Indholdsfortegnelse for Issue 1291 i MoneyWeek

Technology giant Oracle has “spooked” investors, says Kalyeena Makortoff in The Guardian. The stock slid 15% following news of an unexpectedly low 14% rise in sales to $16bn in the latest quarter. Oracle also raised forecasts for its “already enormous investment” in AI. It expects capital expenditure to jump by 40% to $50bn next year; the bulk of the extra money will be used to build datacentres. The rising debt pile and “unknown timeline for revenue generation” are denting confidence in the group. “It’s funny how perceptions change,” says Lex in the Financial Times. In September, Oracle said it would increase planned capital expenditure and its stock jumped by 33%. This time a further increase has caused shares to plunge. Still, the difference is that the latest “bump” to expected…

Five to buy DiscoverIE Investors’ Chronicle DiscoverIE manufactures electrical components for MRI scanners and surveillance drones. The firm has returned to organic growth and confirmed full-year profit expectations. Although a manufacturing footprint in the US has tempered the direct impact of tariffs, the levy has indirectly affected demand from customers. Sales have been supported by growth in Europe, worth 51% of revenue. The operating margin has improved and cash generation is “strong”. The valuation is “reasonable”. 586p Weyerhaeuser Barron’s This US company is the largest private owner of timberland in North America and operates 33 manufacturing plants for wood products. Weakness in the new-home construction and renovation markets has been a headwind, but there is “massive upside” if the backdrop improves. The real-estate investment trust’s high valuation is a “buying…

The way we live now... the weight-loss drugs tailored to fat cats One in eight people in the US have tried one of the new weight-loss drugs, such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro, says Emily Anthes in The New York Times. “Fluffy and Fido could be next.” San Francisco-based Okava Pharmaceuticals has launched a pilot study into treating obese cats, and potentially dogs, with a similar GLP-1 drug, which mimics a hormone to slow digestion and promote a feeling of fullness. Doses are released over six months via a chip under the skin. If the results from the “Meow-1” study (“ManagEment of Over Weight cats”) are promising, Okava plans to launch a larger clinical trial next summer. The company is aiming to keep the price of its product at, or…

● Clothing and homeware retailer Next “appears immune” from “the general misery” consuming retailers in the run-up to Christmas, says Ruth Sunderland in the Daily Mail. Its shares have risen 43% this year following another strong performance in 2024. Now it is reported to be in talks to buy into shoe chain Russell & Bromley, which would add to its “impressive” brand portfolio. The group has been a “profit machine for years”: it recently issued its fourth profit upgrade thanks to the new revenue streams created by its Total Platform e-commerce infrastructure system for partner brands. CEO Simon Wolfson keeps proving that “a genuinely well-run business can thrive even in the toughest of times”. ● “It’s no shock to see Hikma Pharmaceuticals’ CEO Riad Mishlawi head for the exit” after…

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme,” says Jeff Currie, the former Goldman Sachs commodities expert who now works at private-equity giant Carlyle. “Given recent concerns around AI capex budgets… how much does this AI technological revolution rhyme with the shale revolution of 2010-2020?” During the shale boom, energy companies often spent more than 100% of their cash flow on capital investment. Some exceeding 200% just before the 2014 oil-price crash. In the aftermath of that, energy wiped out $2.6trn in equity – 41 cents of every dollar invested – by the end of the decade. Over the same period, technology generated $9trn in wealth. “Energy and technology are arguably the two most important sectors in the economy.” Energy powers activities, while technology drives innovation. “This is why market…

