Indholdsfortegnelse for Issue 1292-1293 i MoneyWeek

Nike’s latest results have “unnerved” the markets, says Gregory Meyer in the Financial Times. While global sales for the three months to 30 November rose 1% to $12.4bn, the figure was still $1bn below sales in the same quarter two years ago. Worse, while sales rose in North America and the Europe, Middle East and Africa region, in greater China they dropped by 17% to $1.4bn. The division is “beset by an array of problems”. Nike is not alone in finding the Chinese market tough going as it has become a “deeply discount-driven market for sportswear”, says Bloomberg’s Lily Meier: consumers have curbed spending “amid an economic slowdown, a property crisis and job market uncertainties”. However, Nike faces “steeper challenges” than its rivals, having failed to deliver “standout” products that…

The US Coast Guard was in “active pursuit” of a third oil tanker allegedly flouting sanctions against Venezuela just before Christmas, say Vanessa Buschschluter and Seher Asaf on the BBC. The seizure of tankers is the “latest development” in Donald Trump’s campaign against the Venezuelan government of Nicolas Maduro. His administration has declared Maduro’s government a Foreign Terrorist Organisation and last week ordered a “blockade” of sanctioned oil tankers. Since the Venezuelan government relies heavily on oil revenue, this is highly provocative. One day, Trump’s stated mission against Venezuela is to fight narco-terrorism; the next, mass migration; now, it is an insistence that Venezuela return “oil, land and other assets” it has stolen from the US, says Karen DeYoung in The Washington Post. The last demand is a reference…

1. An IPO boom The number of listed companies has declined relentlessly over the past 20 years. In London the number of stocks has fallen from 2,448 in 2013 to 1,800. The numbers in New York have fallen from a peak of 7,000 in the 1990s to around 4,000 now, and there have been similar declines across most of the major exchanges. But 2026 is going to see some blockbuster initial public offerings (IPOs). OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceX are all likely to float at values of $500bn-plus. In the wake of that, there will be a huge appetite among investors for new issues. Entrepreneurs with businesses to sell will be quick to take advantage and so will the private-equity firms that have plenty of companies on their books that they…

A yield curve is a graph that shows how the yields on a group of related bonds vary according to their maturity. Investors normally focus on the yield curve for bonds such as US Treasuries or UK gilts. These governments have a vast number of outstanding bonds, with remaining maturities ranging from months to many decades in the future, so their bonds provide a key benchmark for pricing other bonds and loans of different maturities. However, yield curves are also used to compare yields versus maturities for bonds issued by a group of borrowers that have similar credit ratings, or even a single large company. Yield curves move up and down, and shift in shape, in response to demand for bonds of different maturities. A normal yield curve slopes up…

Activist investors Saba Capital and RM Funds have ramped up pressure on the struggling Gore Street Energy Storage Fund. RM, which holds a 6.6% stake, called on the board to cut costs and consider appointing a new manager, while Saba reported that it had doubled its stake to 10%. RM urged directors to tackle what it called a “feeding frenzy” by Gore Street Investment Management – which it claims has received £41m in fees over the last four-and-a-half years. It said it was aware of “credible” interest from firms to take over the mandate. The latest attack came after the battery-storage fund posted weak results – including a 10.6% decline in total asset value and lower-than-expected dividends – that sent its share price down 10%.…

“I no longer need seven chateaux now that my kids have grown up and left home.” Stewart Copeland (pictured), drummer of rock band The Police, quoted in The Times “I’ve had nothing to do with her success — hosting Songs of Praise doesn’t get you much sway in Hollywood!” Aled Jones, on his daughter Emilia, interviewed in The Times “It was such a huge success, it put me on the map in a way I never expected. I had a lot more cousins than I ever realised.” Director Francis Ford Coppola on his film The Godfather, quoted in The Telegraph “There is no other standard available for the distinction between profiteering and earning fair profits than that provided by the censor’s personal envy and resentment.” Ludwig von Mises, quoted on…

commonreader.co.uk This month marked the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth, and she still “reigns supreme” as “one of the most popular of the great English authors”, says Henry Oliver. The reason is simple: she invented the modern novel in order to “answer fundamental questions” about how to be good and happy and flourish in a commercial society. Austen was there at the birth of the modern world – a “new epoch” of “Enlightenment, prosperity and liberty”, a world of “technology, individualism, liberty, subjectivity, fashion and economic growth”. The year after Austen was born, The Wealth of Nations was published. Austen drew on her knowledge of Enlightenment philosophy, especially Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, to explore what it means to see things from another’s point of view. Her genius…

