Innehållsförteckning för Issue 987 från MoneyWeek

“The UK’s productivity problem stems from a reliance on cheap labour” Regular readers might have noticed that I have been taking some time off. For the last six weeks or so I have barely glanced at the papers – an odd feeling for someone who has read almost all of the UK dailies pretty much every weekday and all the weekend papers (bar a few redtops) every Saturday and Sunday for over 20 years. What have I missed? When I asked this question on Twitter I was told that nothing had changed. Not so. The exciting fact that we have actually (sort of) left the European Union aside, I do see some interesting changes in the conversations going on in the UK at least. The UK’s productivity problem The most…

“Cabin fever” has taken on a new meaning since the coronavirus outbreak resulted in the quarantine of 3,700 people aboard the Diamond Princess after 170 tested positive for the virus. Long referred to as “floating Petri dishes”, cruise ships have a reputation for aiding the rapid exchange of germs and illness, says Yvette Tan on the BBC. Another 3,600 and 1,450 passengers were quarantined in ships in Hong Kong and Cambodia respectively upon news of the outbreak. The Boy Scouts of America has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the state of Delaware, listing liabilities of between $100m and $500m and estimated assets of $1bn to $10bn, CNN reports. The youth organisation is facing hundreds of sexual abuse lawsuits.…

Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is “in the doldrums”, says Caroline Bain for Capital Economics. Prices have fallen below $3 per million British thermal units (mBtu), even though it is still winter in the northern hemisphere. A year ago LNG was trading at $6.8 per mBtu. The main culprit is “surging US exports” as well as new supply coming online from Australia and Russia. The coronavirus, which has knocked out much Chinese demand, delivered the final blow. “No major commodity in the US had a worse 2019 than natural gas,” says Nilanjan Choudhury on Yahoo Finance. Prices fell 25% last year, the worst annual decline since 2014. That has weighed on oil majors, which have made big gas investments in response to the “secular shift to the cleaner burning fuel for…

The term “technology” tends to excite investors, says Nilushi Karunaratne in the Investors Chronicle. Why else would US businesses filing to go public go “out of their way to boast supposed tech credentials”? Mentions of “tech” and “technology” have surged in documents accompanying initial public offerings in recent years. Of course, plenty of companies that aren’t remotely tech-orientated have jumped on the bandwagon: online mattress group Casper (see page 6) mentioned the word technology 88 times in its prospectus. Investors are also finally starting to notice that technology usually implies huge losses and are becoming increasingly reluctant to pile into richly valued offerings such as Uber and WeWork.…

Casper’s initial public offering (IPO) has been a “disaster”, says Jordan Valinsky on CNN. The company, which sells mattresses on the internet, was valued at over $1bn in the private market last year. Following WeWork’s implosion and Uber’s overhyped flotation, however, scepticism over loss-making start-ups is setting in. Casper was forced to reduce its IPO share price from $17-$19 to $12-$13, implying a valuation of just $495m. A highly competitive mattress market means profitability remains elusive. In the first nine months of 2019 Casper made a $67m loss from $312m of sales. Now it is trying to reinvent itself as a sleep and wellness company. “Investors aren’t buying it.”…

In a move that “will send waves across Wall Street”, tech giant Apple has warned that first-quarter revenues will miss already-reduced forecasts, due to disruption in China caused by the coronavirus, reports the Financial Times. Store closures have hit sales, while smartphone production has fallen as the virus has “made it hard for workers at all levels to get back to work”. The “double whammy” of supply problems and reduced sales may hit Apple harder than most; Chinese customers account “for nearly a fifth of revenue” and “essentially all” iPhones are assembled there by partner Foxconn, note Pete Sweeney and Robert Cyran on Breakingviews. However, Apple is by no means the only company affected: “everything from vitamins” to cars depends on materials from China, which remains a “dominant” producer of…

The government has “ignored” the pleas of firms that employ low-skilled European workers in its latest proposals for a post-Brexit immigration system, says Robert Wright in the Financial Times. The rules, which will take effect from next year, will end both free movement and preferential access for EU citizens. Instead, they will have to apply via the skilled migrant route, their eligibility measured with a points system. All migrants will also need a job offer and be able to speak English. The minimum salary required has been cut from £30,000 to £25,600 (or £20,480 in some cases) and the minimum qualification cut from a degree to the equivalent of A-Levels. These reforms are just what people voted for, says David Goodhart in the Daily Mail. For decades, businesses have been…

