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It’s a new era and a big change of direction, insisted excited analysts after July’s election. It’s 1974, not 1979, we said. A cursory glance at the past few days’ headlines suggests that is closer to the mark. Having insisted in its manifesto that it would be “pro-worker” and “pro-business”, the government is turning out to be neither. The British Retail Consortium has warned that extra costs stemming from employers’ national insurance contributions, increases in the minimum wage and a new packaging levy will drive up prices in shops and lead to job losses. Big retailers including Next, Marks & Spencer and Tesco have written to the chancellor to point this out. Small companies don’t have that kind of lobbying muscle, and will also face more of a squeeze on…

“Donald Trump believes tariffs on products that the US imports are paid by foreign producers, but if products exported from China to the US are manufactured or assembled by Chinese companies contracted by American companies, such as... Apple iPhones, then US companies must pay for all tariffs. Apple itself must pay the 60% tariff, significantly increasing the cost of selling its products in the US. My estimates suggest that if Apple opts not to pass on the tariff costs to US consumers through price hikes, it would bear the full 60% tariff.... [effectively reducing] the gross profit margin of its products to zero. If Apple wants to pass on all tariffs to US consumers by raising prices, [it] would need to raise the prices of products sold in the US…

Shares in Kingfisher, which owns home improvement stores B&Q and Screwfix, plunged by 13% on Monday after it said it anticipated a £31m hit from higher employers’ national insurance contributions, says Emma Taggart in The Times. The company also downgraded its full-year guidance. Kingfisher’s CEO said improved trading in August and September was offset by mounting uncertainty among consumers in both the UK and France in October, with poor sales of big-ticket items. The group’s like-for-like sales fell 1.1% in the three months to 31 October, far more than the 0.2% forecast by analysts. The Budget may have dealt Kingfisher a “hammer blow”, says Mark Crouch, market analyst at investment platform eToro. The rise in National Insurance costs has undermined the profit outlook, while many customers, especially smaller trade companies,…

High-end perfume maker Interparfums is smelling sweet, says Bruno Kus in Le Revenu. It produces scents under licence for the likes of Jimmy Choo, Montblanc and Lacoste. Cooler inflation has helped it to stabilise gross margins at a generous 65%. Some luxury firms have priced themselves out of the market with big price hikes, but Interparfums has protected margins without alienating customers via “measured” 2%-3% price increases. Only 2.5% of sales are in China, where perfume is still a developing business, so the Middle Kingdom is “more of an opportunity than a threat”. On 22 times consensus forward earnings, the shares are trading on a sizeable discount to the ten-year average of 30.…

The outcome of COP29 – this year’s UN “climate confab” – was “pathetic”, says Mark Gongloff in Bloomberg. It ended with a commitment from developed nations to triple the sum they spend helping developing countries “mitigate and adapt” to climate change to $300bn a year by 2030. They also agreed to draw up a ten-year plan for reaching the $1.3trn in annual financing that poorer countries demanded. This still falls “far short” of the $2.4trn the UN’s High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance says is needed and a far cry from the “$7trn in estimated... subsidies the world pays fossil-fuel producers every year”. Worse, that $300bn is for all types of financing, not just public money, says Antony Currie on Breakingviews. Some of it is expected to come from the…

“India: too expensive or the world’s best growth story?” asked one of the attendees during the emerging-markets session at MoneyWeek’s reader conference earlier this month, concisely summing up the dilemma for investors. India has one of the simplest and most compelling narratives of any long-term bull market: young demographics, vast potential for catch-up growth, unusually large and high-quality stockmarket by EM standards, and a record of considerable progress in recent years. Yet it’s still hard to feel entirely comfortable about paying 25 times earnings for it. This is not a new dilemma. India has long been an expensive market relative to peers. The chart shows the price/earnings ratio for the broad market stretching back almost 30 years: ignore the trough and spike in 2020/2021 – caused by the pandemic panic…

Veteran fund manager Nils Taube used to advise people “never to invest in a country where you don’t need a coat in winter”. That view came to seem antiquated when Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs coined the term “Brics” to cover the largest emerging economies: Brazil, Russia, India and China. O’Neill’s thesis was that these countries were emerging as central players in the world economy. They were collectively set to overtake the G6 developed economies in size on a purchasing power parity basis by 2025. The implication was that these countries would account for an increasing share of global stockmarkets. Instead, Brazil has proved the old adage that it is “the country of tomorrow and always will be”. Russia has gone backwards economically and disappeared as a destination for investment.…

