Indholdsfortegnelse for Issue 1251 i MoneyWeek

Overvalued, overhyped, over here. On 10 March 2000, the Nasdaq Composite index, which investors worldwide were watching more closely than their local indices thanks to its skew towards technology, notched up a 16th successive record high. That turned out to be its last peak for 15 years, and air began to hiss out of the dotcom bubble. Not that anyone noticed at the time, of course. The excited chatter about “land grabs” (the rush to burn through as much cash as possible in a bid to acquire online territory in your chosen field) and “monetising eyeballs” (vague plans for the future that rarely included old-fashioned notions such as sales or profits) endured. Pets.com, which had launched a few weeks before, continued to lose money. Online clothing retailer Boo.com, having hoovered…

“If you breathed a sigh of relief last year when Shell ultimately decided against leaving London for New York, you might have been premature. If anything, the risk that London’s largest listed firms [may] depart these shores has risen. Last year there were 88 departures and 18 new listings and the first few months of 2025 appear to confirm that the City is in the grip of a delistings crisis. New bids appear every week. Several firms have made London their secondary listing. Unilever has chosen Amsterdam as the primary listing venue for its £13bn ice-cream spin-off. Many retail investors won’t mind, given that investing in US-listed shares is as easy as pie. But there are downsides: currency risk, paperwork hassle and the menace of withholding taxes in some jurisdictions.…

Shipping services group Clarkson has reported that its profits have eclipsed £100m for the third consecutive year, rising 6% to £115.3m, says Harry Wise for This is Money. It also raised its annual dividend by 7%, marking the 22nd successive year of increases. Yet the shares slid by 18% on the news: investors paid more attention to Clarkson’s warning of “greater uncertainty from tariffs, trade tensions, sanctions and changing monetary policy”. The fall in the stock will put further pressure on CEO Andi Case, who has already received “major blowback” from the company’s shareholders over his “generous compensation packages”. These saw him receive almost three times the £4.2m average earnings of a FTSE 100 boss in 2023. Case may have rightly “expressed pride” at Clarkson’s results, but it has nonetheless…

Investors seeking shelter from Donald Trump’s erratic behaviour should look to European smaller companies, says WirtschaftsWoche. Enter Spain’s Indra Systems, an IT outfit set to profit from the global drive to bolster defence spending: by 2026, 60% of pre-tax profits are expected to stem from the sector. The group currently produces radar equipment for Germany’s air force as well as radio sets to help Canadian pilots and ground troops communicate more effectively. Indra’s systems also facilitate election monitoring and traffic management. Despite the stock’s strong recent gains it remains cheaper than many of its peers on a price/earnings (p/e) ratio of 13.…

Around 80 Labour MPs are said to oppose the government’s planned £6bn in welfare cuts, the details of which will be announced in the Spring Statement on 26 March. Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have “little choice”, says Ross Clark in The Spectator. Reeves’ “fiscal headroom” has vanished and she already hiked taxes aggressively in her October Budget. Starmer has promised to raise defence spending to 2.5% of GDP. The case for welfare cuts is “pretty clear”: 9.3 million people of working age are classed as economically inactive, 2.8 million through illness. The Office for Budget Responsibility estimates that the total benefits bill will rise by more than 25% to £378bn by 2030, of which £100.7bn (more than the defence budget) will go on incapacity and disability benefits. The bulk…

● Britain’s hunger for Greggs may be waning, says Nathalie Thomas in the Financial Times. Shares in the bakery chain have dropped over 40% in the past six months amid signs of cooling growth: like-for-like sales rose 1.7% in the first nine weeks of 2025, down from 2.5% in last quarter of 2024. This may be due to a weaker “food on the go” market as consumers tighten their belts, but there are also signs that we are hitting ”peak sausage roll”. Greggs reached 2,618 UK stores last December and aims to open about 150 more this year. Now it “might want to revisit such a rapid roll-out, or at least trim more outlets in its traditional strongholds”. It’s unlikely that growth will return to heady double-digit rates, expenses are…

