Indholdsfortegnelse for 1186 i MoneyWeek

At this time of year it is especially important not only to ignore forecasts, but also to tune out “what self-interested trade groups say about their industry; they are lobbyists and cheerleaders”, as financial blogger Barry Ritholtz points out. In 2021, says Ritholtz, America’s National Retail Federation insisted that almost half of losses on inventory were due to “organised retail crime”; in fact the figure was 5%. Similarly, companies and their founders are always coming up with inventive excuses for why the market ate their homework. I was amused to see that Heather Mills (pictured) has blamed the collapse of her vegan food empire VBites on the plant-based food market being hampered by “misinformation… by the meat and dairy industries”. “One of the key events of the late 2010s was…

“The KBW index of large American bank stocks has shed 15% this year… After a decade of mediocrity.. . banks now make up less than 5% of the S&P 500 index… Banks [still don’t] look appealing… Customers fled regional banks following collapses earlier in the year… Even in the…’soft landing’ [scenario]… in which there is no recession [and] few loan defaults… earnings would probably remain only around their present levels… So one looking at banks might turn his attention to Europe… Unlike in America, funding costs have not climbed much, in part owing to weaker competition… After nine years of negative rates, the return to positive ones has been ‘like rain in the desert’, says Huw van Steenis of Oliver Wyman… Extra capital requirements… are more modest in Europe… for…

Macy’s, “one of the best-known names in US retail”, could disappear from the stockmarket, due to a $5.8bn (£4.6bn) offer from Arkhouse Management and Brigade Capital Management, says Jasper Jolly in the Guardian. The flagship store in New York’s Herald Square is one of the world’s biggest department stores, and the company owns Bloomingdale’s and the beauty chain Bluemercury. But Macy’s “has struggled to adapt to online retail”. The interest from the two funds, which already own stakes in the company, has caused the share price to rise from below $11 a share in mid-November to $17.39 last Friday. They have even indicated that they might be prepared to go above the $21-a share offer. Arkhouse Management and Brigade Capital aren’t interested in “trying to arrest the storied department-store operator’s…

Paris-listed Worldline, one of the world’s biggest online-payment processors, used to excite investors with promises of rapid digital growth. Yet the post-Covid period has been tough for the financial technology sector, says Marjorie Encelot in Investir. A profit warning in October was blamed on a household-spending slowdown and rising levels of cybercrime. The shares have plunged by 57% this year. They have bounced recently, but investors are getting carried away, says Hannes Leitner of investment bank Jefferies. Worldline has made ten acquisitions since 2020 and needs time to address an inflated cost base and work down debt before it can recover. Sell.…

Politics & economics In a speech on Tuesday marking the fourth anniversary of the 2019 general election, Keir Starmer said he had overseen a “complete overhaul of his party”, says Sam Francis on the BBC. Labour has an 18-point poll lead over the Tories, but the last election saw Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour suffer its worst defeat since 1935. Achieving a majority in 2024 will therefore require a “larger swing than Tony Blair’s in 1997”. As part of his pitch to former Tory voters, Starmer wrote a piece in The Sunday Telegraph praising Margaret Thatcher for delivering “meaningful change”, prompting criticism from the left of his party. The bookies give Starmer a 90% chance of winning the next election, but his agenda is less certain, says Katy Balls in The Spectator.…

Rishi Sunak may have succeeded in heading off an immediate rebellion by getting the Rwanda bill through its first reading (see previous page), but punters don’t think he’s out of the woods just yet. They’re betting there’s a good chance of further leadership turmoil in the Conservative Party before the next election. With £13,933 matched on Betfair, they put the odds that Sunak won’t be leader at the next election at 4.1 (24.3%), with 1.25 (80%) on him still being leader. My feeling is there is very little appetite for further change, not only because there are no obvious alternatives, but also because Sunak doesn’t seem to have stirred the amount of antipathy that either Boris Johnson or Theresa May ended up creating before their departures. Furthermore, his decision to…

