Innehållsförteckning för Issue 1007 från MoneyWeek

Environmental group Greenpeace has been fined £80,000 after a Scottish court found it guilty of the “wilful defiance” of a court order banning its occupation of a North Sea oil rig, says Severin Carrell in The Guardian. It follows a series of protests by Greenpeace against North Sea oil drilling by Shell and BP in 2019, which involved occupying rigs. Americans have lost at least $77m in scams related to Covid-19, says Greg Iacurci on CNBC. The tally of more than 60,000 cases is likely to be a “severe undercount”, warns the National Consumers League. The average loss was $272 per consumer.…

UK house prices are falling, reports Joe Curtis for City AM. Halifax’s data shows that prices declined for the fourth month in a row in June, the longest losing streak since 2010. That came despite a sharp recovery in market activity last month, with new mortgage enquiries up by 100% since May. Last week Nationwide reported that British house prices fell on an annual basis for the first time in eight years in June. Still, the 0.1% setback will hardly leave anyone with negative equity. Yet some corners of the property market are positively frenetic, says James Pickford in the Financial Times. Property site Zoopla reported last month that sales are 4% higher than before the pandemic, while asking prices are up by 7% on the year. The optimism looks…

Facebook knows “a thing or two about virality”, says The Economist. But it was “probably surprised” by the rapid success of a campaign launched in mid-June accusing the social network of publishing material inciting violence. By 1 July the movement had persuaded 600 firms, including Pfizer and Starbucks, to remove advertisements from the platform. Still, the share price has recovered to a near-record peak. No wonder: the $70bn advertising division is based on eight million clients, “most of them tiny companies... reliant on Facebook as an essential digital storefront”. What’s more, the biggest 100 advertisers on Facebook account for less than a fifth of revenue. Network and cable television are far more dependent on their big brands.…

Lemonade, a home insurance start-up, saw its shares more than double when it floated in New York last Wednesday. The stock jumped from $29 to $60, say Oliver Ralph and Miles Kruppa in the Financial Times, propelling the group’s valuation “well beyond” the $2bn it reached in a private financing round last year. The initial public offering (IPO) raised $320m. Lemonade is “aiming to disrupt a centuries-old industry”. Unlike traditional insurers, it does not make more money if it rejects claims. It takes a fee on each policy it sells; reserves not used for claims are donated to charity, a strategy the start-up hopes will appeal to younger customers.…

Shares in Uber jumped by 4% after it acquired food-delivery platform Postmates for $2.65bn, says Bloomberg. The deal, designed to bolster Uber’s food arm Uber Eats, is the culmination of four years of discussion. It follows Uber’s failed bid to acquire GrubHub, which was instead “scooped up” by Just Eat Takeaway.com for $7.3bn. Postmates was “one of the first to let customers in the US order meal delivery using a mobile app”. The deal, which will keep the Postmates app running separately for now, suggests that Uber, “under pressure” as its core ride-hailing business reels from global lockdowns, is “trying to expand its reach in the food-delivery business”, says Michael Cogley in The Daily Telegraph. In particular, Uber Eats is keen to dislodge DoorDash from its spot as the food-delivery…

• Insurance firm Aviva has appointed Amanda Blanc (pictured) as its chief executive, replacing Maurice Tulloch. Blanc has held several senior positions at rivals Axa and Zurich. She will be paid £1m a year in basic salary, and a bonus of up to 200% of that. No bonus will be paid until the dividend payments resume, having been suspended due to the pandemic. Blanc will also be eligible for awards under Aviva’s long-term incentive plan, which is typically 300% of basic salary. Her appointment brings the number of women currently leading FTSE 100 companies up to six, says The Guardian. • Thames Water’s ousted boss, Steve Robertson, left with a £2.8m payoff, despite a disastrous period for the water giant, including fines for sewage leaks, says The Sunday Times. He…