Migration hides UK’s social crisis Fraser Nelson The Telegraph The revised post-Budget forecast for the number of working-age people expected to be on long-term sickness benefits in four years’ time is 4.1 million, says Fraser Nelson. Britain’s sick population will soon exceed the entire population of Croatia. The reason this calamitous waste of lives (and money) hasn’t triggered crisis talks is that net immigration is expected to “settle at about 300,000 a year for the foreseeable”. While I believe that immigration is a “net benefit”, it’s important to admit the drawbacks. One of those is that it masks many social problems, “especially welfare dysfunction”. Newcomers have kept wages “nailed down”, making it hard for locals to earn a decent living. Brexit was, in large part, a vote for a new…

economicforces.xyz This was the year politicians turned their back on economics, says The Wall Street Journal. Many will “rejoice” at that, says Brian Albrecht. Critics think economists’ theories are too abstract, the models too unrealistic. But they are missing something crucial: “economic forces still move the world”. Economics offers “core insights about the world that have proved remarkably robust across time, place and political systems”. Ignore them at your peril. These are the eight key principles that matter for policymakers. 1. Prices are a signal wrapped in an incentive. They tell us what’s scarce while “creating pressure for change”. 2. Demand curves slope downward. If you raise the cost of something, people substitute away from it. 3. Given time and rewards, people find a way. Never underestimate human ingenuity. 4.…

The private housing rental market in the UK used to be dominated by small-time landlords, but this has changed over the past decade as large companies have spent billions developing purpose-built rental homes. According to Savills, in 2015 there were just 5,000 built-to-rent (BTR) homes in the UK. At the end of September, that number was 120,000, with a further 150,000 in various stages of development. BTR professional landlords have substantial economies of scale and can leverage huge balance sheets to advance housing projects. These projects are built around communities of hundreds of homes, lowering construction and maintenance costs. The largest listed player in the sector is Grainger (LSE: GRI) and its latest results illustrate the scale of the opportunity in the BTR market. For the year to the end…

Following the Budget, families have been seeking ways to protect themselves. “Lawyers have reported a surge in clients keen to set up a trust,” says Rachel Mortimer in The Times. Money and assets placed into a trust belong to the beneficiaries of the trust, but trustees manage and distribute the assets. It is a helpful way to remove an asset from your own estate for tax purposes but retain some control over it. The setting up of the trust is treated as a gift by HMRC so, provided you survive seven years, it becomes free of inheritance tax (IHT). Any asset growth is immediately counted outside of the estate. But that doesn’t mean you can put huge sums (or valuable farms) into a trust and avoid IHT. If you place…

Businesses on LinkedIn are missing out on potentially valuable benefits by failing to optimise their use of the social-networking site, experts warn. One in four Britons now has a LinkedIn account, so the site offers wide-ranging potential to boost a brand as well as to extend your professional networks. A growing number of advisers specialise in helping businesses to use social-media networks more effectively, but there are plenty of simple steps you can take yourself to make a bigger impact. For example, many smaller companies set themselves up on LinkedIn, but then fail to keep their profiles updated. Even merely adding relevant keywords to the “about” section can lead to more regular appearances in search results. Similarly, too few small companies use LinkedIn’s analytics tools, which provide free feedback on…

Compared with this year, which saw elections in both the UK and US, 2025 promises to be a relatively quiet year. But there are a few interesting contests due to take place. Both Australia and Canada will have to go to the polls by May and October respectively. In Canada, the bookies seem convinced that prime minister Justin Trudeau’s tenure is due to come to an end. Indeed, Bet 365 puts the Conservatives at 1/9 (90%) to win, with the Liberal Party on 5/1 (17%) and the New Democratic Party at 40 (2.5%). These are extremely short odds, and recent history has taught us that anything can happen. However, it’s very hard to see how the Liberals can pull off a victory. The Conservatives have been ahead of the Liberals…

Jaguar’s brand “reimagining” has “become a new front in the culture wars”, says Ian Watts in the New Statesman. The carmaker has dropped the “familiar leaping big cat” for a “simple monogram and a minimalist sans-serif logotype”, showcased in a 30-second advertisement featuring a “colourfully dressed, diverse cast… looking much like a BBC2 ident fused with a Vogue fashion feature” – and no actual cars. Critics misunderstand the strategy. For all its charm, loss-making Jaguar had “only really made headway in the Anglosphere”, and in “ditching the heritage (at least for now) in favour of a more ‘disruptive’, futuristic aesthetic,” Jaguar hopes to “connect with a younger, more global audience”. Jaguar will be “delighted by the fuss”. Good week for: US singer Katy Perry (pictured) has won an appeal in…