Along with all the most important ministers and officials in charge of the UK during the difficult months of the Covid lockdown, prime minister Rishi Sunak has been before the Covid inquiry and put through intense questioning over the decisions he made over the course of the pandemic. His “Eat Out to Help Out” scheme, which subsidised half the cost of going out for a meal, has been blamed for spreading the virus and triggering a second lockdown. More broadly, the barristers have tried to pin the blame on him for questioning the cost of Covid restrictions and trying to factor in the impact on the economy. The hugely expensive inquiry looks almost certain to conclude that the government was reckless, callous, and perhaps even caused the deaths of thousands…

Equities, shares and stocks are all names for the individual units that give you a financial interest in a company. The terms are often used in slightly different ways: investors sometimes refer to shares when discussing a single company, shares or stocks when they talk about a small or loose group of companies, and equities when they mean more formally defined groups (or when they just want to sound more professional). But those distinctions are not absolute and all three words will often be used interchangeably. An equity investor in a company is known as a shareholder – the terms equity holder and stockholder are less common. The name for a market on which shares trade is the stockmarket (or share market in a handful of countries such as Australia).…

Activist investor Kelso Group has urged digital retailer THG to break up, says The Times. It is advocating the demerger of the beauty, nutrition and e-commerce segments because it thinks the group would be “worth considerably more” as separate businesses and the move would help address the “inherent disparity” between THG’s share price and its valuation. THG floated in 2020 with a valuation of £5bn but its stock has since slumped, with the firm now worth about £1bn. Kelso, which has a 0.55% stake in THG, argues it can help the company raise the share price to 225p with a valuation of $3bn. In a twist, THG CEO Matthew Moulding recently bought a 3.2% stake in Kelso, becoming the investment firm’s largest shareholder.…

“I couldn’t have hated the whole thing more. But I have lots of children and I need the money.” Actor Hugh Grant (pictured) on playing an Oompa-Loompa in the new film Wonka, a prequel to Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, quoted in The Times “One strange feature of Anglo-Saxon economics is that all economists are agreed that rent-seeking is bad, and yet no economist ever proposes any action to discourage it.” Columnist Rory Sutherland in The Spectator “I honestly think that if you’re lucky enough to get in a position where you have money or you’re in a position where you can help, you really should… my favourite thing that I do is my Imagination Library that I started back in 1995 with my dad, who couldn’t read…

Best of the blogs americanpostliberal.com If pop singer Taylor Swift (pictured) and her partner Travis Kelce have a baby, it will usher in a new US baby boom as millions of 25- to 35-year-old women follow suit. Not far behind will be a manufacturing and housing boom, and a tremendous lifestyle shift for millions of newly minted families. A new golden era for America beckons. That, at least, was the view of one tweet that went viral, and it’s not as unlikely as it seems, says Luca Adamo. Swift has a special appeal for her millions of fans because she “masterfully communicates the blisses of normal life”. Her songs are all about ordinary people in ordinary towns falling in love, and she sings movingly about the struggles and dramas that…

● If you are sending parcels this Christmas, “steer clear of pointless ‘insurance’ that could more than triple the cost of sending your presents”, says Ali Hussain in The Times. Delivery firms including Evri, Royal Mail and Yodel will try to sell you extra cover to ensure your parcel gets to its destination safely. But you don’t need it. Customers are already covered by consumer protection rules. You should only pay the extra fees for additional services not covered by the law. For instance, if you want “a high-value delivery to be tracked and arrive by a certain date then it may be worth paying extra”, Lisa Webb, an expert in consumer law at Which, told the paper. ● The mean cost of a two-year fixed-rate mortgage has fallen below…

● More than nine in ten small businesses believe they offer customers a convenient online experience, new research shows. But just two in ten consumers feel the same way. The survey, from IT company GoDaddy, highlights shipping as a particular bugbear for many consumers. While they expect free delivery, as well as a choice of shipping options, including collection from a store, many small firms can’t afford to offer this. ● One in five small-business owners would struggle to spot an online fraud, a survey conducted by UK Finance warns. The group, which represents the banking sector, quizzed more than 7,000 small businesses about common scams. It found that while awareness of certain types of fraud, including impersonation scams, was good, many businesses were less strong in areas such as…

