Indholdsfortegnelse for Issue 1243 i MoneyWeek

“It’s important to me that this Labour goverment [sic] improves your life and your community in ways you actually notice,” said a tweet on Keir Starmer’s X account on Monday. What I actually noticed was the missing “n” in “government”, but then it is my job to spot these things. I also saw that the government has churned out so many announcements (including a minuscule deal with China, see page 8, and a push to make Britain a champion of AI) that the typo was perhaps inevitable. Still, the frenzied attempt to look busy adds to the impression of haplessness as trouble comes in battalions; Starmer noting in the Financial Times that “AI… can spot potholes more quickly” recalls John Major’s Cones hotline. This week we had the minister responsible…

“Every December, Wall Street predicts what various assets will return over the coming year. Every January, the predictions begin to be proved wrong. This annual forecasting ritual is absurd. As 2024 began, the average return forecast for the S&P 500 was 7.4% by stock analysts and 1.3% by market strategists. The actual return, including dividends: 25.02%. Over the past 20 years, the correlation between the forecasts and the market’s actual returns was minimal. But the purpose of them isn’t to be accurate. It’s to start conversations with clients and generate trades. They are powerful sales tools. Wall Street’s forecasts, no matter how wrong they turn out to be, exert a magnetic force on your mind. When we think about anything we don’t know much about, such as the future performance…

Johnson & Johnson (J&J) has struck a $14.6bn deal to buy drugmaker Intra-Cellular Therapies in what will be “the biggest biotech buyout in more than a year”, say Oliver Barnes and Maria Heeter in the Financial Times. Intra-Cellular develops treatments for central nervous system disorders — including depression, anxiety and Parkinson’s — an area that has “historically proven tricky for drug developers because of the complexity of the brain and the high rate of clinical trial failures”. J&J also hopes that buying Intra-Cellular will help it deal with looming patent cliffs,. The expiry of the patent on Darzalex (its blockbuster treatment for rare blood cancers) in 2029 is set to cost it $17bn in sales that year. Drugs for mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and depression are highly sought after…

Profits at Germany’s Qiagen, a diagnostics specialist, dipped last year, says WirtschaftsWoche. The group had decided to exit the Covid market entirely, a step that necessitated several write-offs. But the core business remains lucrative and promising; overall earnings are already recovering. There will always be demand for consumables such as reagents and equipment in laboratories and clinics. Sales of Quantiferon, a test for tuberculosis, are growing at an annual rate of 10% and now comprise a fifth of the group’s sales. Ventures with Eli Lilly and AstraZeneca, along with participation in UK research on rare diseases, are bolstering the diagnostics business.…

Croatian president Zoran Milanovic has won re-election for another five-year term, winning an overwhelming 74% in the run-off vote on Sunday and beating Dragan Primorac, the candidate of prime minister Andrej Plenkovic’s HDZ party, says Tom Nicholson in Politico. The results are a “major boost” for Milanovic. The 58-year-old president, who is anti-EU despite having overseen his country’s 2013 accession to the European Union during his time as prime minister, is a “fierce opponent” of Plenkovic and his conservative, pro-EU government. In a speech after his re-election, he said that his victory was a sign of voters’ approval, but also sent a message to the government. Milanovic has been likened to incoming US president Donald Trump for his “combative style” and his triumph “sets the stage” for continued confrontation with…

What’s happened? Ahead of his inauguration on Monday, Donald Trump engaged in some sabre-rattling. Not against America’s enemies, though, but three close allies: Denmark, Canada and Panama. Trump’s musings about absorbing Canada as the 51st US state were mostly treated as bombastic posturing. But his threat to annex Greenland – a self-governing territory of Denmark – spooked European allies. Denmark and the US are long-time Nato allies, and Greenland is already home to a large US airbase. Taking it by force would blow up the Western alliance. But Trump said it was an “absolute necessity” for the US to now take “ownership and control” of the resource-rich Arctic territory – two million square kilometres, and home to fewer than 60,000 people. “We need it for national security,” he said, refusing…