The outbreak of coronavirus in China is the most immediate threat to markets, but investors are overlooking several longer-term ones, says Ken Griffin, the founder of $32bn hedge-fund group Citadel. The most severe is inflation, which is likely to catch markets entirely by surprise when it returns. US inflation is running at 1.6% per year, below the Federal Reserve’s target of 2%. Markets expect it to average around 1.7% over the next decade and show few fears that it could be much higher – as shown by the fact that investors are buying 30-year Treasury bonds on 2% yields. “In the United States, there is absolutely no preparedness for an inflationary environment,” Griffin said at an event in New York, reports Bloomberg. That applies to the central bank as well.…

Boris Johnson’s Cabinet reshuffle last week will cost the taxpayer around £100,000, says Dan Bloom in the Daily Mirror. The eight ministers who have been shown the door are entitled to claim a quarter of their annual ministerial salary as an exit payment, regardless of how long they have been in the job, just so long as they don’t take up another ministerial role within three weeks. “That means a big benefit will go to former Tory welfare slasher Esther McVey.” She could, in theory, look forward to a £7,920 golden goodbye for being sacked as housing minister, despite having been in the job for just seven months, having previously received £16,876 for her ten months as the secretary of state for work and pensions in 2018. Former attorney general…

■ More bad news for Neil Woodford and his successor at Invesco, Mark Barnett (pictured). Investment platform Bestinvest produces a bi-annual list of “dog funds” that have underperformed their benchmark index by at least 5% over the past three years. Woodford’s closed Equity Income Fund leads the pack, while two of Mark Barnett’s Invesco funds are also on the list. Eleven Invesco funds with a total of £13bn in assets (almost one-third of all the money in the dog funds) are in the table, notes Madison Darbyshire in the Financial Times. This is the fourth time that Invesco has topped the list. The overall number of dog funds has jumped by 54% since August 2019, when the last list was published. ■ Yet another absolute return fund, supposed to be…

theconversation.com Dissatisfaction with democracy has been on the rise over the past 25 years, according to a new report from the Bennett Institute for Public Policy. That gloomy finding made the headlines, but there was good news in the report too, say Roberto Foa and Andrew James Klassen. Some countries, such as Denmark and Switzerland, have bucked the trend. The “four Ps” explain the difference. First, polarisation. People dislike democracy if the result creates winners and losers. Proportional representation leads to contentment. Second, paralysis. Citizens abhor a political vacuum, as in the Brexit paralysis of 2019. Switzerland’s “magic formula” prevents such crises by design. Third, perfidy. The MPs’ expenses scandal of 2009 saw dissatisfaction spike. Finally, powerlessness. Citizens must feel they have agency in the political process, influence over domestic…

The complicated rules on claiming child benefit are landing some parents with shock tax bills and causing administrative hassle. Since 2013 those who earn more than £50,000 a year have to pay back some of the child benefit they receive: £1 of every £100 earned over the threshold. If you earn more than £60,000, you’ll need to repay all of it. One family has just had a £7,400 bill from HMRC because the sole earner was bringing home less than £50,000 a year, but his company car was classed as a benefit in kind, propelling him over the threshold. Be sure to register for child benefit if you earn over £50,000. A stay-at-home parent who hasn’t won’t get National Insurance credits that build up their state-pension entitlement while they are…

Americans may disagree on many things, but most tend to think that more money needs to be spent on the nation’s decrepit infrastructure. Governments at both state and national level face huge bills for fixing ageing roads, dams and bridges; they also need to build more in order to meet the needs of a growing population and economy. Last year the American Society of Civil Engineers estimated that $4.5trn needed to be spent to bring America’s infrastructure up to what it considered to be an acceptable standard by 2025. While such plans may seem ambitious, President Trump’s potential opponents in November are now talking about spending around $1trn on repairs and upgrades over the next four years. Earlier this month, Trump himself floated the idea of a $1trn ten-year plan…

Sluggish economic growth and historically low bond yields are pushing investors towards growth stocks and away from cyclical value shares. Growth stocks are bought for their long-term cash flows, which are worth relatively more as yields fall. An equity manager’s performance over the next year will almost certainly depend on whether they get the call between growth and value correct. Managing equities has become much more dependent on top-down judgements. While equity managers are struggling with the polarisation between growth and value stocks, bond managers like me are wholly driven by value: there is no growth in fixed income (the clue is in the name). But where is the value in bonds now? “A coupon of 6% is more than ten times the income you receive on a UK gilt”…