The STS Global Income & Growth Trust follows a distinctive quality-focused, conservative investment style. We try to consider the downside to investments as much as the potential opportunity, and to produce good risk-adjusted returns balanced between income and capital growth. We believe this approach is especially relevant today given that we consider the economic outlook to be murky at best, driven by the very material and rapid rise in interest rates around the world, and still elevated equity valuations, notably in the US. In this context, we want to invest in companies that are predictable, boast well-entrenched competitive advantages, and have limited requirements for capital when growing their businesses. Such companies tend also to exhibit attractive margins, allowing them to weather more challenging economic environments, especially when combined with a…

An elegant wristwatch In 1917, French jeweller Louis Cartier created a new watch design that celebrated the purity of the straight line. This vintage unisex Cartier Tank Française watch was an update of that design, featuring an 18-carat gold case and buckle (the black alligator strap is a later addition). Price: £3,983, sothebys.com Spend a wild night in bed Drift off to sleep dreaming of the African savannah in this set of Lila silk pyjamas from British designer Olivia Von Halle. The motif sports a herd of zebras interspersed with stalking panthers on soft silk. £560, selfridges.com For the fashionista in your life This black folio from British fashion label Paul Smith is a smart, timeless classic. It is made from premium calf leather and comes with two separate compartments,…

Police in Nicaragua have accused Karen Celebertti, the organiser of the local franchise of Miss Universe, of having incited and financed terrorist actions and of having conspired in a foreign-backed plot to overthrow the government. The allegations are “absurd”, says The Economist. Nevertheless, she has been barred from returning to Nicaragua and her husband and son have been arrested. Celebertti’s real crime is having crowned Sheynnis Palacios (pictured), a Nicaraguan beauty queen, as Miss Universe in November. Palacios’s triumph “sparked a rare wave of euphoria” in Nicaragua, with public celebrations – “spontaneous joy [that] unnerved president Daniel Ortega and his vice-president and wife, Rosario Murillo”. In 2018, noisy pro-democracy protests resulted in 350 people killed by police and many more jailed. Officially, Palacios’s coronation was “praised”. Wisely, however, Palacios is…

Bitcoin is enjoying a “redemption rally”, says Aaron Brown on Bloomberg. It is down 33% since its November 2021 peak, but has soared by 148% in 2023. The rally comes despite “massive scandals, bankruptcies, prosecutions and regulatory fights”. US regulators may soon approve exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in spot bitcoin and possibly other cryptocurrencies, too, says Jon Sindreu in The Wall Street Journal. That could attract huge inflows into digital currencies by making it easier for institutional and retail investors to gain exposure. Crypto’s last bull run in 2021 was marked by wild, irrational speculation on obscure “alt-coins” and related projects such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), says Pauline Armandet on France’ television network BFMTV. But the various scandals had the effect of “cleaning up the market”. That has paved the way…

The Japanese yen hit a four-month high against the US dollar on 7 December after comments from central bank governor Kazuo Ueda hinted that he could soon end Japan’s long-standing negative interest rates, currently at -0.1%. The rally unwound early this week after markets decided they had got carried away. As the chart shows, Japanese yields and interest rates have stayed “on the floor” for decades, says John Authers on Bloomberg. Betting on higher Japanese rates has been so unprofitable that the trade has become known, ominously, as the “widowmaker”. Ueda’s “extended and cautious retreat” from ultra-loose money promises to end that era, but it could yet make more widows along the way.…