“My view going forward is that US equities will underperform,” says Christopher Wood, global head of equity strategy at investment bank Jefferies. The US peaked as a share of global market capitalisation on 24 December, reaching about 68% of the MSCI ACWI index. “That is an extreme overvaluation and probably represents a massive peak.” Outsize gains for US stocks relative to the rest of world in recent years “went hand in hand with growing commentary around US exceptionalism”, Wood tells Wood tells The Economic Times. “I do not believe in US exceptionalism as applied to the stockmarket.” The one area where the US is exceptional is that it controls the main global reserve currency of the world (see below) and the strong dollar has helped increase the global value of…

wildfirelabs.substack.com In 2021, Lisa Chen, a software engineer, started taking a new weight-loss medication, says Todd Gagne. Six months later, she had stopped buying her daily morning muffin, cancelled her beer-of-the-month subscription and stopped ordering takeaways from DoorDash. By 2023, her grocery bill had dropped 40%, alcohol spending by 85% and impulse Amazon purchases by 60%. Lisa is just one person, but her story will soon become that of hundreds of millions. An economic earthquake is coming. GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic are as big a game-changer as air-conditioning once was. It may not seem a big deal in isolation, but significant changes arise from it which will radically alter the economic landscape. These new medicines effectively regulate impulse control. And our economy is built on impulses. Analysts predict that…

■ Asset sales and other changes continue apace in the battered renewables sector. The Renewables Infrastructure Group (TRIG) has completed the sale of a 15.2% stake in the 330MW Gode offshore wind farm project in Germany at a 9% premium to NAV, using the €100m received to reduce its revolving capital facility. TRIG retains a 9.8% interest. Octopus Renewables Infrastructure says it will realise at least £80m from sales this year, and raise buybacks by £20m (6% of its market value) while bringing gearing down from 45% to 40%. Greencoat Renewables has become the latest trust to cut its fees by shifting to levying them on a mix of NAV and market value, rather than NAV alone. And the board of the sub-scale £17.5m Premier Miton Global Renewables is exploring…

● If you are taking out a new financial product you will need a few hours to read the terms and conditions, writes Ruth Jackson-Kirby. “Investment firms and travel insurance companies’ Ts and Cs average out at about 24,000 words,” according to Jack Simpson in The Times. That is only 500 words short of Romeo and Juliet. The research by financial-services site Fairer Finance found that most products’ small print requires a reading age of between 15 and 18 – “many adults may struggle at that level, with 14.9% of those in England reading at an age of nine to 11”. ● “Don’t fall for a ghost broker,” warns Ali Hussain in The Sunday Times. Losses from fake car insurance policies sold by these conmen on social media doubled between…

● Members of workplace pension schemes need to keep a close eye on the investment returns generated by the managers appointed to look after their money. The best providers outperformed the worst by 15 percentage points last year, according to actuarial consultant Barnett Waddingham. While it is long-term performance that will ultimately drive the value of your pension, it’s important to monitor short-term performance – and to ask your scheme trustees what they are doing to ensure managers are held to account. ● Are you looking forward to an increase in your state pension next month? If so, check what you’re getting. While the headline state pension benefits are rising significantly, not all benefits are increasing so generously. The good news is that the state pension is due to rise…

Jeff Bezos – the man who started an online bookshop from his garage in Seattle in 1994 and rapidly turned it into a global behemoth that revolutionised shopping and placed him in the upper ranks of the super-rich with a net worth of more than $200bn – is making waves again. Bezos (pictured), now 61, bought The Washington Post in 2013 and upset staff and readers last year when he refused to let the paper endorse Kamala Harris for US president. Of course, that is his right as owner, says Joshua Benton in The Atlantic. As is his decision more recently to clamp down on the opinion section of the paper to allow only those opinions that offer “support and defence” for personal liberties and free markets. Since the election,…

2022 Ridge, Lytton Springs, Dry Creek Valley, California Approximately £61, Amathusdrinks.com; Hedonism.co.uk; Highburyvitners.co.uk; Thesalusburywine store.com Back in 2012, I published a book called 100 Most Iconic Wine Estates. Ridge was one of the first estates I noted when compiling this incredible century of wineries. I have been a fan since I started in the wine business, and the 2022 vintage of Lytton Springs marks its 50th anniversary. This is the finest incarnation of this magnificent wine I have ever tasted. Made from ancient vines, in a 67% zinfandel, 19% petite sirah, 11% carignane and 3% Alicante bouschet configuration, there is phenomenal power here, and yet this wine is still open and forgiving enough to be granted a peek inside to marvel at the cathedral of splendour on display. I didn’t…