“Sunak has never run a spending department and has only weeks to pull together his first Budget” The appointment of Britain’s new chancellor made the headlines in India last week, says The Times. With good reason. Before his meteoric rise, Rishi Sunak was arguably better known in the sub-continent than in Britain. His father-in-law, Narayana Murthy – co-founder of the IT consultancy Infosys – is a household name there, known together with his wife as the “Bill and Melinda Gates of India”. When Rishi married their daughter, Akshata, in a two-day wedding in Bangalore in 2009, it was attended by “computer tycoons and cricketing royalty”. Nicknamed “the maharajah of the Yorkshire Dales”, in tribute to his Richmond constituency, Sunak, 39, is the first UK chancellor “to have married into a…

The decision by Uefa, European football’s governing body, to ban Manchester City from the Champions League for two seasons could cost the club up to £200m asa result of the loss of broadcasting and ticketing revenues, prize money and sponsorship, say Murad Ahmed and Arash Massoudi in the Financial Times. That, in turn, could prompt the club’s “superstar” players, such as Raheem Sterling, to leave, along with its “much-admired” manager, Pep Guardiola (pictured). The club has also been handed a €30m fine as part of its punishment for breaking financial fair play (FFP) rules that limit a club’s spending relative to how much it earns. Uefa’s Club Financial Control Body (CFCB) found that Man City had falsely inflated its sponsorship revenues by having its owner, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan…

China’s battle with the coronavirus has begun to resemble a “Mao-style” mass mobilisation, say Raymond Zhong and Paul Mozur in The New York Times. “Battalions” of Communist Party representatives, “uniformed volunteers” and local “busybodies” are carrying out “one of the biggest social control campaigns in history”. With housing complexes sealed off and train stations policing movement, at “least 760 million people” are now thought to be living under some form of residential lockdown. With many factories and businesses unable to function, production in the world’s second-largest economy is coming under increasing strain (see box below). The twin bubbles grow bigger Suggestions that the spread of Covid-19 is slowing have cheered stockmarkets. Global equities have continued to rally and are now above their January highs, notes Rupert Thompson of Kingswood. China’s…

“At a conference for small private companies the other day, one of our leading investment banks [tried to] interest the audience in taking out a loan for their businesses… But [no one asked] if these same people would be interested in equity or an Aim flotation. Does this matter? Yes it does. Katie Potts, who runs the small-cap Herald Investment Trust, says you cannot build a serious company if you have a five-year time horizon. Debt is usually short term, five years or so, whereas equity is long term and to establish a company you often need ten years or more. She worries that we may not be helping those small companies that have the potential to be... giants. Aim is getting smaller, as is [the] Nasdaq in the United…

Three to buy Rank Group Shares Shares in the owner of Mecca Bingo and Grosvenor Casinos have some “serious momentum” after a series of analyst upgrades. The latest half-year results showed a 70% increase in operating profit. Digital is a key part of the growth strategy and will be helped by last year’s £115m acquisition of online bingo operator Stride Gaming. Over the next few years revenue growth should produce a significant cash-flow boost, which can be used for further acquisitions, or for extra dividends. On a forward price/ earnings ratio of 14.7, the shares still look attractive. 302p Howden Joinery The Sunday Times Shares in this kitchens and joinery supplier have been on a tear. The FTSE 250 group, which sells to builders and tradesmen, is up by 45%…

• Having been blocked by competition authorities from merging with German engineer Siemens, French transport infrastructure group Alstom is taking a “second-class route around China” by paying €7.5bn for the train unit of Canada’s Bombardier, says Ed Cropley on Breakingviews. It’s a complex deal, but the odds of being blocked are lower and the dominance of China’s CRRC, the world’s biggest rail conglomerate, means that “staying single was not an option”. Better yet, thanks to Bombardier’s history of delivering trains “late or over budget”, Alstom is getting a “knock down” price of just ten times this year’s expected operating profit, compared with its own near-18 times multiple. • Shares in clothing and homeware chain Laura Ashley have slid as it revealed a double-digit drop in sales and that its owner,…