● LondonMetric Property – the most acquisitive UK real estate investment trust (Reit) – has taken 9.1% stake in Value and Indexed Property Income, a small long-lease commercial property fund that has a current market cap of around £80m. In October, LondonMetric took an 11% stake in Schroder Real Estate, following a series of takeovers including Urban Logistics, LXI Reit, and CT Property Trust. Separately, LondonMetric has raised £500m through two green bonds (debt that is earmarked for projects with environmental benefits) of £250m each, with maturities of four and seven years at interest rates of 4.5% and 4.87% respectively. ● Regional Reit has sold an office building in Manchester at £13m, a slight 1% premium to the June valuation. Regional has been hard-hit by problems in the UK office…

capx.co The British economy is “not in great shape”, says Kristian Niemietz. We have had 18 years of weak growth in productivity and real incomes. This is an anomaly by the standards of the past 200 years of economic history. We’re also not doing well compared with our peers. Why? The left blames wealth inequality – arguing that the rich are monopolising all the assets while the rest of us sink into poverty. This is persuasive to lots of people – and “completely wrong”. Wealth inequality in this country is not high by historical standards or in comparison with our peers. So even if you dislike the level of it, it cannot explain the change in our fortunes. And a large chunk of the fortunes of the rich is tied…

Following three consecutive years of above-average returns from the S&P 500 index, if there is to be a fourth the stockmarket will have to climb a steep mountain. From my recent market observations, I have come to the conclusion that two current booms will come to an end. Firstly, capital spending on anything to do with AI will prove no different from previous bubbles fuelled by investors following the zeitgeist. Excessive capital spending caused by a supply shortage is almost always followed by a downturn once supply is satisfied. Die-hard AI enthusiasts can simply look to CoreWeave’s recent collapse or the market’s incredulous response to Open AI’s forecast for capital expenditure (capex) and revenue: the sums just don’t add up. Secondly, the burgeoning demand for private credit or equity assets…

A warm welcome The Milestone Hotel and Residences in Kensington has teamed up with experiences specialist Beyond Curated to create A Sparkling Christmas in London. Highlights of the luxury package include a carriage ride past the city’s landmarks with Champagne, a private tasting in St James’s at the venue of a holder of a royal warrant and a Dickensian Christmas tour. £3,210 per person for a minimum of two people, until 6 January. Visit milestonehotel.com The world’s finest caviar Cavier House is the global expert in the finest sustainable caviar. For this Christmas, it has created Caviar Émile in homage to Émile Prunier, the founder of the French caviar industry – a combination of two grains of the hugely popular Oscietre caviar with contrasting colours and characteristics, carefully selected by…

Bitcoin’s days are numbered, said Strategy’s (formerly MicroStrategy) CEO, Michael Saylor, in 2013, when the cryptocurrency was trading at around $100. “It seems like just a matter of time before it suffers the same fate as online gambling.” By 2020, when bitcoins were selling for more than $7,000, he had changed his mind. “Bitcoin is a swarm of cyber hornets serving the goddess of wisdom, feeding on the fire of truth, exponentially growing ever smarter, faster and stronger behind a wall of encrypted energy.” He always seems to overstate it, overdo it and overpay for it. And now, with bitcoin on the decline, he may be overexposed to it. Bitcoin was down around 3% in 2025 while S&P 500 stocks climbed more than 16% – the first time since 2014,…

The story of commodities in 2025 was “energy down, metals up hard”, says Ole Hansen of Saxo Bank. Silver and copper are continuing their record-breaking rallies, but the world’s oil men are feeling gloomy. Brent crude is down by a fifth since 1 January. The main European natural-gas benchmark is off 45% this year, to the relief of households. Overall, the Bloomberg Commodity energy sub-index has dropped 10% this year, even as the All Metals index has soared 43%. Energy markets are dogged by talk of massive excess supply as Opec producers lift output caps, and new players such as Guyana enter the market. Meanwhile, China’s appetite for fuel is softening as its transition to greener supplies continues. The International Energy Agency forecasts a near-four-million barrels a day surplus next…