Shares in AJ Bell and other platforms for retail investors have slid sharply after the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the City regulator, “fired a warning shot” at them, says Charlie Conchie at City AM. The FCA argues that they “may not be providing fair value to customers” when they retain at least some of the interest earned on customers’ cash balances, with some also charging fees, a practice known as “double dipping”. The FCA has been firing warnings at firms “after it beefed up its powers under the so-called Consumer Duty in July”, and said earlier this year that banks needed to raise rates for saving accounts faster. The fall in AJ Bell’s share price is unsurprising given that the FCA has highlighted an “uncomfortable feature” of the company’s business…

Polish house builder Murapol raised 404m zloty (£80m) in its initial public offering (IPO) last week, says Bloomberg, marking the end of a two-year drought in flotations in Warsaw. The listing valued Poland’s second-biggest homebuilder at 1.35bn zloty (£267m). Murapol’s owner Ares Management enticed investors with a hefty dividend, but the robust state of the housing market, a result of state-subsidised mortgages underpinning demand, was the key draw. The group’s focus on less expensive apartments means it should prove relatively resilient to fluctuations in the market. Warsaw’s WIG Real Estate index has risen by 44% this year.…

● London has bigger problems than Tui’s possible departure, says Nils Pratley in The Guardian. Europe’s largest tour operator is considering delisting from the UK and “flying solo” in Germany. Yet the reality is that Tui is headquartered in Germany, was propped up by that government in the pandemic, and the majority of its shares are held and traded there. So it has little need to keep a UK listing that dates back to the First Choice business that merged with Tui in 2007. “Two listings means extra expense and hassle. You wouldn’t create today’s set-up if starting from scratch.” There are real reasons to worry that the UK market “lacks fizz, freshness and the deep pools of liquidity of the US”, but these reflect a shortage of start-ups and…

“The Federal Reserve is going to have to cut rates more quickly than people expect,” says hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman. While markets are pricing in a first cut by the US central bank in May or June 2024, falling inflation means that policymakers may start to reduce borrowing costs in the first quarter, he tells Bloomberg. The Fed Funds Rate – the benchmark interest rate for the US – is currently at 5.5%, its highest level since 2001, and is slightly higher than the cycle peak that was reached in 2007 on the eve of the global financial crisis. The Fed began raising rates from near zero in March 2022 and the pace of rate increases has been the fastest in four decades. Inflation, which peaked at 9.1% in June…

■ Liontrust is to be dropped from the FTSE 250 mid-cap index, says the Financial Times. The exit follows a turbulent period that saw the UK asset manager lose half its market value; assets dropped by a quarter and investors pulled out £3.2bn in six months. Liontrust has fallen between two stools. Sector giants BlackRock and Vanguard and specialists Baillie Gifford are putting the squeeze on “middle of the road” companies like Liontrust, which are “suffering”, a former Liontrust partner tells the FT. “You have to be a trillion dollar manager offering lots of things, or you have to be a really efficiently run specialist.” The $27bn asset manager bought seven companies in 12 years in an attempt to diversify, but with mixed results. Alliance Trust Investments bolstered Liontrust’s expertise…

project-syndicate.org Ten years ago, Eugene Fama and Robert Schiller were both awarded the Nobel prize in economics – for holding diametrically opposed views on asset prices, says Antara Haldar. Fama believes the “efficient market hypothesis” – that prices almost immediately incorporate all available information and thus accurately reflect economic fundamentals. Schiller insists that prices are moved by “animal spirits”, which can result in irrational and suboptimal speculative bubbles. The Nobel committee said both could apply on different time scales. Yet which claim is right has important implications for whether or not we should seek to shape market outcomes, and whether central banks should attempt to identify and pop bubbles, for example. The answer lies in the “twilight zone” of economics, where self-interested micro-level decisions get transformed through the invisible hand…

The anthropologist Joseph Campbe ll believed that there were common themes to heroic quest stories found in societies around the world. He outlined his idea of The Hero’s Journey, which influenced George Lucas before he wrote the original StarWars screenplay. There’s more than a hint of The Hero’s Journey in Fever-Tree’s creation story, which involved treks to the British Library to research recipes and adventures in the African jungle looking for the perfect tonic. Like other heroic quests hunting for and returning with a highly prized elixir, this has captured consumers’ imaginations, with the brand now selling in over 85 countries and the company, listed as Fevertree Drinks (Aim: FEVR), growing revenue 18-fold to a forecast £385m in 2023. The story is not over, though, with the brand now facing…