When American voters go to the polls in November they won’t just be electing a president, but will also be voting for senators and members of the House of Representatives. At the moment the Republicans control the Senate, with 53 seats; the Democrats have 45 and two independents, who are part of the Democrat group. One of those independents is Bernie Sanders (pictured), who is seeking to become the Democratic nominee. The Democrats therefore need either to gain four seats from the Republicans, or gain three seats and retake the White House, to take control of the Senate. In an attempt to avoid complications, Ladbrokes is offering a market on the number of seats the Republicans will control. At the moment the Republicans  are the clear favourites to control more…

For most of us, how we invest is linked to our age. People will tend to save little when young (they may often be net borrowers instead), will put aside more as they approach middle age and will draw down their investments to fund their expenses after they retire. And if each of us does this individually, you might expect our combined decisions to have some influence on markets. A population full of middle-aged savers might push up the price of stocks, bonds and other assets because there will be more demand (savings) chasing a limited amount of supply (the number of shares and bonds available to buy). When the proportion of savers is lower, the demand will drop (because the young are not yet saving) and supply could even…

Rewind afew years and buy-to-let landlords were being blamed for just about everything that was wrong with the country. Greedy investors were driving first-time-buyers out of the market. They were pushing up house prices. And they were ripping off all the people pushed into renting with rip-off charges and fees. Hundreds of thousands of investors, driven by decent returns that no longer seemed available anywhere else, had piled into the sector, but no one had a good word to say about them. Then the fightback began, starting with George Osborne, and with plenty of help from chancellors since. First, buy-to-letters were stopped from deducting mortgage interest from the rent they received, unlike any other business, unless they decided to put their properties into acompany. Then they faced an extra 3%…

Despite the fanfare about the return of value investing, the performance of value funds was mixed last year. The Woodford funds were a disaster, Mark Barnett’s trusts at Invesco lagged the UK market by 7%-9% and Scottish Investment Trust lagged the MSCI World Index by nearly 10%. Temple Bar Investment Trust (LSE: TMPL), however, had an outstanding year, returning 29%, 10% ahead of the All-Share index. Avoiding slip-ups This represents a return to form by its manager, Alastair Mundy, after several dull years, but the investment style hasn’t changed and nor has much of the portfolio. So why was 2019 so good? “There were no screw-ups in our portfolio,” says Mundy, “while lots of high profile stocks, such as Pearson, Rolls-Royce, Royal Mail and Centrica did badly. The curse of…

Where does aid money end up? Editorial The Economist When autocracies enjoy a windfall from higher oil prices, the amount of money in Swiss bank accounts spikes, says The Economist. Researchers at the World Bank wondered whether something similar happens following infusions of aid. Dispiritingly, it does. World Bank payouts to 22 aid-dependent countries in 1990-2010 were followed by a jump in the deposits of those countries in foreign financial havens. The leaks averaged about 5% of the bank’s aid to those countries. A paper pointing this out was leaked to The Economist after being spiked by the bank’s officials. They may have worried about how it would look if its aid were ending up in Swiss bank accounts. The bank insists it had legitimate concerns about the paper: a…

ftalphaville.ft.com When economic performance remains sluggish despite aggressive monetary easing, economists say that “Japanification” is setting in, says Claire Jones. They are “terrified” the phenomenon is taking hold in the West. Yet despite decades of it, Japan remains a nice place with high standards of living. How did Japan cope with its predicament? A new book by Robert Pringle, The Power of Money, suggests some answers. Japan is a society characterised by longevity. Usually ageing is seen as an economic problem, but experience of more than afew peaks and troughs can be helpful for businesses – of the 5,500-odd companies that are more than 200 years old, more than 3,000 are Japanese. Pringle puts this resilience down to the fact that they focus less on short-term profit and more on…

■ A growing number of landlords are being caught underpaying tax, says Sam Barker in The Daily Telegraph. Last year HMRC discovered 11,129 landlords who had underpaid or failed to pay income tax, compared with 8,704 in 2018, with the taxman reclaiming £44.7m last year, up 36% on the year before. There has been a “let property” crackdown on landlords who don’t pay enough income tax on their rental income. “Every landlord should pay all their tax that is due, but we do understand that some may be making mistakes with their tax returns, given a number of recent changes and an increasingly complex tax system,” David Smith of the Residential Landlords Association told the paper. ■ “Two-thirds of broadband internet customers face price hikes of hundreds of pounds at…