We try not to tinker with the MoneyWeek exchange-traded fund (ETF) portfolio too actively. The strategy is intended to be a simple balanced portfolio with a long-term view, not one that trades tactically. However, markets like these present a dilemma. Long-term government bond yields are heading higher than they have for many years. Importantly, this move doesn’t seem to be driven by worries about inflation, since the real yield on inflation-linked bonds has also risen. The implication is that we may be heading into a new regime of structurally higher long-term rates (as distinct from short-term swings in the base rate), but we won’t know until we see where yields stabilise. Higher long-term rates mean that bonds we currently hold will fall in value. All else being equal, bonds that…

The 5.6% rise in the FTSE 100 index in 2024 was underwhelming compared with the 26.5% gain in the S&P 500 in sterling, but the five-year increase of just 8.3% against the S&P 500’s 90% has been miserable. The 4% yield of the FTSE 100 – compared with 1.25% for the S&P 500 – narrows the gap only a little. Yet it has been possible to make good returns in UK equities. UK banks performed strongly in 2024, with NatWest rising 83%, Barclays 74% and HSBC 26%, though Lloyds rose just 14%. Rolls-Royce, which had more than trebled in 2023, rose another 90%, while International Consolidated Airlines, owner of British Airways, gained 95%. Packaging group DS Smith added 73% and another five companies more than 40%. What these companies all…

How the US pays for our drugs David Wainer and Jon SindreuThe Wall Street Journal Big pharma spends billions developing new drugs targeting the lucrative US market, say David Wainer and Jon Sindreu. Unlike other countries, the US doesn’t impose strict drug-pricing controls. This means Americans pay far more than everyone else and explains why the US accounts for around 70% of pharma’s profits. Take Sovaldi, a “ground-breaking” hepatitis C treatment, which cost a whopping $84,000 in the US but was available in Egypt at a “99% discount”. When Donald Trump returns to office he may well try to address the pricing disparities with an executive order on the basis the US is being “ripped off”. Europeans, among others, have long argued that America’s problem is “self-inflicted”, but it is…

discoursemagazine.com Donald Trump has put Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy at the head of a Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) to halt the bloat of the US state, says Tracy Miller. We’ve been here before. There have been substantial efforts to rein in the size of the federal government, starting with the Hoover Commission in 1947, and repeating at regular intervals since then, including under Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. All the while, the government continued to expand, and the national debt to explode. What can be learned from these past failures? That limiting government spending is very difficult, for a start. The US system of checks and balances means it is generally easier to enact legislation than repeal it, especially if it benefits special-interest groups. The full commitment of…

If you need to remortgage in 2025, then recent weeks have brought more bad news. Almost 700,000 homeowners are facing an increase in mortgage costs when their fixed-rate deal ends this year, says Mark Sweney in The Guardian. Their repayments were set to rise in any case owing to the rise in interest rates in recent years, but their situation has got worse. Mortgage rates had been set to fall back this year as the base rate was expected to fall several times. But the sell-off in gilts could keep borrowing costs higher for longer. The yield on 30-year gilts has hit 5.4% – its highest level since 1998. This will affect swap rates, which reflect lenders’ expectations of future interest rates and are key to how fixed-rate mortgages are…

Is your business ready for new rules boosting your employees’ rights? A survey just published by the Federation of Small Businesses warns that nine in ten smaller employers are worried about the Employment Rights Bill. The legislation, unveiled in the autumn, includes new protections for workers, such as the right to sue for unfair dismissal from their first day in the job. In practice, however, employers that prepare for the new law should not find it unduly onerous. For example, the government has said employers will continue to be able to hire staff for a probationary period, so making sure managers know how to work with new employees during these periods is vital. Similarly, while employers will now need to offer guaranteed-hours contracts for zero-hours workers with reasonable notice for…

One of the most controversial areas of the financial technology (fintech) sector is buy-now-pay-later, or BNPL. Like traditional consumer financing schemes, BNPL allows a firms’ customers to buy goods without paying for them upfront; the company essentially lends them the purchase price. However, instead of the company having to provide the capital, and take on the risk that the purchaser won’t be able to pay, a BNPL provider uses its own money, assuming the credit risk, in exchange for a cut of the sale price. BNPL’s supporters argue that it can be a win for all concerned, with consumers getting hassle-free access to a wider range of goods and merchants making more sales. Of course, BNPL firms hope that the money they get from the loans and merchant fees will…