We’re now halfway through the decade that began with Covid, which was succeeded by a surge in the cost of living. Geopolitical turmoil has also buffeted markets in recent years. This year, however, was a good one for equities. Let’s see how the companies I picked early this year have fared over the previous 12 months. Four of the six proved profitable, and the portfolio delivered an average return of 35%, comfortably ahead of the FTSE All World index’s 19.5%. This means that my picks have delivered an 89.65% return since 2021, or a yearly average of 17.93%. This compares very favourably with most fund managers’ performances, as they usually fail to beat their benchmarks (despite their high fees for trying to do so). I also comfortably beat the market…

No safe way in There is no exchange-traded fund (ETF) or other collective investment that gives diversified exposure to the graphene theme. And the individual companies operating in the area must be considered high risk. Some of the very early public companies have struggled to get to commercial sales, and their stock prices have suffered because investors have lost patience with them, having gone through “year after year of fundraising”, says Terrance Barkan of the Advanced Carbons Council. Still, those companies able to achieve both profitability and critical mass could see investor interest return as “sales cure all ills”. A catalyst for wider adoption One company that is currently starting to see its revenue go up in leaps and bounds is HydroGraph Clean Power (Vancouver: HG). As stated in the…

• Will you turn 66 in 2026? If so, you are likely to be eligible to start claiming your state pension – but you also have the right to defer claiming the cash if you feel you don’t need it yet. In return, you will then receive extra pension once you do start receiving the benefit. Two-thirds of Britons aged between 40 and 65 don’t realise they’re entitled to defer, research suggests, which could mean people miss out. • Longstanding public-sector workers could lose valuable pension benefits if they continue their careers longer than expected. The rules of many public-sector pension schemes effectively mean that once members have paid in for a set number of years – 30 or 40, say – their pension benefits begin to decline if they…

“Clarkson may be on course to become the Bloomberg of global shipbroking” Our investment approach is based on two propositions. Firstly, if you invest in equities it is useful to be of an optimistic disposition. I will assert our optimism for global equities in coming decades. You could argue that the outlook has never been better. Technological change has created wealth for companies and consumers and the advent of AI is likely to accelerate that process. Technology-derived productivity gains tend to drive down inflation, and hence interest rates; we hope rapidly falling interest rates could be a positive surprise in 2026-2027. Secondly, if you invest in UK equities, as we do, it is important to shake off the pessimism that has afflicted the UK market. There are many world-class UK…

It’s time to hit the slopes. Whereas in previous decades, you wore little more than a pair of garish goggles and hopefully a helmet, skiing and snowboarding in 2026 is a more sophisticated affair. For starters, you will want to swap those goggles for a pair of Oakley Meta Vanguard smart glasses, released in October (£499, oakley.com, meta.com). They feature a “centred ultra-wide camera (12MP and 3K video), and a tighter three-point fit to keep the frames on your head as you race down a slalom”, says Lance Ulanoff on Techradar. They have an “Action” button on the bottom of the left stem, through which you can activate a number of preset operations. “That placement makes sense for protecting the buttons in more extreme conditions,” such as when it is…

President Donald Trump’s social-media company, which has recently expanded into streaming and cryptocurrency, “is now entering its fourth act: fusion power, a promising but still unproven source of alternative energy”, says The New York Times. Trump Media & Technology Group and TAE Technologies have agreed to an all-stock merger worth more than $6bn. The deal would be a “metamorphosis” for Trump Media, the money-losing parent company of Truth Social. The social-media platform has “struggled to gain market share beyond serving as the main online megaphone for President Trump”. This tie-up would also create “one of the world’s first publicly traded nuclear fusion companies”, with the firm intending to begin construction on “the first utility-scale fusion power plant” next year. The team behind Trump Media & Technology Group are certainly skilled…

