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“Rising rates effectively reduce the value of future cash flows” Worried about living costs? You aren’t alone. A survey from Aviva suggests that 74% of adults are too. And for good reason. It looks like Covid-19 has somehow shifted us from an age of plenty into an age of shortages, where supply just can’t meet demand and inflation kicks off as a result. Ships can’t get into ports. No one can get their hands on semiconductors (this is why new cars are so expensive). And energy prices are soaring – gas prices have rocketed and oil is well above $80 a barrel. So what’s going on? Three things, says research group Gavekal. First, overconfidence in the data revolution. The “newfound ability to measure everything” encouraged firms and governments to “optimise”…

California resident Mauro Restrepo is seeking damages of $25,000 (£18,350) from a psychic who promised to remove a curse placed upon his marriage by an ex-girlfriend, says BBC News. Restrepo’s lawsuit claims Sophia Adams promised to lift the curse for $5,100, but that despite paying a deposit of $1,000, he continued to suffer anxiety, anguish and sleepless nights. A group of 1,300 Kenyan workers are filing a lawsuit in Scotland against British-owned tea plantation firm James Finlay, says The Times. The workers say they were paid as little as £1.50 per day for up to 12 hours’ labour, carrying heavy loads that caused permanent spinal injuries. The firm says that it will “thoroughly investigate” the allegations and that tea on its plantations is no longer picked yhand.…

US regulators are still on the fence about cryptocurrencies. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has begun to approve bitcointhemed exchange-traded funds (ETFs), but with important caveats. Last week the SEC gave the nod to the Volt Crypto Industry Revolution and Tech ETF, says Hassan Maishera on FXEmpire. The ETF will offer investors exposure to some of the leading crypto firms on the market, such as Nasdaq-listed MicroStrategy. But the SEC has still yet to approve any cryptocurrency ETF “that seeks to directly track the performance of bitcoin”. Investors use ETFs to track the performance of assets such as gold or equities, says Nathan Reiff on Investopedia. For all the hype, bitcoin remains difficult to invest in, requiring investors to turn to specialised exchanges and deal with “complex storage…

Silicon has become the latest casualty of the global supply-chain squeeze. Silicon is widely used in the electronics and motor industries, as well as to make concrete and glass. It is produced by heating sand and coke together in a furnace at very high temperatures: up to 2,000 degrees celsius. China is the world’s top supplier, accounting for 66% of silicon materials in 2019, as Lex points out in the Financial Times. US sanctions were already putting pressure on the industry when the energy crunch came, leaving “the country desperately rationing power” supplied to industrial furnaces and slashing silicon output by 90%. Silicon isthe second-most abundant element on earth, but even it is now running short.…

Europe’s market for initial public offerings (IPO) is buzzing, says Swetha Gopinath on Bloomberg. Nearly 20 companies have already listed this month, among them Swedish carmaker Volvo. Monday alone saw the announcement of four new listings, including British electric-vehicle charging firm Pod Point. Still, in recent weeks IPOs worth billions have been called off and more than 40% of the largest deals in Europe this year are trading below their flotation prices. “The gap between what is hot and what is not is widening.” Czech digital toll-road payments, it seems, are not hot. Eurowag’s shares slumped when they floated in London last week.…

• Private-equity group Bridgepoint is to float Burger King’s UK division for £600m on the stock exchange next year, says Sabah Meddings in The Times. Burger King UK believes that there is a “growing opportunity” for it to expand further in drive-through sites and on high streets “where it does not have a presence”, especially since the number of outlets “significantly lags the 1,300 McDonald’s sites in the UK”. What’s more there are signs that delivery sales, which jumped during the pandemic, have “remained strong even as people have returned to restaurants”. • One of the reasons Tesla’s shares trade at “120 times forecast earnings” is that investors hope it will be able to “dominate vehicle autonomy” before a rival can, says Lex in the Financial Times. However, while Elon…

Anyone looking at their heating bills over the next few months will be painfully aware that the price of gas has soared. Over the course of 2021 it has more than quadrupled. In frantic trading last week it was moving upwards by more than 20% a day. Why? Renewable energy sources, an important part of the mix, have not been generating as much power as expected and massive stimulus programmes, along with the bounceback from the pandemic, have led to a surge in demand. The energy market has not seen price rises quite so dramatic since the “oil shocks” of the 1970s, when the producer’s cartel Opec discovered it could hold the developed world to ransom by turning supply on and off. The result was an era of “stagflation”, that…