Running out of ideas for Christmas gifts for your children or grandchildren? Here’s a round-up of your financial options. Giving money not only takes the stress out of choosing a gift, but it could also help with a future tax bill. Under inheritance-tax (IHT) rules you can give away up to £3,000 a year and it is immediately exempt from IHT. On top of that you can give away unlimited smaller gifts of up to £250, and they are IHT-exempt – you just can’t give those smaller gifts to the same recipients as the £3,000. If you are thinking of gifting cash, consider a deposit into a child’s Junior Individual Savings Account (Isa), if they have one. “Sure, it’s not a pony or a bike, but the children will thank…

Successful businesses can go bust quickly. The Business Travel Association says that more than 50,000 businesses fail each year because of cash-flow problems. Many of them are viable enterprises, but they simply can’t get cash in quickly enough to pay the bills, and eventually they are forced to cease trading. That’s why every small company should have a cash-flow plan ready for 2024 – a forecast of probable revenues mapped against likely outgoings, particularly in a year when costs such as wages, energy bills and business rates are set to increase sharply. Can customers pay? Start with your sales forecast, aiming to build accurate projections of your sales for the year ahead, including estimates for when sales will generate actual revenues. Consider the possibility of sales not converting into revenues.…

This year saw markets put in a mixed performance. While the S&P 500 ended the year up by approximately 20%, the FTSE 100 merely broke even. This split was mirrored in the mixed performance of my tips this year. Tips carried forward I began the year with 11 tips: seven longs (Ashtead, Dunelm, Netflix, Burberry, D.R. Horton, Gamma Communications and Savills) and four shorts (Coinbase, Digital Realty, AST SpaceMobile and EVgo). As usual, all of them were closed during the course of the year. Digital-currency exchange Coinbase was the first to go in issue 1140, at a profit of £1,320 – my most successful tip this year. Next was construction firm Ashtead in issue 1144, making £900. Netflix fell below the stop-loss level in 1149, but still ended up £876…

2018 Passel Estate, Chardonnay, Margaret River, Western Australia Approximately £32, lokiwine.co.uk; thesurreywinecellar.co.uk; mustandlees.co.uk On a recent trip Down Under, I was delighted to meet Wendy Stimpson, owner of Passel Estate in Margaret River. She explained that a passel is a collective noun for possums, and given that Wendy and her husband run a conservation programme for western ringtail possums on their property, it made sense to use this quaint word as their wine brand. This thrilling wine is made from the much-vaunted gingin chardonnay clone, and it weighs in at a sprightly 12.5% alcohol. With no malolactic fermentation and one-third new Allier and Vosges oak barrels employed, this is a lean, energetic, keen-edged wine with stunning poise. Fresh, zesty and perfectly balanced, this is a spectacular new find for me,…

Oil prices are having their worst run in five years, says Laura Sanicola on Reuters. Brent Crude prices peaked at $94 a barrel in late September, but have since fallen by more than a fifth to trade around $73 early this week. Oil has dropped for seven weeks in a row, its longest losing streak since 2018. The slide comes despite a pledge by the Opec+ group of oil exporters, which includes Saudi Arabia and Russia, to cut a collective 2.2 million barrels per day (mbpd) of output in the first quarter of 2024. Traders are “sceptical” that Opec+ members will actually comply with promised cuts. Meanwhile, signs of deflationary pressure in China (see page 5) suggest a weakening global appetite for oil, adds CNN’s Nicole Goodkind. Opec+ is increasingly…