The Brew Deal How Beer Helped Battle the Great Depression Jason Taylor Palgrave Macmillan (£24.99) You might be forgiven for thinking that politicians around the world are engaged in a conspiracy to drive us all to drink. But that might not be such a bad idea, at least from an economic and financial point of view. This book by Jason Taylor of Central Michigan University outlines the history of prohibition in the US, beginning with its origins in the restrictions during World War I. The eventual loosening and then repeal of the law helped delivered a substantial boost to the US economy at the height of the Great Depression. The pivotal moment in prohibition was the Volstead Act, passed by the US Congress in 1919. It banned any drink stronger…

Britain is bracing for a wave of “Donald Dashers” – wealthy Americans such as designer Tom Ford (pictured), “with a (still) strong dollar on their side who do not need to read another deranged news story to persuade them that now is the time to leave the US”, says Helen Kirwan-Taylor in The Times. A record 6,100 Americans applied for British citizenship last year, a 26% increase from a year earlier, according to the Home Office. There was a 40% increase in the final quarter, coinciding with Donald Trump’s re-election. “Even the nose-holding wait-and-seers whose hedge funds will benefit from Trump’s supposed tax cuts and deregulation policies” are fleeing, while Americans already in Britain are applying for citizenship thanks to the abolition of the non-dom tax status. “When the rich,…

The UK market’s reputation as a generous dividend payer has taken a knock. Globally, dividend payouts reached a record $1.75trn last year, a 5.2% rise, according to the latest edition of the Janus Henderson Global Dividend index. US payouts rose 8.7% as some big tech firms began to pay dividends for the first time. Japanese payout growth was “among the strongest in the world”, rocketing 15.5%, while European dividends rose 5.6%. The UK, by contrast, was a “relative laggard”, with payouts dipping 0.6% for a second successive year of decline. Although 85% of UK companies did manage to increase payouts or hold them steady last year, big cuts in the mining sector have hidden better performance elsewhere. British income investors might be growing frustrated, but dividends remain a “key selling…

Gold has rocketed to record highs this year, but silver isn’t being overshadowed. The other precious metal has held pace with gold’s 32% gain over the past 12 months, and has outperformed over five years, with a 125% gain in silver futures compared with gold’s 92% rise over the same period. Fans of silver had endured “decades of disappointment”, says Buttonwood in The Economist. Now things are looking up. Precious metals are back in fashion, with silver exchange-traded funds seeing inflows in 2024 for the first time in three years. Silver also has industrial uses, especially for its role in the solar-panel boom. Industrial demand has risen 50% over the past decade, even as physical silver supply has fallen slightly. “Silver is the new gold.”…

The stock of Assura, which owns doctors’ surgeries, jumped by 14% on Monday after a consortium comprising KKR and Stonepeak Partners made an offer of 49.4p a share, says Sam Nagarajan on Bloomberg. This second bid, which values the company at £1.6bn, represents a premium of 32% to Assura’s closing price on 13 February, just before KKR’s interest became public. While Assura’s board rejected a previous offer of 48p, it is now thinking of recommending such an offer. Assura’s board also rejected an all-share proposal from Primary Health Properties (PHP) worth 43p a share. Discounts to book value at listed UK property firms have spurred several takeover bids from private-equity firms. Care-home operator Care Reit’s board also recommended a bid this week. The board’s decision to accept an offer barely…

Digital physical-therapy start-up Hinge Health plans to file for an initial public offering (IPO) as soon as April, says CNBC. However, sources close to the US company, which helps patients recover from musculoskeletal injuries from home, cautioned that the timing could change owing to uncertainty around Donald Trump’s tariffs. Investors will be eyeing the listing to see if it serves as a positive bellwether for the beleaguered digital-health sector, which struggled as Covid restrictions were lifted. The physical-therapy market is forecast to be worth about $70bn by the end of 2030. Hinge has raised over $1bn from investors and was valued at $6.2bn in 2021.…