Defence is “Asia’s Trump trade”, says Jacky Wong in The Wall Street Journal. South Korean and Japanese defence shares have soared since the US election on bets of higher defence spending in Seoul and Tokyo. Shares in Korea’s Hanwha Aerospace have doubled this year, while Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has gained 170%. Global military spending rose 6.8% last year, and many buyers are looking to South Korean contractors, which deliver “on time at competitive prices”. The country is building tanks, howitzers and other gear for Poland, Romania and Peru. Export work usually offers higher margins than contracts with the domestic government. A similar tailwind has seen European defence shares rally since Trump’s win, says Lex in the Financial Times. His Nato scepticism will push European governments into higher defence spending,…

If an emerging economy had just elected a “bombastic strongman president with a spicy legal history” then local markets would have “cratered”, says Katie Martin in the Financial Times. Not so for America. Wall Street has outperformed all others so strongly since the financial crisis that global money managers increasingly struggle to justify investing anywhere else: “There is no alternative to the US”. American stocks have delivered almost three times as much as European ones since 2009, says The Economist. America now accounts for almost two-thirds of all global markets by valuation. But with US shares “more expensive than at almost any other time in history”, those going “all in” on America could be making a strategic mistake.…

Shares in Barclays rose by 2% on Monday after it dropped an appeal against a fine levied by the UK Financial Conduct Agency (FCA), the City regulator. It did so in return for the penalty being cut to £40m, says the Financial Times. The move ends a “legal saga” lasting more than a decade, which started after the FCA claimed that Barclays “misled the market” about the costs associated with an £11.8bn emergency capital-raising from Qatari investors in 2008. While two attempts to prosecute executives, including former CEO John Varley, failed, the FCA fined Barclays £50m in 2022. Even though Barclays still doesn’t accept the FCA’s findings, it now wants to move on. While 2008 may seem like “ancient history”, if Barclays genuinely thought it was innocent then it should…

A rare second initial public offering (IPO) in Algeria this year and at least three more next year are set to boost the small and illiquid Algiers Stock Exchange, says Bloomberg. Statecontrolled lender Banque de Développement Local is expected to float by the end of the year and bolster the local bourse by about $500m to around $4.5bn. One of the listings in 2025 is expected to be from the pharmaceutical industry. The IPO of Credit Populaire d’Algerie in March was the exchange’s biggest in its three-decade history and the first in eight years. The state-controlled bank was also only the fifth company to list shares locally and raised 112bn dinars (£664.9m).…

A “landslide victory” for Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in a state election in Maharashtra last week has been overshadowed by US fraud charges against Modi’s close ally, billionaire Gautam Adani, says The Economist. Federal prosecutors accuse Adani and his executives of orchestrating a $265m scheme with Indian officials to “secure contracts worth $2bn in profits over 20 years”, says Soutik Biswas on the BBC. Adami Group has denied the allegations. India’s economy is “deeply intertwined” with Adani, whose portfolio “closely mirrors Modi’s policy priorities”. He owns ports, airports and cement businesses and is India’s largest private player in power. Globally, his ambitions span from Indonesia to Africa and he employs 45,000 people. He had just announced plans to invest $10bn in US energy and infrastructure. The charges create…

We don’t yet know if investors will be able to take the shares right away and then pay for them in instalments once they have the money available, or whether they will, somewhat ironically, have to stump up all the cash upfront. Whatever the financing arrangements, Klarna, the Swedish fintech giant, is making a big splash by floating its shares in New York. The initial public offering (IPO) is planned for sometime early in 2025. One of Europe’s few genuinely innovative start-ups, Klarna created the “buy now, pay later” model that has become ubiquitous in online shopping. It is likely to be valued at around $14bn, according to the latest price put on the shares by its investors. That is a long way down from the $44bn price tag put…

Gross domestic product (GDP) is a measure of the size of an economy over a period of time (normally a year). GDP is most often used for discussing individual countries, but may also be calculated for regions (eg, Southeast Asia), trading blocs (eg, the European Union), or areas within a country. GDP is calculated in three ways. The production or output approach is the sum of all the value added through producing goods and providing services (ie, the market value of what’s produced minus the costs of producing it). The income approach is the sum of all the income earned by companies and individuals from offering the same goods and services. The expenditure approach is the sum of everything spent on finished goods and services. In theory, all three should…