Behold another “vast fossil-fuel” acquisition in the US, says Callum Jones in The Guardian. Occidental Petroleum is buying CrownRock for $12bn in cash and shares. The deal will increase Occidental’s acreage in the Permian Basin, America’s largest oil-producing area (see page 4), and boost its production in the region by about 170,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. It is the sector’s third big deal in three months, following ExxonMobil’s purchase of shale group Pioneer Natural Resources for $59.5bn and Chevron’s acquisition of Hess Corporation for $53bn. Occidental’s rivals have also made acquisitions, says Andrew Bary in Barron’s. But while Exxon and Chevron are “conservatively” using equity, Occidental Petroleum’s president and CEO Vicki Hollub has decided to “play more aggressively”. This is because Occidental is issuing debt to finance most…

Five to buy Gattaca The Mail on Sunday Gattaca helps firms find the engineers and technicians they need, working with firms as varied as BAE Systems, Network Rail and TripAdvisor. Gattaca’s focus on science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) requires its recruiters to have a specialist understanding of often technical fields. The shares came unstuck in the years after 2014 after the firm overexpanded. But the group is turning around: profits “soared” last year and the dividend was reinstated. Given the chronic shortage of Stem specialists in the UK, Gattaca’s services will remain in high demand. 124p Nichols The Sunday Times Shares in the maker of soft drink Vimto have been buffeted by the cost-of-living crisis. But better days lie ahead. While sugary drinks feel a little “anachronistic” in the…

President Emmanuel Macron’s government suffered a “humiliating blow” when the French parliament threw out his immigration bill on Monday, says Charles Bremner in The Times. The centrist government, led by prime minister Élisabeth Borne, had spent months modifying the bill to garner support from the centre-right, only for them to end up backing a motion from Marine Le Pen’s National Rally and the left-wing opposition “to cut short examination of the bill and reject it outright”. The bill promised faster expulsion of unsuccessful asylum seekers while legalising illegal migrants who work in understaffed industries. It is yet another example of Macron (pictured) “saying one thing but doing another... to keep his disparate party united”, says Gavin Mortimer in The Spectator. All the tough talk about expelling asylum seekers wouldn’t have…

Over the last few issues, I’ve reviewed the first five positions in the MoneyWeek exchange traded fund (ETF) portfolio and the halfway mark is a good point to summarise where it now stands. The table shows the current portfolio, with the holdings that we have yet to review in grey. The biggest change was to add back some conventional government bonds (issue 1185). We are still considering whether an equal-weighted US ETF might be better than a market-weighted one, given the increasing concentration of the US market (issue 1184), but have kept the overall 10% allocation to US equities. Most investors will invest the cash component in whatever gives them the best risk-free interest rate (eg, savings accounts) and it would be useful to proxy this in the portfolio. We…

The selling of funds in the “alternatives” sector (those not investing in listed equities) has been indiscriminate this year, with discounts to net asset value (NAV) widening sharply. Some of these funds will bounce back but others will continue to struggle. The differentiator is their strategies on the way up; the hares are burnt out but the tortoises keep moving forward. Augmentum Fintech (LSE: AUGM), for instance, listed in March 2018, raising £100m to back “early-stage high-growth companies transforming the financial-services sector”. Five years later, its share price is still just below the issue price and it hasn’t paid a dividend. But its NAV has risen by 70% and, helped by a 70% increase in issued shares, it has £290m of capital, of which £45m is still in cash. There…

Britain is on the sick Camilla Tominey The Telegraph It’s all very well to be tough on immigration, but who is going to fill our million job vacancies if Brits refuse to work, asks Camilla Tominey. The impact of lockdowns have proved “devastating”. There are 1.2 million more people on working-age benefits today than there would have been had pre-Covid trends continued, while more than 2.6 million (up 500,000 since the pandemic) are economically inactive due to “long-term sickness”, with 53% of those reporting “depression, bad nerves or anxiety”. As a result of the 18-month-long “no-strings-attached” furlough scheme, attitudes to work have changed, too. Once “extreme” ideas such as permanent homeworking are now mainstream. The problem is perhaps greatest in the public sector – at Defra, civil servants are demanding…