Washington, DC Cannabis sector on a high: President Donald Trump (pictured) has signed an executive order to expedite the reclassification of cannabis at the federal level from a Schedule 1 drug, on a par with heroin, to a Schedule 3 drug – the same category of drugs as those that can be bought with a prescription at a pharmacy, such as ketamine, says Dean Seal in The Wall Street Journal. Cannabis will still be illegal for recreational use – and so it doesn’t directly resolve the challenges of banking for many cannabis businesses – but it does “open the door for medical research that was previously stymied by pot’s stringent drug classification”. It is the “biggest advancement in federal cannabis policy since US states began legalising recreational cannabis in 2012”.…

● ”That’s gratitude,” says Nils Pratley in The Guardian. Just a fortnight after the government agreed to raise the amount that the NHS spends on new drugs, GSK’s boss Emma Walmsley caused a stir by saying that the US remains the best market for pharma firms to invest in. Yet her comments are “merely a statement of reality”. It would be “absurd to pretend the UK has suddenly shot to the top of the competitiveness table in life sciences” thanks to the new agreement, which essentially commits the NHS to spend more over the next three years while making UK pharma exports to the US exempt from tariffs. Yes, Britain has strong research facilities, but it lags behind the US in spending on new drugs and the depth of its…

“I was crying to sell Nvidia shares,” says Masayoshi Son, the billionaire founder and CEO of tech conglomerate SoftBank. “I don’t want to sell a single share. I just had more need for money to invest in OpenAI and other opportunities,” he told a forum in Tokyo recently. SoftBank is going “all in| on OpenAI” – in Son’s own words – to an extent that is radical even by the founder’s long-standing willingness to make huge bets. To raise the $22.5bn funding that Son has committed to the creator of ChatGPT, SoftBank has sold its entire holding in the chipmaking giant Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company, for $5.8bn, as well as part of its stake in T-Mobile US for $9.2bn. SoftBank has also slowed other deal-making at its Vision…

● Aberdeen European Logistics (LSE: ASLI) has rejected a call from its largest shareholder to halt its wind-down and the sale of assets. The real-estate investment trust (Reit) says the process is nearly finished – with 20 of 27 assets having been sold since investors approved the liquidation in July 2024 – and that changing direction would be too expensive. However, Polish logistics developer DL Invest, which owns an 18% stake, argues the Reit could return to growth by adding additional properties to its existing portfolio and that this would deliver better long-term value for shareholders. ● HarbourVest Global Private Equity (HVPE) is to sell $300m of assets from its $4.6bn portfolio, its biggest disposal to date. Roughly $90m of the proceeds will be assigned to share buybacks, with the…

capx.co Providing clean running water is one of the most basic duties of the state, says Lawrence Newport. Typically, Britain is failing at it. For six days at the start of the month, 24,000 people in the country had to go without it, resulting in closed businesses and sickness. This was not a “freak event”, but a “microcosm” of Britain today and “the predictable consequence” of political choices. Our politicians could have decided to build more reservoirs, replace Victorian-era infrastructure and upgrade water and sewage plants. They didn’t. Instead, they have made it “effectively illegal to build”, with a “labyrinth” of red tape. It doesn’t have to be this way. The “only solution” is “radical reform of the planning system” and change in the “procedure-driven culture” of Whitehall. Like the…

Vietnam is set to end the year by posting one of the world’s best stockmarket returns, with its VN index up 38%. But if 2025 was exceptional for investors, 2026 could provide the icing on the cake. September should mark a coming-of-age moment, with index provider FTSE Russell upgrading Vietnam from frontier to emerging-market status. That will prompt a further wave of interest in Vietnamese equities, including from passive funds adjusting their emerging-market weightings. It has taken 20 years to get here, says Qian Zhang, an investment specialist at Baillie Gifford. “Vietnam is now one of the best structural growth stories in emerging markets,” she says. “It’s still a lesser-known and off-index market and we remain selective, but the opportunity... is broadening for long-term, patient investors.” Vietnam shares some of…