Saba Capital has more than doubled its holding in Janus Henderson’s top-performing European Smaller Companies Trust (ESCT) to 29%, becoming its biggest shareholder, says Citywire. The US hedge fund’s stake sits just below the 30% threshold that would require it to make a bid. Saba could block the re-election of directors or disrupt the board’s ability to buy back or issue shares. Saba’s previous conflicts with other European trusts hint at a long-term game plan; it may be aiming to take control at ESCT’s triennial continuation vote next year. The decision to target ESCT is “intriguing” since the trust has not faced significant performance problems, with shareholders’ returns outperforming the sector average.…

“He took all my money. I just thought: ‘We’re husband and wife. Half the things are his, half the things are mine.’ It didn’t occur to me that there was another way… To this day I wish to God I could just ask, Son, at what point, during what day, did you go: ‘Yeah, you know what? I’m going to take her money.’” Cher (pictured) on being swindled out of her earnings by her ex-husband Sonny Bono during their marriage, quoted in The New York Times “Never invest in a country with green in its flag.” Henry Keswick, chairman of Jardine Matheson, quoted in The Spectator “You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.” US economist Thomas Sowell, quoted on X…

popsci.com Modern car makers are almost universally replacing dashboards full of tactile knobs with sleek, iPad-like digital displays and touchscreens. But there are signs of a backlash, says Mack DeGeurin. Korean car maker Hyundai is “publicly shifting gears”. It had assumed the new technology added a “wow” factor, but customers in focus groups remained resolutely unwowed and in fact got “stressed and annoyed” when they needed to “control something in a pinch”, but were unable to do so. Hyundai has hit reverse. Knobs are back. Hyundai is not alone. VW and Porsche are also planning to buck the trend. The result could be safer roads. A 2017 study by the AAA Foundation found that drivers navigating through in-car screens and apps were “visually and mentally distracted” for an average of…

Sometimes certain firms become stockmarket darlings. They generate outstanding and consistent returns for shareholders and are widely owned by professional investors. Often shares in these companies are at their riskiest when they are most popular, as prices become untethered from value. When things go awry, the share-price decline can be extreme, but after the fall a great investment opportunity can emerge. One such former darling is Marshalls (LSE: MSLH), which was loved by numerous investors. It rewarded that love with a peak-to-trough decline of 80% in two years. Having been patently overvalued at their peak, the shares now look cheap. Might now be the time to buy this once admired stock? Marshalls produces and supplies landscaping, building and roofing products; it makes things like paving stones, concrete blocks and the…

• Did you know HMRC will reward you for snitching on tax dodgers? You can fill out an online form for whistleblowers. “If your information helps it to recover unpaid tax you will get a reward, but the sums are not huge,” says The Sunday Times. In the 2023-2024 tax year there were 151,763 tip-offs and total payments reached £978,256, giving the average whistleblower just £6.45. • HMRC’s haul from late-filing penalties has hit a five-year high. Figures obtained by the Financial Times under a freedom of information request showed that HMRC collected £220m in fines from people who filed their self-assessment tax return late in the 2022-2023 financial year, up from £185m in 2021-2022. The figures brought the total amount HMRC has received in late-filing fines to £980m since…

• Small businesses can expect a £4.4bn share of Christmas spending this festive season, according to new research from the Small Business Saturday campaign, published ahead of Small Business Saturday itself on 7 December. The campaign says the average household will spend £757 on seasonal celebrations this year, equating to around £20bn of festive spending. It expects small firms to net a fifth of this cash. Small business groups hope Small Business Saturday, an annual event aimed at encouraging Britons to spend money with small and local businesses, will give the sector a fillip. See smallbusinesssaturdayuk.com for details of how to take part. • Does your business have an outstanding complaint against its bank? If so, time could be running out to get independent help because the Business Banking Resolution…

The last fortnight has been mixed for my long tips, with four rising and three falling. Cruise-ship operator Royal Caribbean increased from $234 to $240, United Airlines climbed from $89.43 to $96.83 and retailer Marks & Spencer went up from 359p to 377p. Trainline rose from 404p to 412p. Broker Alpha Group International fell from 2,300p to 2,220p, Foodprocessing firm Hilton Food Group declined from 945p to 892p and Harworth, a specialist in land and property regeneration, dipped from 170p to 169p. Overall, my long tips are making profits of £4,212p, down from £5,377p two weeks ago. My shorts tips also had some positions that moved in my favour and some that didn’t. Online grocery-delivery firm Ocado went down from 344p to 325p, while Trump Media & Technology fell from…