“The AI frenzy has taken hold in the stockmarkets of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan… But there is one big difference [from America]: northeast Asian stocks remain relatively affordable… The average firm in each trades at less than three times its book value, against more than five times in America. For investors who want a cheap way to buy AI firms, north-east Asia is the place to go… in South Korea… prices suffer from a longstanding “Korea discount”, reflecting investors’ concerns about poor corporate governance and unwieldy conglomerates. South Korean stocks trade at a pitiful 1.4 times book value… If there is an AI bust, Asian stocks will not avoid the thumping. Yet their relative cheapness might provide some comfort to investors. In the case of a reversion to more…

Shares in iRobot Corp, the company that “revolutionised robot vacuum cleaners in the early 2000s with its Roomba model”, has filed for bankruptcy, say Bloomberg’s Reshmi Basu and Dorothy Ma. The shares plunged 75% this week after the group broke the news and proposed handing over control to its main Chinese supplier. iRobot enjoyed so much initial success with the Roomba, which debuted in 2002, that the device “quickly became synonymous with autonomous vacuum cleaners”. However, profits began to decline after Covid amid difficulties with the supply chain and cheaper rival products. This was exacerbated by the fact that it moved most of its production of its US-bound robots from China to Vietnam only for Vietnam to be hit earlier this year with a 46% levy – part of president…

America’s technology group Ametek, which specialises in electronic instruments and electromechanical devices for markets ranging from aerospace to medicine, has been shopping again, says WirtschaftsWoche. It has bought Florida’s Faro Technologies, a 3D-measuring and imaging group, for a valuation of three times sales. Its own shares cost six times sales. The difference reflects Ametek’s success at scooping up companies boasting cutting-edge technology and developing them further. It owns more than 100 firms set to achieve $7.3bn in sales and $1.4bn in net profits this year. These record figures will give the stock’s long-term uptrend added momentum.…

King Maha Vajiralongkorn has approved Thai prime minister Anutin Charnvirakul’s request to dissolve parliament, paving the way for elections in January, a month earlier than expected. Anutin announced he was “returning power to the people” after a dispute with the opposition People’s Party, which led to a legislative impasse, says Al Jazeera. The People’s Party, which has 143 seats compared with Anutin’s Bhumjaithai party’s 69, says Anutin reneged on a “kingmaker” deal to make him prime minister by failing to deliver on promised constitutional reforms. The “political rupture” comes at a difficult time. The country is engaged in heavy fighting with Cambodia along their shared border, during which at least 20 people have been killed. The government has been criticised for its failure to manage recent devastating floods in Hat…

Why is MMT back in the spotlight? The leader of the Green Party, Zack Polanski – whose more assertive, charismatic and left-populist tenure has seen the party dramatically surge in the polls to within a few points of both Labour and the Conservatives – speaks about economics and fiscal constraints in a way that’s ominously familiar to observers of the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) debate. Last month, Polanski told The New Statesman that “the fiscal rule we need to have is to make sure that inflation doesn’t go higher than the skills and resources that we have in our economy”. In a TV interview, he told Laura Kuenssberg that higher taxes on the wealthy will not be needed under his gigantic public spending plans since “this isn’t about creating public…

If nothing goes awry between now and the new year, 2025 will end up being a much better year for stocks than looked likely eight months ago. The US tariff sell-off in early April was severe at the time, but the slide ended faster than expected and markets rebounded quickly. For all Donald Trump’s bluster, the reality is that he backtracked on the level of tariffs pretty significantly. Foreign governments signed a bunch of deals to placate him, including many promises around investment and trade that they will do their best not to deliver. Central banks began loosening monetary policy a bit more. So stocks went up again: the MSCI ACWI index – which includes developed and emerging markets – have returned a very strong 18% (including net dividends) in…

Investment trusts are one of the best vehicles for creating wealth over the long term. Yet many of today’s trusts should not exist. Some are too small to make a difference and lack economies of scale. Others are not making the most of the benefits that the investment company structure offers. An investment trust is set up as a public limited company, which has several advantages over other collective investment vehicles. Their closed-ended structure with fixed capital means that they don’t have to worry about money flowing in and out. That’s perfect for holding illiquid assets and also for borrowing money to improve returns. Meanwhile, the oversight provided by the board of directors should hold the investment manager accountable if the trust underperforms for too long. However, this structure has…