Justin Trudeau says that Mark Carney is succeeding him as prime minister of Canada at “a nation-defining-time”, says Josie Ensor in The Times. In his acceptance speech, Carney warned that the US under Trump is “seeking to seize control of Canada”. With 25% tariffs due to come into force on 2 April, his “immediate task” is to negotiate a trade truce with Donald Trump, says Ilya Gridneff in the Financial Times. Then he will have to save the “Liberal party from electoral annihilation” by the Conservatives’ Pierre Poilievre in an election later this year. The opposition’s lead has narrowed dramatically since Carney was named PM, but he still has to pull off a major political comeback against a background of inflation and housing shortages. Is he up to it? He…

It would be quite a coincidence if the AI boom turns into a bust on the 25th anniversary of the end of the dotcom bubble, and we should be wary about jumping to that conclusion. People are very good at seeing patterns where there are none and certain things (round numbers and big anniversaries) tend to trigger that. Many of us are sub-consciously looking for signs of a crash. Still, markets are more on edge than they have been for a while. In particular, they feel more jittery than they did in 2022, when rapidly rising interest rates provided a very fundamental reason for investors to rejig their portfolios. The latest shifts are more about sentiment: investors may be questioning whether they should put so much trust in American exceptionalism…

The US is ruled by a mafia boss Jonathan Freedland The Guardian Donald Trump behaves like an unprincipled mafia boss, says Jonathan Freedland. From bullying Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to announcing to Congress that “one way or the other, we’re going to get (Greenland)”, both substance and style are “‘straight out of the Corleone playbook”. In Canada, Justin Trudeau has “spelled it out”, accusing Trump of trying to engineer a “total collapse” of the economy to make it “easier to annex”. Demanding respect and humiliating subordinates are part of the routine. As he neuters judges and moves to control the press, a “strange silence” has fallen on “America’s public square”. Whether Republican colleagues or university presidents, fears of financial, even physical, reprisals are growing. All this encourages Trump…

bloomberg.com As Covid swept across the US five years ago, states run by Democrats were quicker than those run by Republicans to shut down schools, offices and restaurants, says Justin Fox. As the pandemic wore on, the former were slower to reopen and more willing to impose mask mandates and other precautionary measures. How many lives did this approach save? Not many. At the end of 2020, Democrat and Republican states had nearly identical numbers of deaths relative to the population. On the other hand, states with low vaccination rates, once vaccines became available, were disproportionately Republican and did report far higher mortality. These facts have done nothing to change minds: reticence about vaccines has only grown among Republicans, and Democrats continue to think the non-pharmaceutical interventions were a good…

Last year was a “huge frustration” for BlackRock World Mining (LSE: BRWM), say managers Evy Hambro and Olivia Markham in their annual report. The trust produced a total return of -12.7% and a net asset value (NAV) return of -10.7% as its discount to NAV widened from 3.3% to 5.8% over the year. This had little to do with the fundamentals for commodities. Gold and silver prices rallied by 27.2% and 21.5%, respectively, while copper prices increased 8%. However, this failed to translate into meaningful returns for mining stocks. Losses were most pronounced at “large mining companies that simply did not perform as they have historically”. Take copper miner Freeport-McMoRan, which made up 4.4% of the portfolio at the end of the year. The stock lost 9.4% on a total…

Should you find yourself a financial adviser? Most of us would like to think we are experienced and astute enough to work out what to do with our own money. However, according to a study by the International Longevity Centre UK in 2017, people who use an adviser are nearly £48,000 better off after ten years. And no matter how successful you may have been in the past, there are occasions when acquiring advice makes sense. “If you… earn over £100,000, your Personal Allowance drops, and it is zero when you earn over £125,140 – that’s a good time to see an adviser,” says Lisa-Conway Hughes, chartered financial adviser and founder of LCH Wealth. “And if you are at least ten years away from retirement, then a financial adviser can…