It’s hard to look at social media today and not be “struck by the sense that something has shifted in the zeitgeist”, says Tom McTague on Unherd. The right is not only winning – “it’s becoming cool”. When Napoleon rode into battle at the head of his Grande Armée in 1806, Hegel described him as “the world soul on horseback”. Donald Trump is no Napoleon, but he “has captured the spirit of the age”. Who fits the bill in the UK? Step forward, Jeremy Clarkson. If Clarkson (pictured) entered politics now, it would be “Britain’s Trump moment”, the pollster James Kanagasooriam wrote on X. Indeed, “whatever the impression given by London media types”, Clarkson is “arguably the most popular person in Britain”, says Guy Kelly in The Telegraph. His antics…

“Welcome to the crypto bull market,” says Gautam Chhugani of Bernstein. “Buy everything you can.” Bitcoin prices have surged more than a third since Donald Trump’s election victory, which heralds more favourable US regulation for cryptocurrencies. The digital asset nearly broke through the $100,000 mark for the first time at the weekend. Trump’s promise to sack Gary Gensler, chair of America’s Securities and Exchange Commission, has delighted crypto bulls, Glen Goodman, author of The Crypto Trader, tells This Is Money. “Gensler has been the bane of crypto businesses in America and across the world, bringing court cases against some of the biggest companies in the industry.” Gensler has announced that he will quit in January. Back from the dead Bitcoin has been declared “finished” hundreds of times, says Julien Romon…

US chip giant Nvidia hailed the “incredible demand for its chips in the age of artificial intelligence” as it reported unexpectedly strong sales and profits, says Louisa Clarence-Smith in The Times. Revenue jumped 94% year on year to $35.1bn and earnings 109% to $19.3bn. The chipmaker also said it expects to achieve revenue of $37.5bn in the next quarter. The shares fell slightly after the news, however, as investors “considered how much longer the chipmaker can continue delivering better-than-expected results”. The results are particularly encouraging given that analysts had been especially interested to see how Nvidia’s new generation of chips, known as Blackwell, which launched earlier this year, might affect short-term revenue growth, says Michael Acton in the Financial Times. There are also concerns as to “whether the chip is…

Five to buy Smiths Group The Telegraph Smiths Group’s shares fell after full-year results missed expectations, but recovered after a positive first-quarter trading update that prompted an upgrade in sales forecasts. The full-year dividend rose 5.2%, outpacing inflation. The engineering company’s low debt and diverse operations reduce risks. Although the stock may be volatile in the short run, Smiths’ solid financial position, sound strategy, growth potential and upbeat income prospects are appealing. A “worthwhile dividend holding for the long run”. 1,724p Disney The Times The US entertainment giant recently posted strong results, exceeding profit expectations in streaming and theme parks. It also surprised investors with profit forecasts up to 2027, predicting growth in earnings per share and resilient household spending. Despite difficulties in traditional media, Disney is appealing owing to…

• Royal Mail’s parent company IDS has revealed a projected £120m hit from “Labour’s tax on jobs”, says Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail. But the “bigger issue for shareholders” should be the Ofcom inquiry into rebooting the universal service obligation. This requires Royal Mail to deliver letters at the same price across Britain six days a week. The key consideration is that business secretary Jonathan Reynolds may agree to the £3.6bn bid (£5.6bn including debt) from Daniel Kretinsky after a national security and investment review. But if the regulator allows a premium first-class six-day delivery service at a higher price than the current £1.65p and a limited second-class service, “then the economics could be radically changed”. Kretinsky can currently offer unions “iron-clad wage and job guarantees” because he sees…

“Will Team Trump… be able to find a path to put America’s fiscal house back in order?” asks Ken Griffin, the founder of Citadel, one of the world’s largest hedge funds. “We cannot continue to run this level of profligate spending.” President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to reduce corporate taxes to 15% for US manufacturers could add $200bn to the deficit over a decade, with tax cuts contributing $7.5trn, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Addressing waste, fraud and abuse may only save the budget $100bn. “I don’t think we have the fiscal room to cut taxes from where they are today,” Griffin tells Bloomberg. “There’s a real question about where do we need to raise taxes.” Meanwhile, Trump’s proposed tariffs would make US businesses less efficient in…