There’s a surprisingly durable marketing myth about actively run funds (whose managers try to pick and choose stocks to beat the wider market, rather than just tracking it, as apassive fund does) and bear markets. The myth goes something like this. “Passive funds are all very well during bull markets, when everything goes up. But what happens in a bear market? If you’re in a passive fund, then the value of your portfolio will just drop alongside the wider market. Far better then to be with an active manager, who can take evasive action, move to cash, and exploit the opportunities as they arise.” It’s a compelling argument, logical even. Sadly, an examination of the market data suggests it’s not true. “If you fear a bear market, don’t bet on…

Australia touts for new business Neil Newman South China Morning Post “Seemingly impervious to recessions for decades,” Australia now finds itself “staring into a deep crevasse”, says Neil Newman. The country’s economy is heavily dependent on the export of minerals, including iron ore, coal and copper, largely destined for China. In 2020, iron ore alone made up 41% of all Australia’s exports by value. But Chinese demand is in “very sharp decline” as a “pending tidal wave of debt threatens to destroy three property developers and signal the end of China’s building boom”. Ghost cities are being demolished, producing large quantities of steel and copper which will benefit China’s domestic recycling businesses and meet demand from railways and other industries. In any case, with the expansion of China’s empire through…

bloomberg.com/opinion Visit the lovelier parts of any city, and you can’t help but be struck by a “mystifying question”, says Tyler Cowen. All the attractive parts of town are old. “Why has our advanced, modern and wealthy world ceased building beautiful neighbourhoods?” This isn’t just subjective: tourists pay money to see the old bits, but never dig deep to visit anything much built after 1940. Various explanations have been advanced, from the cost of craftsmanship to the rise of the car to modern regulations, but it still seems hard to understand why it shouldn’t be possible to work around such constraints and produce something nice. A plausible answer is that modern neighbourhoods lack coordination. Medieval and Renaissance buildings could be coordinated around a unified and pleasing style mostly because of…

I’m not usually a fan of funds of funds, largely because they cost investors so much money: funds’ fees are piled on top of each other. But when it comes to investing in private equity (PE), there is little choice. Listed PE funds of funds are the best way to gain exposure to big, diversified books of fund partnerships in an easily tradable structure. And listed PE funds’ managers work hard to minimise fee layering by negotiating with the underlying managers. A promising fund going cheap Listed PE funds in aggregate have posted good returns over the last year. In the second quarter, the LPX50 (listed private equity) index, which tracks the main players in both single and multi-manager listed funds, rose 15.7%. So which listed PE fund to go…

For most people, this month’s outage at Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp was simply an inconvenience. But for small businesses that depend on these networks to make online sales, the six hours they were down meant six hours of no trading and no revenues. That might just prompt some small businesses to question the extent to which they have become dependent on the social-media giants. From Instagram’s Storefront service to all the tools built into Facebook and WhatsApp, these networks take much of the hard work out of e-commerce for small firms, which don’t even need their own websites. That’s fine – until the networks go down. Many e-commerce experts say small businesses now need to build their own web presence. That doesn’t mean dispensing with the Facebook approach, which offers…

Joseph Windle Cole was born in 1809 and spent most of his early life working as a clerk for a firm of merchant traders called Forbes, Forbes and Company, which mostly dealt with east India. Having built up a large number of contacts in the commercial communities of both India and Britain, Cole decided to set up his own company with the aim of cornering the metal trade between the two countries. His initial attempt in 1847 quickly collapsed asa result of an economic downturn. Then he set up Cole Brothers in 1848. What was the scam? Cole leased a small warehouse in the name of a shell company, Maltby & Co, run by fellow clerk William Maltby. The location, next to a series of large warehouses, gave the impression…