Americans eye the pitchforks Michael HirschornThe New York Times Thanks to “ever more obliging tax policies”, America’s billionaire class has grown “absurdly rich”, says Michael Hirschorn. Since 2020, the 20 richest Americans have increased their net worth from $1.3trn to $3trn. But while the super-rich used to flood politics with their cash and reap the benefits discreetly, today they “won’t stop yapping about it”, whether it’s Elon Musk’s $250m support for Donald Trump or Bill Ackman’s declaration that “he and his pals” plan to bring down New York’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani. And when not “lecturing” the rest of us about their fitness regimes and “weird personal philosophies”, some are even calling for elites to “take control of cities and states – or build their own – and run them…

project-syndicate.org Investment booms are of two kinds, say Simon Johnson and Piero Novelli: those that ended up building something useful (the railways) and those that did not (sub-prime mortgages). Which characterises the AI boom? There are three questions to answer. First, is the boom about more than just a run-up in asset prices? For AI, the answer seems clear. There is “definitely a big wave of investment in plant and equipment”, such as data centres, and such investment could boost productivity and underpin growth. Second, is the boom financed primarily with debt? For AI, the answer is mixed. The credit risks already taken on are “murky” and tech companies are tapping lots more in “novel and aggressive” ways. It remains to be seen whether these bets will pay off. Third,…

If you want proof that British manufacturing isn’t dead, take a trip to an unassuming stretch of Stoke-on-Trent. There, on the same site it has occupied since Victorian times, sits Goodwin (LSE: GDWN), a heavy engineering group that has become one of the most profitable specialist manufacturers in the country. It may not be glamorous, but Goodwin produces the components that keep critical national infrastructure running, such as precision-cast nuclear-waste containers for Sellafield, high-integrity parts for naval propulsion systems and specialised valves for the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry. These are the bits that no one can afford to get wrong; and its excellence in these areas is why Goodwin is so profitable. But following its tremendous run, can investors still afford the shares? Keeping it in the family Goodwin…

Stephen Connolly More than two in five US adults are now classified as obese, and rates are rising across the rest of the world too. It is a chronic disease associated with a costly catalogue of long-term ill health, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease and kidney failure. Until recently, the medical response amounted to little more than advice on lifestyle. Now a new class of drugs targeting GLP-1 receptors has delivered weight loss that is clinically meaningful and increasingly durable. For the first time, obesity is being treated as a biological condition rather than a failure of willpower. US pharmaceutical group Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY) sits at the centre of this shift. Its GLP-1 franchise, led by Mounjaro and Zepbound, has demonstrated strong efficacy. For insurers and governments, the attraction is…

The best films and TV The art world has seen no shortage of fraudsters over the years, but few as brazen as rogue dealer Inigo Philbrick, who gained a reputation as one of the top art dealers of his generation before being exposed. Philbrick would sell the same artwork to multiple buyers, relieving his victims of more than $86m before the scam collapsed. After a global manhunt, he was found hiding on the South Pacific island of Vanuatu, and eventually jailed. The Great Art Fraud (BBC iPlayer), a two-part documentary, tells the story of his rise and fall. What is most revealing is that all concerned were enjoying a life of excess, thanks to a soaring art market fuelled by money printing, while most of the Western world was suffering…

Never mind the tariffs. America’s S&P 500 is on course to finish 2025 with a 16% gain, higher than the index’s long-term average annual return of roughly 9%. As Ryan Detrick of Carson Group notes, “average” years are actually quite rare. Indeed, in only four of the past 75 years has the S&P finished the year with an “average” yearly gain of between 8% and 10%. Annual returns are distributed widely, with those higher than 10% occurring in 62% of calendar years, but there was also a crushing 38% drop in 2008 as the global financial crisis took hold. As the old joke about the statistician goes: “He put his feet in a bucket of ice and head in the oven. When asked how he felt, he answered ‘pretty good…