The spike in coronavirus cases across America may be less concerning than it looks, says veteran analyst Christopher Wood in Greed & Fear, his weekly strategy note. The average age of new cases is falling, while deaths are declining despite rising infections. That may be because increased testing is finding a greater number of cases and more of those cases are younger and healthier people, but it could also imply that Covid-19 is evolving to become less virulent and will burn out. “If such is indeed the case, it is extremely bullish. Investors should certainly keep an open mind on such a possibility.” However, even if we face a severe second wave of infections, we are unlikely to see a fresh round of global lockdowns. Donald Trump will not countenance…

■ The failure of Neil Woodford’s Equity Income fund last year prompted widespread criticism of Hargreaves Lansdown’s (HL) Wealth 50 selection – a “best-buy” list that promoted the star manager’s flawed fund, encouraging investors to “pour billions” into it, says Ali Hussain in The Times. So investors have been interested to see what the revamped version of the list would consist of. The answer? Still too many duds. A third of the managed funds it has picked are consistent laggers, “and in some cases the worst in their sector”. According to fund analyst Trustnet, HL did not cut failing funds from the Wealth 50 list, instead adding 17 new ones to the renamed “Wealth Shortlist”. Of the 55 funds now in the list, 17 are serious underperformers. Among these are…

glineq.blogspot.com The view in the West is that corruption exists mainly in less developed countries and that the corruption accounts for the lack of growth. Yet as Yuen Yuen Ang shows in China’s Gilded Age: The Paradox of Economic Boom and Vast Corruption, this is too simplistic, says Branko Milanovic. Large-scale looting of public funds is difficult to justify on any grounds, but corruption takes many forms. It can mean cash to speed decisions, such as to get a licence to operate a business, say. But the most “desirable” form, says Ang, is that involved in winning permission for big infrastructure projects. These enhance growth and boost investment, leading to improved infrastructure and greater employment. Lower-level corruption can also give bureaucrats an incentive to care about local investment and growth…

• Millions of savers with workplace pension plans could be in line for increased retirement benefits. Ministers have launched a review of the current cap on charges, which limits defined-contribution pension schemes in the workplace to an annual charge of no more than 0.75% a year. The cap, which applies to large numbers of schemes set up to comply with the auto-enrolment regulation requiring employers to provide staff with pension plans, has been widely criticised as too high since its introduction in 2015. Charges represent a drag on growth in the assets of pension schemes, with the effect multiplying over time, so reducing fees could have significant benefits for savers. • Tens of thousands of married women who may have been underpaid state pensions – in some cases for many…

Many of the eye-catching developments in the space sector come from private companies, notably SpaceX and Blue Origin. On the space tourism front, however, Virgin Galactic (NYSE: SPCE) has also caught the imagination of the media and the public and is available to invest in. It currently has plenty of cash – around $240m – but is burning through it at a rate of around $60m a year and until it starts sending paying customers into space and returning them safely, it will not make many sales. Another option is to look into the defence giants involved in the space economy. Although Boeing (NYSE: BA) failed to make it through to the final three of Nasa’s lunar lander competition, it is still an important company in the space economy. Its…

The rally in US equities, with the benchmark S&P 500 index now up 40% from its low in mid-March, has left many stocks trading only slightly below their level at the start of this year. However, some technology shares have surged by even more as investors think that the crisis could lead to many activities traditionally carried out face-to-face being conducted online instead. One of these is GSX Techedu Inc (NYSE: GSX), a Chinese company that specialises in after-school online tutoring. A year ago the shares were trading at barely $10. However, by January they had risen to more than $23. They are currently at $66: a 750% rise in a single year. But the firm’s meteoric rise, which follows the implosion of Chinese companies such as Luckin Coffee, has…

The race to develop a commercial vaccine for Covid-19 has brought the healthcare industry into sharp focus. It is a highly diverse and rich area of the market for all types of investors. A growing global population, which is both ageing and ailing, remains ahighly supportive longterm backdrop for the sector. The rise of the middle class in emerging markets is another tailwind, with more patients able to afford healthcare. Changes in their dietary habits, meanwhile, will lead to an increase in chronic conditions such as diabetes, autoimmune and cardiovascular diseases. A sector to suit all investors The depth and breadth offered by the global healthcare industry is second to none. It includes well-established multinational companies operating in drug research and development, life sciences, diagnostics, distribution, medical technology and animal…