Market commentators like to pigeonhole equity investors with simple terms such as active, passive, contrarian, value, growth or momentum. This makes things unnecessarily complicated as most people are investing for either value or growth. Our approach is different. We are business-transformation investors focused on management and strategic change within good companies. We back strategies to make firms more relevant, profitable, cash generative, consistent and more highly valued. Business transformation could be described as a value or turnaround style, but in practice it is so much more. It starts with value recovery, but thrives on value creation. When executed well, the process begins with the most contrarian of value mindsets and ends with the most sought-after stockmarket characteristics of them all: momentum and quality growth. The trick is judging which value…

It’s not because this pink gem of a hotel is stashed away in the verdure of its Barbadian gardens that Cobblers Cove is so named. (Although pink and green are its signature colours.) And it’s not because, like a pirates’ cove, it is especially secret. Cobblers has been a celebrated Caribbean treasure since at least the late 1960s, when it was sold to the Godsal family, the current owners. And, as far as I’m aware, it has never been the seaside repository of shoe repairers either. “Cobblers” is the local name given to the majestic white frigate birds that swirl above its tropical coastline. It is to them that the cove truly belongs – along with the schools of tropical fish and turtles swimming among the reefs. Living with nature…

Although they may have been political rivals (see left), John Adams had to hand it to Thomas Jefferson – he had a way with words. Or, as Adams actually said, Jefferson enjoyed a “peculiar felicity of expression”. So it was to Jefferson that the responsibility of drafting the Declaration of Independence would fall in 1776. After a couple of tweaks, the US Congress adopted the Declaration on 4 July of that year and sent it off to the printers. Copies were to be sent to “the several assemblies, conventions and committees” of the 13 colonies then in revolt against Britain. That evening, John Dunlap, official printer to Congress, busied himself with setting the Declaration in type and, the next day, possibly between 500 and 1,000 copies, according to Sotheby’s, were…

Compared to her aunt, Sheikh Hasina, the ousted prime minister of Bangladesh, Labour’s anti-corruption minister, Tulip Siddiq (pictured) “is a charmer,” says Francis Pike in The Spectator. Hasina had good reasons for her abrasiveness. But there’s no denying that by the end of her 15 years of rule, she had “turned into a nepotistic tin-pot dictator plagued by allegations of corruption”. Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Prize-winning economist now in charge, has embarked on a clean-up. All of Hasina’s family have been implicated in the investigation, with focus given to Siddiq’s alleged ties to a bribery scandal involving the Russian state energy firm Rosatom. Siddiq maintains her innocence – and she was found not to have broken the ministerial code – but it was “not a great look” for the British…

Donald Trump’s selection of Robert F. Kennedy Jr as US health secretary has caused an “upset stomach” for investors, says Luke Kawa for Sherwood. RFK Jr, as he is known, has “questioned the safety and effectiveness of vaccines”. The former environmental lawyer is popular with those Americans who regard regulators as “too deferential to big food and medical companies”, adds Natalie Sherman for the BBC. The S&P Healthcare subsector has dropped 4% since the November election. Shares in vaccine maker Moderna are down a third. Investors fear that securing new vaccine approvals could become more difficult with RFK Jr running the show, says Sarah Hansen for Morningstar. Kennedy has also “voiced skepticism about the benefits of obesity drugs”, an important “tailwind” for the pharmaceutical industry of late. A post-pandemic healthcare…

America’s economy continues to fire on all cylinders, with nonfarm payrolls (a measure of job creation) coming in at a strong 256,000 in December, up from 212,000 the previous month. While unemployment has ticked up slightly from the 50-year lows of early 2023, it remains subdued in historical terms at 4.1%. The US Federal Reserve has cut interest rates three times since September. However, annual inflation – running at 2.7% in November – is stubbornly refusing to return to the 2% target. Last month, Fed officials projected a modest half-point of rate cuts for 2025. Back in September, they expected a full percentage point of cuts. And with inflationary pressure growing, some analysts now think there may be none at all in the year ahead.…

The festive season certainly proved to be “no turkey” for M&S and Tesco, says Alistair Osborne in The Times. Not only were revenue records broken across the company at M&S, with like-for-like food sales up 8.9%, but Tesco also saw its UK food sales rise by 4.7%. Nonetheless, M&S’s shares fell 8.4%, while Tesco’s slipped 0.5%: “The market had already priced in some seasonal sparkle,” while neither retailer upgraded profit guidance. Finally, both firms’ shares seem to have been caught up in the “funk” over the extra employers’ costs from Rachel Reeves’s Budget. Tesco’s shareholders may be disappointed by the market’s reaction, but they should take heart, says Lex in the Financial Times. The shares have outperformed in the last year. Tesco also lacks the “troublesome debt burdens” that most…