How much can you safely withdraw from your pension fund in retirement? New research from Fidelity suggests the answer may be more than is often assumed – good news for millions of savers in old age. It is now ten years since the pension freedom reforms of 2015, which made it easier for pension savers to draw income directly from their pension funds in retirement. For many, an income-drawdown plan has been preferable to using their fund to buy an annuity income. Annuities guarantee a pension for the rest of your life, but drawdown plans provide more flexibility, as well as the opportunity to continue investing your pension fund to generate further income later in retirement, or even an inheritance for children. However, drawdown savers all face the same quandary.…

“Indonesia’s sanitaryware sector faces limited competition from Chinese rivals” My investment strategy is built on diligence, discipline and patience. We look for good businesses run by competent management teams, available at a price that leaves us with a margin of safety. I focus on managing absolute risk and losing little money during market downturns, which should help compound returns at higher rates over the long term. We therefore tend to avoid thematic investments, start-ups, highly geared companies, cyclical businesses earning peak margins, and stocks on high multiples to earnings. As a result of this approach, the trust has a high-quality, contrarian value tilt and is primarily invested in mispriced small- and medium-sized companies – the “winners of tomorrow”, before they become well known. Here are three examples. Solid foundations in…

Europe is “finally getting its act together”, says Jeremy Warner in The Telegraph. The government of incoming chancellor Friedrich Merz in Germany (see page 10) has vowed to reform the country’s “debt brake”, an economic “hair shirt” that has harmed eurozone growth for years. “Don’t underestimate Germany’s capacity to change,” say Deutsche Bank analysts. Berlin wants to establish a €500bn infrastructure fund and exempt some defence spending from debt-brake rules, showing a level of ambition that has pleasantly surprised markets. Things are looking up for European stocks. Earnings (excluding energy) rose a robust 10% in the year to the final quarter of 2024. And while the US hobbles its own economy with tariffs, China – Europe’s second-biggest trading partner – is back in stimulus mode. European markets have outperformed this…

Five to buy BAE Systems The Telegraph BAE Systems’ upbeat dividend-growth outlook outweighs the defence group’s low 2% yield. Payouts are forecast to rise 9% a year over the next two years thanks to buoyant prospects for its bottom line, a result of increased defence spending by Nato members. With solid fundamentals, a sound strategy and an upbeat industry outlook, BAE can deliver attractive income and capital gains. 1,634p Rolls-Royce The Times Rolls-Royce’s shares have returned 727% over the last three years, beating the Magnificent Seven group of US technology stocks. With a £1bn buyback, a reinstated dividend, and a turnaround plan running two years ahead of target, analysts say the defence and aerospace engineering company can increase its market value by another 50%. The stock trades at a small…

We should probably celebrate the moment by spending a few minutes “surfing” what used to be known as the “world wide web”, preferably using a Netscape browser via a dial-up connection that crashes every few minutes. This week, the dotcom bubble is officially 25 years old. It was one of the great stockmarket bubbles of all time. On 10 March 2000, the Nasdaq peaked at 5,048 after doubling in the space of a year, and rising fivefold over the course of five. It had been driven higher by a wave of enthusiasm for pioneering tech stocks. Over the following 12 months, it crashed spectacularly, losing 75% of its value. There was a lot of craziness around at the time. Any business that could put the word “online” in its name…

A reserve currency refers to a currency that central banks hold in large quantities as part of their foreign currency reserves. The US dollar remains the most dominant reserve currency, accounting for about 58% of foreign currency reserves, with the euro far behind on 20%. In addition, around a third of countries peg their currencies to the US dollar (in other words, their currencies go up and down along with the dollar), and half of global trade invoices are denominated in dollars. This means that the US dollar’s influence stretches far beyond America’s direct economic clout (by comparison, the US accounts for about 13% of world imports and 9% of world exports and 25% of global GDP). The dollar’s dominance in global trade and financial transactions means that the US…