City regulators are proposing new rules on pension transfers amid growing concern that savers are losing out. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) wants to impose new requirements on pension providers to offer more detailed information when savers consider transferring from one defined-contribution pension scheme to another. Until now, the FCA has been most concerned about protecting savers with defined-benefit schemes (where pension benefits in retirement are guaranteed), for whom a transfer to a defined-contribution scheme offering no guarantees almost never makes sense. However, the regulator now believes many savers arranging supposedly more straightforward defined-contribution schemes may also be losing out. Multiple funds The intervention reflects huge growth in the defined-contribution sector, especially since the introduction of the auto-enrolment workplace pensions system. Many savers now have several small pots of pension…

It has been a solid year for both the S&P 500 and the FTSE 100, which have risen about 17% each, with the British index edging ahead slightly. My trading tips put in a mixed performance, with some big losses but also some big wins. Tips carried forward I began 2025 with eight tips: six longs (Marks & Spencer, Harworth, United Airlines, Hilton Food Group, Trainline and Domino’s Pizza Group) and two short-selling tips (Trump Media & Technology Group and Ocado). As usual, all of them were closed during this year, but while it’s normal for some of my ongoing positions to be closed out early in the year, it took a little longer this time. However, in Issue 1252, no fewer than three long positions – those in United…

A socialist takes New York “We cannot have a socialist” running “the greatest capitalist city in the world”, observed one Wall Street financier just before November’s mayoral election. Get used to it, said The New Yorker. On New Year’s Day, Zohran Mamdani will become the first avowedly socialist mayor of New York, and its first Muslim leader to boot, following a meteoric rise. A year ago, most had never heard of the youthful Assembly member from Queens. But Mamdani’s rising star – on a platform of soaking the rich to fund rent freezes, free bus travel and universal child care – has proved unstoppable. Donald Trump, who once called Mamdani a “100% Communist lunatic” and threatened to deport him, changed his tune when he met him, staging a surreally chummy…

This week’s column is dedicated to sensational quality, bargain-priced fizz. The golden rule when selecting party bubbles is to focus solely on those wines that drink beautifully on their own and work brilliantly in cocktails. I have found a fabulous collection of awesome wines that perform both disciplines at the highest level, and they are all epic value to boot. My headliner is exceptional value, and the pinot noir portion (52% of the blend) sings here with uncommon purity and accuracy. This is the most complete, inexpensive and delicious rosé on the shelves this season. For the same dosh, also find solace in NV Graham Beck Brut Rosé (£14, waitrosecellar.com), which is very similar. NV Saumur Brut Gratien & Meyer (£12, reduced to £9 with a Clubcard until 31 December,…

In a “surprise announcement” last week, BP said that its CEO Murray Auchincloss would step down and be succeeded in April by Meg O’Neill, who leads Woodside Energy, says Emily Gosden in The Times. Auchincloss’s departure “comes after less than two years in the role in which he has struggled to win over investors”. Auchincloss previously served alongside Bernard Looney, whose “radical strategic shift into green energy… resulted in sustained underperformance in BP’s share price”. Auchincloss partially reversed this, but many investors have wanted him “to be more radical”. The decision to let go of Auchincloss “should not be an outright surprise”, says Nils Pratley in The Guardian. Albert Manifold, the new chairman who arrived in July, “had a mandate to take his own view of how the company should…

At the start of 2025, I said that investors should “beware the long bond”. The good news is that yields on the longest-dated bonds did not run wild during the year. The 30-year Treasury and the 30-year gilt are ending where they began. Yes, the 30-year bund has gone from 2.6% to 3.5%, while the 30-year JGB is up from 2.3% to 3.4%. However, this is healthy: a world in which investors were willing to lend money for three decades at incredibly low rates (well under 1% at times in Japan) is very damaged, and higher long-term rates are a step towards normality. At the same time, we are seeing early hints of an important shift. While longer-term rates are not coming down, the short end of the yield curve…