Shares in Bloks Group soared 82% on their first day of trading in Hong Kong following the toymaker’s $215m blockbuster initial public offering (IPO), says Bloomberg. The shares opened at HK$109.60 (£11.60), higher than the listing price of HK$60.35 (£6.39), before trimming gains to close 41% higher at HK$85 (£9). The IPO for the Chinese company behind the Ultraman and Transformers figurines saw overwhelming demand from individual investors taking a bullish view of toy companies; zero-interest loans had also been available to buy the stock. Bloks raised HK$1.67bn (£176.7m) in the flotation, helping to make its CEO a billionaire.…

Israel and Hamas are “on the brink” of agreeing a ceasefire in Gaza, US secretary of state Antony Blinken said on Tuesday, raising hopes of “some respite” from violence after 15 months of war, says Adam Rasgon in The New York Times. The deal, which is being negotiated in Qatar, rests on final acceptance by Hamas. It is a complex deal with more than 100 separate parts and, although officials are optimistic, no agreement can ever be considered “done” until both parties announce it publicly. Negotiations have broken down at the 11th hour on several previous occasions, but this is reportedly the closest parties have come to agreement. The first phase of the truce, spanning a 42-day ceasefire, would see the exchange of 33 Israeli hostages in Gaza for Palestinian…

For all the hype around her experience as an economist, and high-profile endorsements from the likes of the former Bank of England governor Mark Carney, Rachel Reeves has proved a very poor chancellor. She talked down the economy, and then imposed huge tax rises on business, as well as big increases in spending and borrowing, in her first Budget. Ever since then, perhaps not surprisingly, the economy has ground to a halt. GDP growth has dropped to zero, and on a per capita basis it is now falling. Inflation is rising again, too. Job vacancies are in free fall, retail sales have weakened, and business and consumer confidence has been battered. The UK is not yet in a recession, but it looks inevitable that it will be by the spring.…

When you invest in assets that are priced in a foreign currency, your return depends both on how the investment performs and how the foreign currency changes against sterling. Let’s assume you buy European stocks when the pound is at €1.20. Your stocks rise by 10%, but the euro weakens to €1.25. When you work it all through, your gain in sterling terms becomes 5.6% rather than 10%. Currency hedging aims to reduce the effect of exchange-rate changes. This is often done by using forwards to lock in an exchange rate today for a transaction in the future. If an investment is made for a predetermined period of time – eg, one year – an investor can enter into a forward contact for one year ahead to match that. However,…

Standard Investment is ramping up pressure on Johnson Matthey and urging the chemical-technologies company to break itself up, says The Times. The family-controlled US conglomerate, which is Johnson Matthey’s largest shareholder with a stake of 11%, criticised the board’s response to demands for a strategic review as “wholly insufficient” and accused the firm of poor strategic decisions, particularly in pivoting towards technologies such as hydrogen energy and sustainable aviation fuel with “no apparent path for return on capital”. Johnson Matthey’s shares have fallen 60% in the past four years following a decision to abandon work on electric batteries after a decade and hundreds of millions of pounds of investment.…

“Do the people who shout about the price of my fish and chips [£37] also shout at Ferrari when it launches a new car? If you’re getting the best you can get, that’s how much it is. It’s very different from a fish and chip shop like where I grew up. Frozen blocks of fish, which are sometimes shipped to China to be processed, are different from fish caught by a guy who has been on a boat throughout the night.” Celebrity chef Tom Kerridge, quoted in The Times “Footballers now are rock stars. They’re in a goldfish bowl with very short careers; they deserve [all the money] they get. People say they’re on lots of money, but if you take everything they earn in ten years and spread it…

theconversation.com In 2024, many tourists were “on the receiving end of a very loud and clear message”, says Veselina Stoyanova: they were no longer welcome in some of Europe’s most popular holiday destinations, including Barcelona and Mallorca, where there were large and loud protests against the negative effects of mass tourism. So why not resolve to be a “more gracious guest” in the year ahead and “shift towards more sensitive and responsible forms of travel”? “Regenerative tourism” aims to enhance wellbeing by “giving back” to the people who live in tourist destinations – through supporting local economies, preserving cultures and nurturing the environment. This means treating your holiday as “more than just an escape” and as a chance for personal development, too: instead of lying on a sun lounger, why…