While companies can change their names for legitimate reasons, such as a merger, sometimes they have a more cynical motivation. During the late 1990s, many firms rebranded themselves as “dotcoms” in an attempt to cash in on the craze for internet stocks. Even though the core business of these firms didn’t change, they still subsequently saw their prices rise before crashing back to earth when the market soured on tech stocks. Similarly, while Long Island Iced Tea’s stock briefly tripled in value after it changed its name to Long Blockchain in late 2017, reflecting the craze for the digital ledger technology underpinning bitcoin, this didn’t stop it being delisted a few months later. There is further evidence that name changes can boost share price in the short term. A 2013…

Pets At Home (LSE: PETS) is the UK’s largest pet-supplies retailer. Its offerings include food, toys, bedding, medication and accessories. For the quarter ending in January it reported total revenue of £255.9m, a 7.9% increase from £237.2m a year before. On a like-for-like basis, sales rose by 5.1%. Its return on assets of 3.5% exceeds the sector’s average. The pet-care market remains resilient, so the company should keep growing. Its forecast for underlying pre-tax profit for the year ahead is £93m, up from £89.7m. The stock has gained 139% in the last year.…

Charles Keating was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1923 and went on to serve in the US Navy before getting a law degree from the University of Cincinnati in 1948. He set up the law firm Keating, Muething & Keating in 1952, before co-founding American Financial Corporation with Carl Lindner Jr. in 1960. American Financial was initially very successful, but Keating was forced to leave amid accusations of fraud and misleading investors. In return for resigning, Keating was given control of American Continental Homes (later American Continental Corporation). What was the scam? In 1984 American Continental Corporation bought Lincoln Savings and Loan Association for $50m. Keating took advantage of a prior relaxation of the rules to expand Lincoln’s asset base by buying large numbers of junk bonds and speculating in…

Going… Bill Wyman, the former bassist of The Rolling Stones, is selling some of his instruments and music memorabilia through Julien’s Auctions in Beverly Hills, California, at the end of May. Among the awards, concert posters and photos, his 1962 Vox AC30 amplifier is one of the most notable of the 1,000-plus lots, says Kory Grow in Rolling Stone. Keith Richards is said to have been so enamoured of the amp it was the reason he invited Wyman to join the band in the first place. It is expected to sell for at least $80,000. “Collecting and archiving has been one of the great pleasures of my life and will undoubtedly be one of my legacies,” says Wyman (pictured). “It feels like the right time to share my archive with…

• In 1961, Tottenham Hotspur manager Bill Nicholson paid £99,999 to bring footballer Jimmy Greaves (pictured) back home from an unhappy exile in Italy, says Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail. “He didn’t want to burden Greaves with the pressure of becoming the world’s first £100,000 footballer.” True enough, Greaves wouldn’t have wanted to be saddled with that kind of price tag, even though Nicholson would have had no trouble justifying the expense. “At that time, and with the probable exception of the Brazilian genius Pelé, he was the most valuable player on earth.” This week, Greaves turned 80. Today, given soaring transfer values since the 1960s, he’d probably be the world’s first £1bn footballer. “Knowing Jimmy, he’d prefer the fee to be £999,999,999. The least we can do is…

56 The percentage of the value of US equities held by the richest 1% of Americans, according to Goldman Sachs. That includes stakes in private companies and amounted to $21.4trn at the end of last September. In 1990, the figure stood at 46%. €1.5bn The cost of Europe’s Solar Orbiter space probe, which took off aboard an Atlas rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida last Sunday. It will study the sun close up so that scientists will be better able to forecast the solar flare-ups that can knock out power grids. 25.1m The number of top-level internet domains registered in Tokelau, a tiny trio of coral atolls in the Pacific, according to domain registry Nominet. Its .tk suffix is the most popular of any country’s (the UK’s is the world’s…

The European Central Bank’s €189bn Corporate Sector Purchasing Programme (whereby the eurozone central bank prints money to buy corporate debt) has helped to lower the yields on European corporate debt. That’s worked out great for luxury brand LVMH, owned by France’s richest man, Bernard Arnault, says Marcus Ashworth on Bloomberg. In a bond issue this month to raise funds for its $16bn purchase of US jeweller Tiffany, two of the five euro-dominated maturities were funded at negative yields – in other words, some investors paid LVMH to lend it money. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who is the world’s richest person with a $130bn fortune, has pledged $10bn to set up the Bezos Earth Fund. The issuing of the grants aimed at tackling climate change will start this summer, Bezos said.…