news.sky.com The Resolution Foundation’s report (see story above) could end up being a “kind of Bible” for both the Labour and Tory parties, says Ed Conway. It “synthesises much of what you might call the ‘Whitehall view’” of what needs to be done, and it was “not for nothing” that both chancellor Jeremy Hunt and Labour leader Keir Starmer were at the launch event. Yet one of the most important of all the economic factors behind our stagnation is barely mentioned at all: energy. That is a “glaring omission”. Britain has some of the developed world’s highest energy costs, and that is at least part of the explanation for the weak productivity and low investment of recent years. Bringing down wholesale energy costs would make an “enormous difference” and boost…

In these uncertain times portfolios benefit from firms with regulatory barriers to new competitors entering their markets, predictable growth and appealing dividend yields of around 4%. A good example is Bioventix (Aim: BVXP), which was founded in 2003 and admitted to Aim in 2014. It specialises in creating and manufacturing sheep monoclonal antibodies (SMAs) for use in immunodiagnostics. Monoclonal antibodies bolster or imitate the immune system’s response to unwanted cells. Bioventix’s novel SMAs have proved more effective than conventional monoclonal antibodies from rodents, both for diagnostic targets at low concentrations and where the target is a small molecule or drug. Bioventix’s SMAs are therefore used to create new and improved diagnostic tests for blood-testing machines in hospitals and other laboratories around the world. These machines are supplied by major diagnostic…

If you want to spread the cost of Christmas, note that the number of cards offering lengthy interest-free periods has fallen and the average APR has risen since last year. In 2020 it was possible to get a credit card with an introductory 0% period of up to three years. Last Christmas it had fallen to two years, James Daley of Fairer Finance tells the Daily Express. This year there is only one card offering more than 20 months interest-free. The Barclaycard Platinum All-Rounder has a 21-month interest-free period on purchases. After that the interest rate rockets to 24.9% APR. But don’t assume you need the longest possible 0% period. Do you really still want to be paying for this Christmas in the summer of 2025? If you can clear…

Small firms, particularly those based outside London and the South-East, will be among those hit hardest by reforms to the immigration rules, business groups warn. The changes, due to come into effect in April, could make it much harder for firms to recruit much-needed talent from overseas. The main change is the large rise in the minimum salary migrants will need to earn to qualify for a “skilled worker” visa, which will go up from £26,200 to £38,700. Analysis suggests 210 of the 225 occupations covered by this scheme offer lower average wages than the new cap. The salary that British citizens or migrants already settled in the UK will have to earn for their immediate relatives to be allowed to join them will also increase to £38,700, from £18,600.…

Be very careful when shorting certain sectors If there is one big investing story this year, it’s the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). While many think that expectations are now so high that AI won’t be able to live up to its hype, this doesn’t matter as, for the moment, the markets clearly think it will. This means that even companies with poor fundamentals may benefit, at least in the short run. The fact that I had to cover my short position in C3.ai only four weeks after I took it out shows the danger of shorting stocks in booming sectors. The importance of stop-losses The case of C3.ai also highlights the importance of stop-losses. Whenever I tip a share, I always place a stop-loss, which automatically closes your position…

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) has long held a “seductive” appeal for artists, says Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. He ranks third behind Jesus and Hitler in the number of books written about him, says Simon Schama in the Financial Times, and outdoes them both in the number of films. Just what kind of person sits at the centre of this cult is in the eye of the beholder. In Sergei Bondarchuk’s film Waterloo, he was a “world-weary gang boss”; in King Vidor’s War and Peace, a “dwindling absurdity”. But in Ridley Scott’s new “outrageously enjoyable” epic biopic (starring Joaquin Phoenix, pictured), he is the “arch satirist and grinning mastermind, the outsider, the brilliant observer and exploiter of other people’s weaknesses, the proto-capitalist entrepreneur”. Born Napoleone di Buonaparte on Corsica, he graduated…