Investors are rightly nervous when a well-regarded fund manager retires. The departure of Bruce Stout from the £1.9bn Murray International (LSE: MYI) in June last year after 20 years was no exception. In that time he had delivered 20 years of dividend growth from a global income strategy. Over ten years, MYI has delivered a total return of 8.5% per annum, twice the retail price index. Charges of just 0.5% per year are very low. Borrowings (net of cash) are 5.6% of net assets, being £50m of loan notes at 2.24% and redeemable in 2031, and £60m at 2.83%, redeemable in 2037. So, what was not to like? And why did it trade on a discount to net asset value (NAV) of 10% as recently as the beginning of 2025?…

Carbon tax reshapes global trade Simona SagoneThe Conversation The carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM), when it comes into force on 1 January, could soon be reflected in higher prices for cars, building supplies and even food for those living in the EU, says Simona Sagone. The CBAM places a carbon price on many imported goods – the more carbon intensive, the higher the price. The goal is to stop firms from relocating production to countries “with looser rules, ensuring fair competition between EU and non-EU” firms while encouraging decarbonisation. “A positive shift is already under way.” More firms are measuring and reporting emissions and other countries are introducing their own systems to stay aligned with the EU and protect their market share. It is seen by some as an opportunity…

project-syndicate.org Debates on Europe’s “flagging growth prospects” have been going on since the turn of the century, says Philippe Aghion. But the 2020s have “lent them new urgency”. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine exposed its dependence on imported energy. A change of regime in the US has forced it to rethink its security and sovereignty. And with the US and China racing ahead in AI, Europe’s “lack of dynamism has become an emergency”. The main problem is a lack of innovation. Europe is “deeply dependent” on foreign technologies and is unable to generate the growth needed to finance its strategic objectives. Europe is, in fact, a “textbook example” of why “creative destruction” – the “toppling of less productive firms by innovative new challengers” – matters. Europe will remain vulnerable unless it…

“There’s growing evidence that consumers are in a better position to spend heading into the new year” The leisure sector is but part of the gigantic services sector, which accounts for roughly 80% of UK GDP. The latter encompasses everything from professional services such as solicitors and accountants, to restaurants and coffee shops, banks and everything in between. As a result, the entire sector is connected to the consumer in one way or another. Whether it’s the waiter in the restaurant, or the highly-paid accountant that works for a US investment bank who buys a £15 lunch every day, the services sector, the consumer and leisure spending all go hand in hand. To put a number on it, consumer spending accounts for about 60% of UK national output, with the…

Savers who opt for their employer’s default investment funds when making pension contributions at work could soon find themselves paying higher charges. Fees on default funds, typically managed by specialist pension providers, are subject to a cap, preventing savers paying more than 0.75% a year. But regulators are to launch a consultation on raising this cap in the new year. The consultation is part of a broader debate about the government’s desire to see UK pension funds invest in a wider range of assets, including infrastructure projects and venture capital for early-stage businesses. These private assets can be more time-consuming and demanding for providers to manage. Many investment firms say they cannot offer pension savers exposure to such assets while staying within the 0.75% pension charges cap. The investment industry…

This year has been a lot quieter than last, largely because 2025 isn’t either a presidential or mid-term year in the United States. So this column only made 25 tips, less than half the 54 made in 2024. Of these 13 were resolved, with nine winning and four losing. The losers included betting on the Liberal-National coalition to win the Australian election (they lost badly) and thinking the PvdA–GroenLinks would win the Dutch election (they came fourth). However, any missteps were more than compensated for by betting that Labour would win the Hamilton by-election in Scotland and that Zohran Mamdani would win the primary contest for mayor of New York. Even my Australian misadventure was redeemed by my bet that one party would get an overall majority, rather than the…

Money 1. Which US city became the first in America to implement a daily congestion charge? a) Chicago b) Los Angeles c) New York City 2. Fund manager Chris Hohn topped the 2025 Sunday Times Tax List of the 100 people who paid the most tax to the Treasury. How much did he contribute? a) £273.4m b) £339.5m c) £265m 3. England won the women’s Rugby World Cup final against Canada. Each member of the Red Roses received £5,000 for earning a place in the squad. How much was the bonus each player received for taking home the trophy? a) £15,000 b) £20,000 c) £1m 4. Hit US television show White Lotus has famously bolstered tourism wherever it is set. Which country was this year’s series in? a) Monaco b)…