France’s oil giant Total is making impressive progress in its efforts to go green, says WirtschaftsWoche. The renewable energy division already produces 16% of the company’s operating profits; notable projects include a solar-energy facility in Qatar that will provide a tenth of the country’s electricity and a joint venture with India’s Adani to tap the local market for liquefied petroleum gas. The core business, meanwhile, isin excellent shape. Total has almost managed to halve its costs in the past six years and production is on the rise, so even at today’s low oil prices it should be able to produce net earnings of €12bn. Throw in a dividend yield of 6% and this is a core holding.…

FTSE 100 banking giant HSBC has outlined a “radical restructuring”, reports Richard Fletcher in The Times, after 2019 saw profits before tax fall to $13.35bn, well below the $20bn forecast by City analysts. As part of the move, the group will “shed $100bn in assets and slash the size of its investment bank”, shedding 35,000 jobs in the process. HSBC will also combine its retail banking and wealth-management business unit with its global private-banking operations while reducing its sales and research coverage in European equities and closing a third of its 224 branches in America. These changes will mean a big fall in the number of HSBC bankers in Canary Wharf, says Jim Armitage in the Evening Standard. But the reality is that they are overdue. HSBC has been “trying…

Asset allocation is the process of dividing your portfolio between different asset classes, such as shares, bonds, property, cash and gold. Each of these asset classes should behave in different ways in different scenarios, and have different potential risks and returns. The aim of asset allocation is to blend these together in a way that produces a combined level of risk and return that best suits an investor’s needs. To take some extreme examples, a young investor saving for retirement a long way in the future and prioritising maximum growth above everything else might have 100% in shares, while a retiree who only cares about achieving a steady income might have 100% in bonds. More commonly, somebody who wants to achieve a combination of income and growth while also protecting…

• Ocado boss Tim Steiner has “bagged” a £54m bonus, despite the online supermarket posting a “bruising” £214.5m loss last year, says the BBC. The payout is the result of a long-term incentive scheme that paid out on the rising share price, which rose from £2.50 three years ago to £12.55 as of last week. Steiner (pictured) also earned £4.7m in salary and benefits that took his total pay to £58.7m, compared with almost £4m in 2018. Three other executives shared in £34m from the incentive scheme, according to the accounts. • Even as Intu, the owner of shopping centres, “races to secure at least £1bn in an emergency cash call”, the property giant is talking to investors about a new pay policy that could increase the share awards under…

European shareholders are starting to flex their muscles, says Jeremy Chan in Financial Director. In the past five years the number of activist investors has doubled and 5% of listed European stocks have become a target. That compares with 10% on the New York Stock Exchange. Activists on both sides of the Atlantic tend to concentrate on bigger companies. The cost of running a campaign to change course is more likely to be recouped at big companies because they may have developed into large conglomerates and growth will have slowed as the group matures. These two characteristics imply plenty of scope to enhance value by pressing the board to make disposals or change strategy.…

“In the Nineties when I started, I felt quite posh because my mum was a teacher. Nowadays, everyone around is landed gentry.” Suede bassist Mat Osman (pictured) on the music industry, quoted in The Mail on Sunday “[Pop star] Ed Sheeran gave me the best advice. He said that fame may not change you, but it does change the people around you, and you will no longer feel in control of the situation. We’re in uncharted territory here.” Scottish singer Lewis Capaldi, quoted in The Times “Many of those who dominate FTSE 100 companies and organisations like the CBI are much more similar to the worst sort of bureaucrats than they are to start-ups.” The prime minister’s adviser Dominic Cummings, quoted in The Sunday Times “When my life hit rock-bottom…

unherd.com/thepost An MP told me that when they hear the word “family” in a political context they think it’s code for reversing gay marriage and reimposing old gender roles, says Freddie Sayers. If that’s a Tory’s reaction, then it’s hard for those who believe that family matters, to get heard. Many are turning away from the individualism of recent decades and think we would be a healthier society with stronger families. But as David Brooks puts it in The Atlantic, “our culture is oddly stuck. We want stability and rootedness, but also mobility, dynamic capitalism and the liberty to adopt the lifestyle we choose. We want close families, but not the legal, cultural, and sociological constraints that made them possible”. What we think of as “nuclear families” needn’t be the…