The World for Sale Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources Javier Blas and Jack Farchy Random House Business, £20 Most of us don’t pause to consider how the tea or sugar in our morning cuppa got into our mug, as the raw materials that make our lives so comfortable are considered “too boring to dwell on”, says John Arlidge in The Sunday Times. The World for Sale, by Javier Blas and Jack Farchy, makes it clear that “nothing could be further from the truth”. The commodities industry is the “wildest, dirtiest and riskiest business on the planet” and features awide-ranging cast of characters – “Western adventurers with pick’n’mix ethics, communists turned kleptocrats, Fidel Castro, corrupt African rulers, even the Jamaican bobsleigh team”. Blas and Farchy argue…

• Farmers in Boston, Lincolnshire, are offering £30 a hour to pick broccoli. “Now that’s what I call a high-wage economy,” says Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail. “As Yosser Hughes in Alan Bleasdale’s Boys From The Blackstuff used to say: I could do that, gissa job!” We’re talking about three times the national minimum wage, or £60,000 a year. Our green and pleasant country lanes may soon be jammed with farm labourers “tooling round in Teslas and drinking scrumpy from Waterford Crystal champagne flutes”. But it raises the question of how much consumers are prepared to fork out for their broccoli. Aloose head of broccoli costs 49p at Tesco. Soon, it could be up there with caviar and truffles. • “Britain is heading for ableak midwinter,” says Leo McKinstry…

£24,423 The price of a Tesla Model 3 when it was unveiled in 2016. Five years on, the model topped the list of best-selling cars last month, the first time an electric car has done so. In September, 32,721 new electric cars were registered, 5,000 fewer than in the whole of 2019. $834,000 The projected median price for a house in California next year, according to the California Association of Realtors. Prices are forecast to rise by 5.2% in 2022 after surging by 20% this year, as the state continues to grapple with a shortage of affordable housing. £131,625 How much the “Poohsticks” bridge, made famous by author A.A. Milne, has fetched at auction. It was bought by Lord De La Warr, owner of the 2,000-acre Buckhurst Park estate in…

Chinese food-delivery group Meituan has been fined RMB3.4bn (£390m) for abusing its dominant market position, says the Financial Times. Antitrust regulators said that it charged higher fees to restaurants that were not willing to sign exclusivity agreements and had taken RMB1.3bn in deposits from sellers to ensure they remained loyal. The firm was also criticised for underpaying delivery drivers and failing to provide them with benefits. However, the fine was less than expected, at 3% of 2020 earnings, and was seen as good news by analysts, who argued that Meituan will not have to make other changes that might erode its near-70% share of the food-delivery market. The firm’s shares rose 8% in Hong Kong after the announcement. Meituan – which operates in a similar way to Deliveroo and Uber…

“India’s equity market is on the cusp of overtaking” Britain’s, say Abhishek Vishnoi and Swetha Gopinath on Bloomberg. India’s market capitalisation stands at $3.46trn and has soared by 37% so far this year. The former British colony is fast closing in on the UK’s $3.59trn market value. The benchmark BSE Sensex has delivered an annualised return of 15% in dollar terms over the past five years, more than twice the FTSE 100. Equities boom The BSE Sensex has gained 26% since the start of the year. It surpassed the 60,000-level for the first time last month. The rally has been powered by a listings boom, says Dev Chatterjee in Nikkei Asia. “Companies as varied as edible oil sellers and hotel-booking apps” are jumping into the “Great Indian IPO [initial public…

”[Public debt] currently stands at £2.2trn... its highest relative to gross domestic product –97.6% –since 1963... very low interest rates, and the Bank [of England’s] extensive quantitative easing (QE), mean borrowing is cheap... In 1963, when government debt was last this high... the government’s debt interest bill was 3.2% of GDP. Now it is 1.1%. Were it to rise to that 1963 level, it could add nearly £50bn to the debt interest bill... if traders were to perceive that inflation was being allowed to get out of control [then UK government bond yields could spike]... a high proportion of the debt stock is index-linked, and thus a rise in inflation pushes up borrowing costs, as does any increase in interest rates [by the Bank of England]. This is going to…