● “The ‘hotel of mum and dad’ is the busiest it has been for two decades as an increasing number of young adults in the UK choose – or are forced by low wages and rising rents – to live with their parents,” writes Patrick Butler in The Guardian. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has found that almost a fifth of adults aged 24-34 are living with their parents. Around 1.7 million people in that age group live at home, up 450,000 since 2006. “The boomerang trend is not confined to the UK.” Similar increases have occurred in the US, Australia and Canada. ● Loopholes in easy-access interest rates are becoming increasingly common, says Jack Simpson in The Sunday Times. It means savvy savers have to make sure they…

● Small businesses looking for support from the government will be given access to a new online portal, ministers have announced. The Business Growth Service, to be launched in the coming months, will offer firms a range of advice and support in a single online location. Ministers say they service will streamline the current government offer to small businesses, saving them time and money compared to today’s fragmented landscape. However, critics complain that the service is effectively just a rebrand of existing services. ● New rules on how SMEs must account for leases could force many small businesses to pay for more costly audit work, financial advisers warn. Increases in the reporting thresholds that apply for leases – taken out, for example, when firms hire plant, equipment and buildings –…

The first major election of this year is in Germany, which goes to the polls on 23 February. At present the centre-right CDU/ CSU are firm favourites to win most seats. With £1,215 matched on Smarkets they are 1.12 (89.2%), with any other party at 8.2 (12.1%). If you want to bet on other individual parties, Bet 365 has the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) at 13/2 (13.3%), the social democrats, SPD, at 28/1 (3.4%), the Greens at 80/1 (1.2%), the far-left BSW at 125/1 (0.8%) and the free-market, liberal FDP at 400/1 (0.3%). The AfD continues to rise in the polls, cutting the CDU’s lead to as little as 8% in two recent surveys. But I think there is no chance of them overtaking the CDU. The party’s…

When Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are inaugurated as president and vice-president of the US on Monday it will bring to a close merely the latest chapter in a story of bad-tempered politics that has bitterly divided the country. But what few people may realise is that that story is a very long one indeed. It begins with the third US presidential election in 1796. Really, this was the first “proper one”, because it was the first election to be contested. The first president, George Washington, had run unopposed in the first two elections and he had declined to run a third time. The stage was set for John Adams of the Federalist Party, and also the incumbent vice-president, to face off against Thomas Jefferson of the Democratic-Republican Party (the…

The new year has brought a global rise in government bond yields (and hence borrowing costs), but Britain has been the hardest hit. The government’s 30-year bond yield has touched 5.4%, the highest level since 1998, with the ten-year gilt hitting its highest level since 2008. The resulting rise in borrowing costs could add £50bn to the government’s debt bill by 2030, and has prompted comparison with the 2022 market havoc during the short-lived premiership of Liz Truss. Worse than Italy Chancellor Rachel Reeves is being punished for concocting a “budget that borrows an extra £142bn over this parliament” while kicking “business in the teeth” for good measure, says Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in The Telegraph. The fact that to borrow for a decade the UK must pay more than chronically indebted…

Shares in Constellation Energy rose 23% after the nuclear power company agreed to buy the natural gas and geothermal outfit Calpine Corporation. Constellation is paying in shares worth $16.4bn (the deal comes to $26.6bn including debt). The tie-up, “one of the biggest takeovers in the US power industry”, will expand Constellation’s workforce by a fifth, says The Guardian, creating the largest independent power provider in the US with 2.5 million customers. The news comes amid soaring demand for electricity, driven by the proliferation of “energy-guzzling AI data centers” as well as electric vehicles. The deal would represent a “stunning” return for Calpine’s private-equity owners, who bought the firm for only $5.5bn in 2018 and stand to make a profit of $19bn, says Bloomberg’s Liam Denning. It also represents vindication for…