■ Miton UK MicroCap Trust, run by veteran stock pickers Gervais Williams and Martin Turner, plans to wind down given a “challenging” trading performance and dwindling assets, says Investment Week. In October, investors sold 40% of their shares, leaving the closed-ended fund with just £23m in assets. The trust has struggled in recent years as investors shunned UK small caps for US and international investments. The board said it is at a “size which some investors consider to be too small from a liquidity perspective” and is trading at a “persistent” 11% discount to its net asset value (NAV), with limited growth options. The liquidation is subject to shareholders’ approval. Owing to the “positive views” of the trust’s investment manager, Premier Miton, and current “depressed valuations” of UK small and…

theconversation.com The legalisation of recreational cannabis use still causes heated debate, says Amir Englund. Yet the US has come quite some way towards it – nearly half of states have laws permitting use. What can we learn from them? That the drug is harmful is well-established – raising the risk of mental-health conditions, for example. But how are these harms affected by legalisation? The evidence is mixed. Legalisation does seem to encourage use among adults and lead to more visits to A&E for cannabis-induced psychosis and accidental poisoning, for example. But much depends on what laws are put in place. With alcohol, for example, what measures are taken to govern marketing, the number of stores selling it, opening hours, taxes and pricing, and minimum age limits, for instance, all affect…

Hiring a nanny isn’t straightforward. The taxman classes you as their employer – just as they do for cleaners, gardeners and other household help. This means you must pay them through PAYE, ensuring that income tax, national insurance (NI), pension contributions and student loan repayments are paid. You must also provide holiday pay, a contract and payslips. That all means you are also liable for the higher employer’s NI that kicks in from next April. The average salary for a nanny working outside London is £40,326, according to payroll company Nanny Tax. “On this, an employer will pay £4,309 NI and £1,023 pension contributions under auto-enrolment, bringing the total cost of employment to £45,658,” says Lucy Andrews in The Sunday Times. “From April the NI bill will increase to £5,299,…

Good news and bad on business rates. The positive policy in the Budget was that business-rate reliefs that had been due to end next April will now be extended. Less happily, they will not be so generous, and there is still no detail of Labour’s promised overhaul of the much-criticised business-rates system. The headline numbers are worrying. Businesses in the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors are entitled to discounts of up to 75% on their business-rates bills under a scheme introduced by the last government during Covid. From next April, these reliefs will come down to only 40%. Analysis from property group Altus suggests these reductions could prove very costly, with 250,000 high-street premises in England facing an average 140% rise in their bills for the 2025-2026 tax year. The…

Warren Buffett is one of the legends of investing. His holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, has outperformed the US stockmarket by an average of 10% a year over the last eight decades. However, as Buffett himself has pointed out on several occasions, the sheer size of the fund, which recently reached a market value of $1trn, means that it is hard for him to find compelling investment opportunities. As a result, he has mainly used the huge amount of cash generated by the investments to buy back Berkshire’s shares. However, earlier this month his fund took a major stake in Domino’s Pizza. Should you follow suit? It’s not hard to see why Berkshire likes Domino’s Pizza. The company seems consistent with all elements of Buffett’s “growth at a reasonable price” strategy.…

When looking for stocks to buy we concentrate on how much cash they make and how much we’re paying to put them in our portfolio. We appraise cash flow rather than accounting profit because it represents a return more secure than promises by customers to pay later. It is also harder for companies to manipulate. Businesses with healthy cash flow have the flexibility to repay their debts when they come due, reinvest in their businesses to create future profits, and pay dividends to shareholders. And as for valuation, the price you pay is one of the main determinants of your long-term returns. While the past decade has not been kind to the UK stockmarket, we remain enthused about its prospects. Valuations are highly attractive, especially relative to other markets, and…

£26, huntsworthwine.co.uk; £25.95, sevencellars.co.uk Three of the wine trade’s most respected players, Tim French, Violaine Manac’h and Jamie Waugh, each with profound experience in our craft, have set up a new business sourcing and selling a collection of finely wrought wines to discerning merchants and restaurants around the UK. As always, businesses are only as strong as their signings (or wineries), and if you will pardon a tenuous football analogy, Halo Wines has a Ronaldo in its team in the form of Niepoort, a Portuguese superstar! This week’s wine of the week is the mega-classy, super-smooth, crisply refreshing Vertente. At £25, this might be Portugal’s finest value and most expressive red wine. It is medium-bodied, summer-pudding imbued and astonishingly delicious, and it deserves to be unleashed with alacrity. But that…