Three to buy Tesco The Mail on Sunday Tesco is capitalising on the lifestyle changes brought about by the pandemic: online sales are up by 74% compared with a year ago. Its interim results for the first half of 2021 revealed overall revenue is up by 8% from pre-pandemic times. The company is trying out new initiatives, recently launching a super-fast delivery service platform, Whoosh, which delivers groceries to users in under an hour. The supermarket has also identified £1bn of savings it can make if it streamlines operations. 270p Euromoney Institutional Investor Shares There are three reasons to buy media group Euromoney. It is “reaping the benefits” after a string of acquisitions and an increase in subscriptions to its data service. Profits for the year to 30 September will…

Shares in online retailer Asos plunged by 13% on Monday as it issued a profit fwarning a dits CEO Nick Beighton resigned. The cost of “supply chain strains and Brexit duties” is hampering progress, says John-Paul Ford Rojas on Sky News. While it announced a 25% rise in pre-tax profits to £177.1m for the year to the end of August, and expects sales to kep growing bother y an 10%- 15% in 2021-2022, it warned that margins are likely to shrink at the same time. As a result, earnings could end up falling “by as much as 40%”. The group’s shareholders can at least console themselves that they haren’t lintheir one misery, says Ben Marlow in The Daily Telegraph. Rival online retailers In the Style and Boohoo were also forced…

Lebanon took another step towards “total economic collapse” this week when the state electricity provider declared that its two main plants had run out of fuel, causing a temporary nationwide blackout, says Chloe Cornish in the Financial Times. Meanwhile, the collapse of its banking system continued to gather pace. Banks had already imposed “harsh limits” on withdrawals and foreign transfers; people now have so little confidence they will ever see their money again that they are selling cheques drawn on their accounts for as little as 15% of the face value. The country’s currency has also plunged 15 fold against the dollar, says Martin Chulov in The Observer . As Lebanon imports most of its goods from abroad, this means “large parts of the Lebanese population are now at or…

• Former Labour foreign secretary David Miliband (pictured) was handed a raise of almost $26,000 last year by the International Rescue Committee, taking his pay package as president of the charity, which is heavily funded by British taxpayers, to just over $1m, says The Mail on Sunday. His income from the charity has more than tripled from the $332,778 he was paid for his first full year after taking charge eight years ago, according to US tax filings. • The six-person board of DfT OLR Holdings, the state-owned rail operator, which runs the LNER and Northern Train networks, shared remuneration of £718,000 this year, a rise of 5.7% on 2020, despite rail workers enduring a two-year pay freeze, says The Daily Telegraph. The chief executive of the operator, Robin Gisby,…

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…

“[The] kind of house I have in LA I could never afford in London… It’s like hundreds of millions of pounds. I don’t have that much money at all. I’d throw up.” Singer Adele (pictured), quoted in Vogue “Evergrande’s crisis has its historical particularities, but it’s also just another of those moments that capitalism produces to remind us that it runs on faith, some of it bad, and that Adam Smith’s invisible hand can occasionally give us the finger.” Writer and broadcaster Matthew Sweet in The Economist’s 1843 “No, no, no, that would be no bad thing, but I’m in the lucky position that I can do things because I love them. Money is always good, it’s nice to have. It gives you freedom and also gives you what we…

sifted.eu In the middle of the lockdown in October 2020, a new restaurant launched on Deliveroo and UberEats in Paris, says Freya Pratty. Cala’s pasta dishes started at €8 each, causing some customers to wonder about the high quality-to-price ratio. It wasn’t until lockdown ended and Cala’s customers could visit in person that they learned the restaurant’s secret – the food had been prepared by a robot. (This is a duller spectacle than might be suggested by our picture.) Cala has raised €5.5m in seed funding, led by Backed VC, a venture-capital fund, and is scoring in the top 1% of Parisian restaurants on delivery apps. Similar ventures have launched in Sweden and the UK. The appeal is obvious. About 30% of costs in the industry go on labour. Another…

Activist investor Starboard Value is becoming increasingly frustrated with animal-health pharmaceutical developer and marketer Elanco, in which it has a 1.6% stake, says Kenneth Squire on CNBC. When it began trading in September 2018, Elanco was met “with a lot of excitement”. Management hoped to grow revenue at or above industry rates and to improve margins. It also signalled that its own pipeline, rather than acquisitions, would fuel the group’s momentum. A large acquisition in 2019 unnerved investors and now management has claimed that it has “realised significant cost savings” – yet they have not led to expanding profit margins, which remain far behind those of rival Zoetis.…