Five to buy C&C Group The Telegraph Despite struggling with bad weather, the cost-of-living crisis and a bungled software implementation, C&C Group could bring a “little fizz to risk-tolerant investors’ portfolios in the next year or two”. The Irish drinks group, which owns Bulmers and Magners, has a new CEO and management team, while debt is low. If C&C meets ambitious earnings targets, the shares could be rerated. It plans to return £150m, over a fifth of its £568m market value, to shareholders via dividends and buybacks by 2027. 143p Next The Times Next has been on a “tear” over the past year, with several profit upgrades pushing shares up over a tenth. Full-price sales rose 6% in the nine weeks to 28 December, beating guidance, which is expected to…

● Boaz Weinstein, the activist hedge fund manager “gunning for seven investment trusts” (see page 24) claims to be “a whizz at closing discounts”, says Alistair Osborne in The Times. Does his previous foray into the UK bear that out? In December 2020, Weinstein’s Saba Capital took a stake in Crystal Amber, the activist trust run by Richard Bernstein that is shaking up banknote printer De La Rue. Saba first built a holding large enough to block Crystal Amber’s continuation vote – which required 75% in favour – then “badgered” it to sell its stake in payments firm Equals quickly at 45p. The fund held on to sell at 85p – but since Equals has now agreed a bid at 140p, the result of Saba’s actions was still a big…

“The markets, while high-priced and perhaps frothy, don’t seem nutty to me,” says Howard Marks, co-founder of Oaktree, the world’s largest distressed-debt investment firm. While concerns about a bubble in US stocks are widespread, “a bubble or crash is more a state of mind than a quantitative calculation”. The distinguishing feature of a true bubble is “a temp mania”, Marks says in his latest investment letter. There are signs of “highly irrational exuberance, outright adoration of the subject companies or assets, and a belief that they can’t miss”, together with a “massive fear of being left behind if one fails to participate”. This leads to the conviction that “there’s no price too high” for the most-favoured stocks. There are certainly reasons to be cautious, he says. These include the ongoing…

■ Terry Smith’s flagship Fundsmith Equity fund has underperformed the market for a fourth consecutive year. Smith’s £22.5bn fund – the largest in the UK – posted a total return of 8.8% in 2024, compared with 20.8% for the MSCI World index. Performance was held back by the absence of Nvidia, which accounted for 20% of the S&P 500’s gain last year – a decision that Smith defended, saying that he was not convinced of the stability and predictability of demand for Nvidia’s high-end chips in AI systems. ■ Chrysalis Investments says it must avoid a “de facto wind-down” caused by a large-scale return of capital after one of its key holdings completes an initial public offering. Buy-now-pay-later firm Klarna, which makes up 14% of Chrysalis’s £826m portfolio, is expected…

watt-logic.com On 8 January, Britain suffered a near-miss in the electricity market, says Kathryn Porter. Total available supply at 5.30pm was 47.405GW (from power generation plus interconnectors that trade with neighbouring countries), while peak demand was 46.825GW, leaving a spare margin of just 580MW – the tightest day in the market since 2011. Had just one power station tripped, “demand control would have been a real prospect” (meaning that the National Energy System Operator, Neso, would have disconnected parts of the country to avoid uncontrolled blackouts). Wind power at the time was 2.5 GW, solar was zero and there were significant interconnector outages. Neso used almost every last MW available with just 580MW of cushion – two thirds of the contingency that should be held. Securing that minimal spare margin…

The easiest way to play the rise in price of a commodity is through an exchange-traded commodity (ETC), which is essentially an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that directly follows a commodity index. WisdomTree Copper (LSE: COPA) aims to follow the Bloomberg Commodity Copper Subindex 4-Week Total Return index. It comes with an annual charge of 0.49% a year. Alternatively, you could consider an ETF that invests in copper-mining companies, such as Hanetf ICAV Sprott Copper Miners ESG Screened UCITS ETF (LSE: COPP). This invests in a basket of 30 copper-mining companies, including such names as Ivanhoe Mines, Evolution Mining and Southern Copper Corporation, which have been screened for minimum ethical standards. In this case the total expense ratio (TER) is 0.59%. One of the largest holdings in the above fund is…

Have you made any New Year’s resolutions for your finances? Just over two-fifths of us have set financial goals for 2025, according to the Investment Association, making it the second most popular topic for New Year’s resolutions after health and fitness. The main imperative is to grow savings, with over half of us making that a New Year’s resolution, followed by a third wanting to improve our budgeting skills and a fifth aiming to invest regularly. “Aim to set clear savings goals,” says Mike Ambery from Standard Life. “Start by building an emergency fund to cover unexpected costs such as car repairs or appliance breakdowns. Once you’ve built up this buffer consider longer-term savings options.” Improving your budgeting skills will also help you build your savings. “Creating a realistic budget…