No club in world football is “more defined by, or associated with, their owners than Juventus”, says James Horncastle in The Athletic. While the company is listed on the Italian stock exchange, “the Agnellis have been their benefactors for more than a century”. No wonder, then, that an attempt by crypto firm Tether to “transcend football tradition” and buy the 65.4% controlling stake in Juventus held by Exor, the Agnelli family’s holding company, for a reported €1.1bn has “turned heads”. While the board of Juventus unanimously rejected the offer, it comes at an “interesting time” for both parties. Tether “has gone from being accused of fraud to becoming a crypto darling”. Exor has been selling some of the “culturally symbolic” assets in its portfolio. Tether’s bid for Juventus football club…

Medline aims to raise up to $5.37bn in what could be the biggest initial public offering (IPO) in the US this year, says Bloomberg. The US medical-supplies manufacturer plans to sell 179 million shares for between $26 and $30 and has gathered around $2.35bn in commitments from cornerstone investors, valuing the company at $55.3bn. The company was taken private by US private-equity firms Blackstone, Carlyle Group, and Hellman & Friedman in a $34bn deal in 2021. After the IPO, they each expect to hold 18% of voting rights. Medline reported $977m in net income on $20.6bn revenue for the nine months to 27 September 2025.…

Ultra-conservative José Antonio Kast won Chile’s presidential election by a landslide on Sunday, “harnessing voter anger over crime and migration” to create the “most dramatic rightward shift in decades”, says Matthew Malinowski on Bloomberg. Kast prevailed over his Communist Party rival Jeanette Jara, taking 58% of the vote, and will take office on 11 March. Warning of a “tough year” ahead, he has promised to crack down on illegal migration and organised crime, while cutting public spending, red tape and corporate taxes to attract investment and reverse more than a decade of sluggish growth. His victory comes less than a fortnight after the publication of the US National Security Strategy, which explicitly made the Western hemisphere the top US priority, says Michael Stott in the Financial Times. Kast’s win adds…

If you are a mother juggling the demands of raising a family while trading commodities for a hedge fund, and you also happen to be hacked off with your employer, then 2026 could turn into a very good year. The Employment Bill currently making its way through Parliament is about to award you lots of extra rights. There is just one catch. It will also make firms very reluctant to hire anyone – crushing the economy at a moment when it is already stagnating. The Bill, being driven through by junior minister Kate Dearden, is likely to turn into one of the most significant reforms of a Labour government that, in most respects, has done very little apart from putting up taxes to spend more on welfare. We already had…

Many investors use the price/earnings (p/e) ratio as a measure of whether a share is cheap or not. There’s a good reason for that – it’s one of the simplest valuation measures out there. You simply take the share price, and divide by the earnings (profits) per share. So a company with a share price of 50p and earnings per share (EPS) of 5p would have a p/e ratio of ten. A p/e ratio which is based on forecast earnings is often referred to as a forward p/e ratio, while one based on past earnings is sometimes described as a trailing p/e. P/e ratios are also sometimes referred to as “multiples”, as in: “Acme Widgets is trading on a multiple of ten times its earnings”. In effect, a p/e of…

Activist investor Metage Capital is urging private-equity trust Pantheon to sell £500m of investments (22% of net assets) and use the proceeds for share buybacks. Under the trust’s current capital allocation policy, the amount destined for buybacks out of ongoing realisations will be about 4% of NAV per year, which is too small to make an impact on its “persistently wide discount”, argues Metage. In addition, Pantheon’s portfolio has underperformed the MSCI World index over one, three, five and ten years, and the board should set out a strategy to improve returns. If these changes do not achieve a “consistent single-digit discount”, the board should look for a deal to take the fund private, similar to the recent buy-out of its peer Apax Global Alpha.…