The words “Asia” and “growth” have been intertwined for decades. Asia is the fastest-growing region in the world and over the last decade its companies have grown profits at a faster pace than any other region’s. However, it is still surprising that the growth and resilience of dividends in Asia is not celebrated in the same way. The performance of dividends in Asia has been nothing short of spectacular. Over the last decade dividends in Asia have grown faster than the global average; South Korea’s, for example, were more than three times larger in 2020 than in 2010. Asian payouts are also highly resilient. Regional dividends fell by less than 6% in 2020. This is an incredible outcome in a year where global pre-tax profits slumped by 23%, compared with…

2016 Roda I Reserva, Bodegas Roda, Rioja, Spain £38 per bottle, £228 for a case of six, laywheeler.com; £289.67 per case of six, goedhuis.com We have all had to wait an eternity for the new Bond film to be released, and I have had to sit tight for a slightly shorter period for my favourite ever Roda I to arrive on our shores, and, in truth, it has felt longer than the 007 delay. But, as the saying goes, good things come to those who wait, and the world’s most famous secret agent and this epic Rioja have both hit impossibly high notes with their respective performances. I have followed Bodegas Roda for all of its 34 years, and I have tasted virtually every wine this imperial estate has made,…

America’s leading colleges are probably the least curious institutions in the country. They are convinced they have The Truth – on diversity, anti-racism, climate control, equality, and ESG (environmental, social, corporate governance) investing. No need to look any further. And so, when their own endowments earn preposterous returns, no one asks any questions. “How could the capital market grow so much faster than the economy?” Take Duke University in North Carolina. Its endowment fund in 2021 boasted a 56% return. The economy is growing at about 5%. True, Duke was an outlier. On average, university endowments did not earn ten times more than GDP growth… only about half that much. But still, how did they do so well? There’s no reason to think college endowments would be any better than…

Songwriter and former Miss UK Kirsty Bertarelli (pictured) has won the largest divorce settlement ever for a British-born spouse, receiving £350m after the end of her 21-year marriage to Italian biotech billionaire Ernesto Bertarelli, reports the Daily Mail. She has also been given a £52m mansion by Lake Geneva. David Card, Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens have received the Nobel prize in economics for their work on natural experiments (situations in which people are subject to different policies). Their research includes an analysis of the jobs market in neighbouring US states that found a rise in the minimum wage did not undermine employment. The trio will share an award of 10m Swedish kronor (£840,000).…

Italy’s Amplifon is the world’s top hearing-aid retailer, with 11% of the market. It operates 11,400 stores in 26 countries. Revenue dipped during the pandemic, but sales and profits are roaring back, notes Focus Money. In the first half Amplifon notched up sales of €959m, a 56% year-on-year increase, while earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda – see page 20) gained 77% to €232. There will be plenty more growth to come. Amplifon has just swallowed up an Australian rival and secured a second joint-venture with a Chinese counterpart. The Chinese market looks especially promising in a sector where ageing populations are underpinning long-term growth.…

General Motors plans “to double its revenues to $280bn by 2030 while increasing profit margins”, says Claire Bushey in the Financial Times. The idea is gradually to phase out petrol-based cars in favour of electric ones, while using parts common to both to produce a “broad portfolio of vehicles”. While the savings would raise margins to between 12% and 14%, GM has also said that it would “add another $80bn in revenue from new businesses, such as its autonomous driving subsidiary Cruise, as well as from subscriptions for car insurance or breakdown services. CEO Mary Barra clearly wants investors to think of General Motors as “less of a lumbering industrial giant and more of a tech incubator”, with a correspondingly “racy” valuation says Jonathan Guilford on Breakingviews. Still, even if…

The EU unveiled what it described as “very far-reaching proposals” on Wednesday to end the row over the Northern Ireland protocol. The proposals from the European Commission follow UK demands for a “radical rewriting” of the protocol, which was agreed to prevent the return of a hard border on the island of Ireland, says Oliver Wright in The Times.UK-EU relations have been “dogged” by a stand-off over the issue ever since Brexit came into force in January. EU officials say that the measures could “reduce the number of customs and regulatory checks” on the new Irish Sea border by up to 50%. Keeping Northern Ireland in the EU’s single market for goods (creating a new trade border with Great Britain) has created genuine problems for trade between Great Britain and…