The convenience of smartphone-based banks is proving increasingly popular, while some people have also been prompted to open an account by the offer of fee-free foreign spending. More than 42,300 people switched their current account to Monzo in the first nine months of 2019. The app-only bank has over three million account holders now, while Starling Bank has more than one million. Revolut boasts ten million worldwide. Digital-only bank accounts are opened and run via your smartphone. There are no branches and very limited websites. Everything is done via apps. Accounts are opened in minutes and come with useful budgeting tools and simple savings options. Most accounts will break down your spending by type so you can see where your money goes each month, which is handy if you are…

What happens if, as a result of your pension provider’s mistakes, you receive more pension than you’re entitled to in retirement? Disputes over overpayments have risen almost 20-fold over the past decade, according to the Pensions Ombudsman. “You may be able to fight a demand for repayment” The surge is due to widespread failures in pension schemes’ record-keeping. These have come to light as schemes have reviewed the impact of changes to the pension system, such as the abolition of people’s right to “contract-out” of parts of the state pension. The upshot is that when providers have checked their records with those kept by HM Revenue & Customs, they’ve realised they’ve been overpaying many people. Some 10,000 members of the civil service pension scheme have received overpayments. When such errors…

My long positions have done well over the last fortnight, with six of the seven tips rising. Storage firm Safestore climbed from 801p to 855p, homebuilder Bellway increased from 4,077p to 4,243p, car manufacturer Volkswagen advanced from €163 to €172, building firm Taylor Wimpey climbed from 219p to 232p and recycling firm DS Smith rose from 357p to 358p. Coach and bus company National Express ticked up from 441p to 442p. The only share to decline was drug company Bausch Health Companies, down from $27.91 to $27.74. Five out of seven of my long tips are making money, with overall profits of £4,819. Sadly, four out of my five short tips also appreciated. Ride hailing service Uber rose from $37.15 to $39.66 while social network Twitter increased from $32.85 to…

Rolls-Royce Holdings (LSE: RR) is a multinational engineering company that designs, manufactures and distributes power systems for aviation and other industries. It was loss-making last year and the dividend has declined by around 2% since 2010. Earnings per share have dwindled, which will put further downward pressure on the dividend. The stock fell sharply last month after the group said it would have to replace 30 Boeing 787 engines because there was a chance a power surge would turn them off mid-flight. The stock has lost 28% in the last year.…

2018 Grace, Koshu Private Reserve, Yamanashi, Japan £20.95, thewhiskyexchange.com  This is the first time that I have felt moved to write up a koshu in this column. Japan’s most famous grape is a hard one to love. I have attended annual koshu tastings for a good few years and I have always felt rather depressed at the gallons of innocuous, feeble, hollow wines which are seemingly prized by koshu lovers. Water white, mildly soapy, short and dilute, this is a style of white wine that apparently goes beautifully with sushi and other Japanese fare and yet I cannot think of a wine style less capable of handling soy sauce, wasabi, teriyaki and other accompaniments to this heavenly style of cuisine. Koshu tend to be expensive too and some,…

The Nintendo Play-Station is a one-off (see left). But there does appear to be a growing market in collectable (read “retro”) video games. “The hottest investments are games for the Nintendo Entertainment System, which popularised characters such as Link, Mega Man and Mario in the 1980s,” says Jason Bailey in The New York Times. A collector who spent almost $1,500 on one game was able to resell it for $12,000. “You almost can’t pay too much, because stuff is going up so fast,” Josh Hamblin, the owner of SideQuest Games in Oregon, who also advises collectors, tells the paper. Nostalgia is one reason. Collectors who are now in their 30s and 40s are fond of the video games from their  childhoods. The market really took off in 2018, when WataGames…

This week, we’re clearing our desk at the office, putting away tools on the farm and skipping down to Argentina. We’re curious to see how the country operates with 55% inflation and a new government determined to make things worse. Since we were there last year, the peso has lost about half its value. Inflation is only part of the tale. In 1853, the Argentines agreed on a constitution, largely based on the US model. It has the familiar legislative, executive and judicial branches, elected representatives, checks and balances. The system worked plausibly well for the first 100 years. By 1914, the Argentines were richer than the French. The expression “as rich as an Argentine” was not followed by laughter, but envy. “When the money goes, everything goes. Even the…