“I am often criticised for being rather accessible. And my reply to that is I think Mozart and the Parthenon are quite accessible, too, though perhaps in another league.” Joanna Trollope (pictured), who has made around £15m from her books, quoted in The Telegraph “Every woman should have four pets in her life: a mink in her closet, a Jaguar in her garage, a tiger in her bed and a jackass to pay for everything.” Socialite Paris Hilton, quoted in The Mail on Sunday “It’s a nice feeling to have cash in your pocket. I always remember my dad giving me a pound and I felt like the richest person alive.” DJ and TV presenter Clara Amfo, interviewed in The Sunday Times “I don’t think I’ll get married again. I’ll just…

newscientist.com Scientists have discovered a “troubling trend”, says Graham Lawton: “all over the world, people are getting older faster”. Those born after 1965 are biologically ageing more rapidly than people born a decade earlier and diseases that were once considered to be a “scourge of the elderly” are becoming ever more common in younger people. A major reason why may be obesity. Western diets are making us fatter and that may accelerate biological ageing. There is, then, hope that that trend may reverse with the advent of GLP-1 receptor agonists such as Ozempic – drugs developed to treat type-2 diabetes that have been found to help promote weight loss and to slow the rate of ageing. But you can avoid becoming old before your time – and even throw the…

Coastguards, fishing ministries and port authorities need to track the movements of large numbers of vessels. SRT Marine Systems (Aim: SRT), founded in 1987, is a leader in providing the technology they need in order to do that. Customers range from sovereign agencies to individual vessel operators, including the RNLI lifeboat service. SRT’s technology and systems enable its customers to solve important problems, such as establishing where borders and territorial sovereignty lie and detecting illegal fishing, smuggling and piracy. To that end, its maritime surveillance and monitoring systems are used by coastguards and border agencies, national fisheries authorities, and ports and waterways authorities. SRT’s digital AtoN systems (aids to navigation) communicate directly with vessels’ electronic charts and supplement static buoys and lighthouses. The technologies involved include the automatic identification system…

SharkNinja began “hawking vacuums on late-night infomercials” in the early 2000s, say Lily Meier and Shelly Banjo on Bloomberg. Since then, the firm’s “flair” for advertising and TikTok videos, and its “endless stream of whiz-bang home appliances”, has helped it to a $16bn market capitalisation. The secret to its success is an “obsession with making products as irresistible as they are functional”, a formula the firm has put to work in everything from pizza ovens to skin-care devices and ice-cream makers. Those familiar with the brand tend to be “fanatical”: its Ninja Slushi frozen drink maker launched in July 2024 and sold out ten times in the US. The firm, headed by Mark Barrocas as CEO (pictured) and still advised by founder Mark Rosenzweig, has doubled its annual revenue in…

This is not the highest-scoring wine of the year, nor is it a multiple award winner. It gains a solid silver medal score in my notes (17.5/20), so why does it warrant a mention in one of my most important wine columns of the year? The reason is that the perfume and flavour, coupled with the price, make it the equivalent of the finest, smoothest, most perfect golf swing of 2025: it goes straight down the middle of the fairway, prompting applause from everyone who witnesses it. During the most hectic entertaining season, you will inevitably pour wine for all manner of palates, and serving opinionated, polarising or esoteric styles will be a waste of time, effort, and money. What one needs is the ultimate all-purpose red wine with class,…

The Secret History of Gold: Myth, Money, Politics and Power, by regular MoneyWeek contributor Dominic Frisby, is an expanded take on his acclaimed Edinburgh Fringe talk, which takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of humanity’s relationship with the precious metal, from Neolithic man through to the present day. As you’d expect from this seasoned storyteller and comedian, Frisby entertains the reader with fascinating stories and facts, and has produced a book that will appeal not only to goldbugs and economists, but also to the general reader. If you enjoy the book you might also like to consider signing up to Frisby’s newsletter, Dominic Frisby’s Comedy News, at frisbys. news. The paperback edition of his book is expected next year. The Vagina Business: The Innovative Breakthroughs that Could Change Everything…