There’s plenty going on for punters who fancy their chances in political races. Here are the ten most popular markets on Betfair. In first place, with £741,788 matched, is the contest to be the next German chancellor, with Olaf Scholz (below) ahead as the favourite at 1.1 (90.9%). In second place, with £501,617 matched, is the winner of the 2024 US presidential election, with Joe Biden favourite at 4.8 (20.8%). In third place is the £443,655 matched for the next mayoral race in New York, with Eric Adams at 1.02 (98%). With £400,766 matched, the winner of the next French presidential election is tipped to be incumbent Emmanuel Macron, the favourite at 1.7 (58.8%). Fifth place goes to the £312,419 matched on the identity of the next PM after Boris…

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), Britain’s financial regulator, has handed its staff £125.5m in bonuses since 2016, says Jon Ungoed-Thomas in The Observer. The figure includes payments of up to £45,000 each for executive directors. In the year to 31 March 2021, £19.8m was paid out. Around 4,200 staff are employed at the FCA, which is funded by the firms it regulates. Between July 2016 and March 2020, it was headed by Andrew Bailey, now governor of the Bank of England. Two independent reviews published last December accused the watchdog of acting too slowly to protect investors from the collapse in 2019 of Neil Woodford’s £3.1bn Woodford Equity Income Fund and the mini-bond issuer London Capital & Finance (LCF). FCA boss Nikhil Rathi has proposed scrapping the bonuses, noting payouts…

An old cliché sums up the theoretical role of the Federal Reserve and its fellow central banks. Their job is to “remove the punchbowl just before the party starts”, as former US treasury secretary Larry Summers recently told a Citi investment conference. In other words, they’re meant to tighten monetary policy to prevent the economy from overheating once growth is running at healthy levels. Yet today, argues Summers, “the party’s gotten great and the Fed’s not removing the punchbowl until they’ve seen... conclusive evidence that everyone’s going to get plastered”. There is already plenty of data to show that inflation is now a major issue. Energy prices are high and rising, as are housing costs. Meanwhile, in the US jobs market the “quit rate” – the number of people leaving…

nationalinterest.org Most people do not like capitalism, says Rainer Zitelmann. The Edelman Trust Barometer survey of 2020, conducted in 28 countries, found majorities agreeing with the statement “capitalism as it exists today does more harm than good in the world”. Anti-capitalism has become a “political religion”, which, despite all the facts pointing to the contrary conclusion, is blamed for everything from poverty to climate change to cultural decay. If there are not enough goods on the shelves, capitalism is blamed. If there are too many capitalism is blamed. Anti-capitalism has become a “diffuse feeling of protest against the existing order” – all evils, whether in society or personal life, are blamed on it. A sense of proportion might be useful. In anovel by Eula Biss, a character asks what it…

■ UK investment trusts have had a record run of fundraising in the first nine months of 2021, says Joshua Oliver in the Financial Times. They have amassed £8.7bn in secondary fundraising so far this year, already surpassing the former 12-month record of £7.4bn set in 2019. The increase is due to booming demand for green infrastructure investments: they pulled in the most cash with over £1.7bn raised. Fundraisings normally tap institutional investors and wealth managers, but there has been a rise in direct retail investors’ participation as trusts “throw open their offers to ordinary investors”. This reflects the “robust appetite for green-tinted investments”, such as those in renewable-energy infrastructure, ranging from wind farms to biogas. According to managers “income-conscious” investors have been lured by the attractive yields the sector…

Travel is finally becoming easier. The government has scrapped the amber and green travel lists in favour of a binary system that sees countries classed as either “red” or “rest of world”. Only seven destinations, all in Central and South America, are on the new red list. The changes mean that it is possible to get travel insurance for most countries once again. Foreign Office advice against “all but essential travel” to many red and amber list destinations had previously invalidated most travel-insurance policies. Before this week, a traveller voyaging to Mexico, South Africa or Thailand would have needed specialised insurance usually designed for people working in war zones. While the new system is simpler, you should still keep an eye on local Covid-19 numbers if your destination is at…