen.me. Cleanse the air in your home with the Philips Air Purifier Series 3000i. The device has a three-layer filter to remove airborne allergens and pollution trapped indoors. The Smart Air scans the air 1,000 times per second to detect impurities, and the 360˚ airflow enables fast cleaning in large spaces. The digital display reveals your indoor…

Debasing US money (see left) quite literally chipped away at the value of these coins. It was illegal then as it is now (except for when the central bank does it). Errors made at the time of manufacturing, on the other hand, can often add major value for collectors. Just ask the bidder who paid nearly $400,000 for a $20 banknote, also with Heritage Auctions, last month. In 2004, a student in Ohio received the note from a cash machine and was surprised to see it had a “Del Monte Ecuador” fruit sticker “in it”. Modern US banknotes are printed in three stages, the auction house explains. The first prints the back, the second provides the face devices and the third adds the seals and serial numbers. At some point…

• “Sorry, but I just cannot get behind the idea of having a designer travel mug,” says Karren Brady in The Sun on Sunday. “Especially when said mug is made by Versace and costs £765!” The Italian fashion house’s aluminium “keep cup” is covered with “crystal bling”. It bears the face of Medusa, the Gorgon from Greek mythology, who could turn people to stone with a shake of her hair made of snakes. The name “Versace” is written in caps on the top, while the bottom is adorned with Greca borders, long associated with the brand. Supermodel Kate Moss (pictured) recently carried one on the cover of Vogue. Indeed, fashionistas at the style magazine have branded the cup the new “it bag”. “But the huge price tag for a reusable…