Gloomy small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are considering hiring freezes or even job losses thanks to higher taxes, new employment rights and increases in the minimum wage. However, there may be better options for coping with such headwinds; and SMEs able to maintain or increase headcount will ultimately be in a stronger position to grow. Smart financial planning is one example. Introducing salary-sacrifice arrangements can help businesses to reduce their national insurance costs without leaving employees worse off. These schemes work by offering staff the opportunity to give up a proportion of their salary, rather than making contributions to the workplace pension scheme out of pay. Instead, the employer channels the salary sacrificed straight into the pension scheme. The effect is that the same amount of money ends up in…

The global dental market is expected roughly to double in size over the next decade. Rising demand for aesthetic treatments, such as implants, veneers and braces, is set to drive the bulk of the growth, particularly in major developed markets such as the US and across Europe. Demand for aesthetic treatments surged immediately after the pandemic as consumers, flush with cash, splashed out on improving their appearance. After several years of growth, demand flattened last year. But according to proprietary analysis by the team at investment bank Berenberg, that’s about to change, particularly in the largest market, the US. Berenberg’s analysis found that 60% of dentists in the US expect spending on procedures to recover in 2025, driven by enhanced consumer sentiment following Donald Trump’s election. Tax cuts and lower…

The last few weeks have been bad for my long tips, with five out of the six falling. Retailer Marks & Spencer was discounted from 389p to 334p, property developer Harworth retreated from 169p to 159p and Hilton Food Group declined from 901p to 860p. Ticketing firm Trainline fell from 421p to 391p while Domino’s Pizza Group slipped from 340p to 273p. The only exception was United Airlines, which climbed from $97 to $104. Overall, my long tips are now making net profits of £948, down from £2,047 before Christmas. My short tips did a bit better, with online food-retailer Ocado falling from 319p to 304p. However, sadly Trump Media & Technology Group, an outfit largely owned by the incoming president and which runs the social-media platform called Truth Social,…

America’s “favourite newly permed CEO and bona fide chill-guy” Mark Zuckerberg, founder and boss of Facebook’s owner Meta, struck another blow to “Big Woke” last week when he announced in a social-media video, sporting a million-dollar wristwatch, that the era of woke censorship was over, says Katherine Dee on Unherd. Meta’s social-media platforms will now disband their armies of “fact-checkers” and instead adopt a system where users can attach “community note” clarifications to content, as on Twitter. The move is a result of the “cultural tipping point” of Donald Trump’s election, says The Economist, which Zuckerberg (pictured) said is an “opportunity to restore free expression”. The Meta chief also appointed Dana White, an ally of Trump’s, to the board, no doubt mindful that Trump had once called Facebook an “enemy…

2023 Plan de Dieu, Côtesdu-Rhône Villages, Domaine de Verquière, Southern Rhône, France £15.95, reduced to £14.20 each by the case, hhandc.co.uk, 020-7584 7927 It’s mid-January, and those of you who have given up booze and are drinking Jukes, please carry on (of course, I would say this). However, if you are tiring of the endless flow of unappetising alcohol-free alternatives, or want to give up on your abstemious but ultimately fruitless new-year intentions and do what all sentient and well-being-conscious drinkers already practise, which is three or four days off per week and the others on, then hoorah. Don’t forget that giving up alcohol for half the week is the equivalent of six months off per year, not one! Regardless, this week’s awesome wine is a stunning example of drinking…

Going… An extremely rare 1894-S Barber dime (pictured) will be sold with Heritage Auctions on Sunday. It is a “classic” in American coinage, according to the Texas-based auction house, “often grouped with the 1804 dollar and the 1913 Liberty nickel as ‘The Big Three’”. In 1893, the San Francisco Mint struck almost 2.5 million Barber dimes and more were planned for the following year. However, the Panic of 1893 caused a deep recession and the 1894 minting of the Barber dimes was scrapped – all except for 24 examples for reasons that are not entirely clear. The Barber dime for sale with Heritage has a reserve price of $2.16m, including the buyer’s premium. Gone… Long before the Declaration of Independence was issued (see above), there were already signs of revolt…