“I love punching a bully in the nose. That’s what I think I’m doing with closed-end funds. I believe that by the end of this year, we will have won almost all, or all, of these campaigns.” Saba Capital’s founder Boaz Weinstein (pictured) on his campaign to shake up the UK investment-trust industry, quoted in the Financial Times. Saba has lost votes on replacing the board at all seven trusts it has targeted so far. “There could be a little disruption. Look, what I have to do is build a strong country. You can’t watch… the stockmarket. If you look at China, they have a 100-year perspective. We go by quarters. And you can’t go by that.” Donald Trump on the jitters in the US stockmarket, quoted on Fox News…

theconversation.com Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky made a big mistake in his row with US president Donald Trump recently (the pair are pictured) – the same mistake Zelensky’s European allies have made too, says Andrea Caputo. They made a stand based on principles. But Trump is a businessman and operates with a fundamentally different mindset. Trump combines the usual US approach – which is more competitive and transactional – with highly competitive tactics and emotional rhetoric. He uses anger and confrontation to dominate discussions and control narratives, and frames negotiations in zero-sum terms. The liberal world must learn to negotiate at Trump’s level. Proposals should be presented in terms of economic benefits and arguments based on objective data or power, not moral appeals, which appear weak. Trump rarely backtracks, but often…

Montaro UK Smaller Companies may have fended off activist Saba Capital by buying back shares from the US hedge fund, says analysts at Deutsche Numis. The trust has bought 20 million shares at 100.25p (an estimated discount to NAV of 8.5%) in its first buyback since 2008. That amounts to roughly 12% of its shares, matching Saba’s holding. Elsewhere, uranium specialist Geiger Counter won a continuation vote at its annual general meeting, despite Saba – which owns 13% – apparently voting against the resolution. And CQS Natural Resources Growth & Income, which won a first vote against Saba in February, says the activist has withdrawn its demand for a vote on changing the trust into an open-end fund after “constructive discussions” over a strategic review due in April.…

I remember flicking through old investment books in my father’s study in my teens. They were published in America by the financial-data firm Moody’s and were a gold standard for accurate financial data and quality ratings of public companies. This was just over 40 years ago, well before the internet. People and businesses paid to have reliable data brought together in an accessible form for analysis and decision-making. This is Moody’s business. Accessing firms’ data by post in book form has long since given way to sourcing it via computers, the internet and AI. Companies and the securities they issue have grown exponentially. But Moody’s has more than kept pace, supplying and analysing the data the market needs. Valued today at around $83bn, Moody’s has issued credit ratings on nearly…

Changes to the Income Tax Self Assessment (ITSA) reporting threshold could see up to 300,000 people avoid the administrative headache of completing a tax return. HMRC announced last week that the reporting threshold for extra income, which includes cash you make from a side-business, is to rise from £1,000 to £3,000. The upshot is that although you are still required to pay tax, you do not have to complete a self-assessment tax return until you earn £3,000. Those with taxable income below the new threshold will instead be able to report tax through a new digital reporting service. The aim of the change is to make tax simpler; the hope is also that it will help alleviate the pressure on HMRC’s services. The taxman has often incurred criticism for helplines…

Savers who could boost their final state pension by making additional national-insurance (NI) contributions may need to act fast. A government scheme that offers more generous rules on top-ups is due to close on 5 April. Savers typically need to have made 35 full years of NI contributions to qualify for the full state pension. If you’ve missed periods of paying NI – because you were economically inactive, say – you may miss out on the maximum pension. The government therefore allows you to make voluntary contributions to replace any missed payments. Normally, you are limited to making good NI shortfalls from the past six financial years. But under a special arrangement that closes on 5 April, the final day of the 2024-2025 tax year, you can top up payments…

A Story is a Deal How to Use the Science of Storytelling to Lead, Motivate and Persuade Will Storr Piatkus, £20 Fraudster Elizabeth Holmes may have failed to follow in the footsteps of her idol Steve Jobs, but both knew how to use storytelling to their advantage. In Jobs’ case, the success of his Macintosh computer was built on the iconic 1984 advertisement, which portrayed Apple users as rebels breaking IBM’s monopoly. Holmes exploited her status as one of the few women in the tech industry to portray herself as the ultimate disruptor (even if the technology she was promoting didn’t actually exist). In A Story is a Deal: How to Use the Science of Storytelling to Lead, Motivate and Persuade, journalist Will Storr argues that storytelling is an essential…