A British court ruling has denied a request by Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro (pictured) to withdraw more than $1bn-worth of gold from reserves the country has stored in the UK. It’s “a reminder that much of the world—like the Venezuelan peopledoesn’t accept Mr Maduro as the country’s legitimate leader”, says The Wall Street Journal. About a quarter of Venezuela’s gold reserves are stored at the Bank of England and Maduro’s government has been trying to withdraw it since 2018. The UK refused to hand over the 31 tons of bullion (worth around $1.8bn), as it recognises opposition leader Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s interim leader, and Guaidó has instructed the Bank to ignore Maduro’s request. “The Guaidó and Maduro governments are fighting over state assets around the world, including frozen bank…

China is on course for a “swift ‘V-shaped recovery’”, says Gurpreet Narwan in The Times. Post-lockdown industrial indicators have been improving for some time, and now consumers have joined in the rebound. The services sector is advancing at the fastest rate in ten years. China’s thorough approach to eradicating the virus has enabled consumers to feel confident enough to go out and spend again, says Jonathan Cheng in The Wall Street Journal. The economy suffered its first GDP contraction in decades in the first quarter, but the International Monetary Fund thinks that China will be the only big economy to register growth for 2020 as a whole. The bulls are back The positive data cheered markets, helping the local CSI 300 stock index rally to its highest level since the…

Three to buy Induction Healthcare Group The Mail on Sunday The NHS loses about £1bn every year from missed outpatient appointments. This health technology firm aims to change that with its healthcare app, which helps patients to manage appointments and store medical records. Eighteen hospitals are already using the system and interest will only grow as the NHS looks for ways to manage the post-lockdown treatment backlog. This is not a business with a long history, but patient, risk-tolerant investors will find much to like. 99p Standard Life Aberdeen The Evening Standard In a time of uncertainty people will be looking to save more, which should prove a tailwind for this global investment company. Management has been struggling to bring together the “creaking” pre-merger tech systems of Standard Life and…

• Deutsche Bank “can’t shake off” its troubles with American regulators, says Patricia Kowsmann in The Wall Street Journal. New York’s financial-services regulator has fined Deutsche Bank AG $150m for “failing to properly monitor its dealings” with the late disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein (pictured). Despite knowing Epstein’s “terrible criminal history”, the bank “inexcusably failed to detect or prevent millions of dollars of suspicious transactions”. Another scandal, meanwhile, relates to its relationship with two European banks embroiled in money-laundering scandals. • To say natural gas is facing challenges would be an “understatement”, but this also makes it “just the kind of environment that appeals to Warren Buffett”, says Lauren Silva Laughlin on Breakingviews. Berkshire Hathaway has paid $9.7bn for most of US utility firm Dominion Energy’s pipelines.…

After a “week-long circus, full of parades, trickery, games and prizes”, Russians voted to approve a series of 200 constitutional amendments, says The Economist. The changes include “a long list of crowd-pleasing ideas”, such as inflation-proof pensions and protected status for the Russian language, but the main purpose was to allow the current president, Vladimir Putin, to stay in power beyond 2024, when he is obliged by the current constitution to stand down, and to concentrate even more power in his hands. Putin is now effectively Russia’s “life-long supreme leader”. The post-Soviet dream of a “European-style liberal democracy” taking hold in Russia is now over, says the Financial Times. Russia has “defaulted to its centuries-old model of one-man rule”. Still, the fact that these measures had to be introduced at…

Would you pay £1,000 to shut your neighbours up? asks Sally Williams in the Daily Mail. Plenty of us would, especially now. DIY projects, loud music and late-night barbecues have caused a sharp increase in noise complaints since the start of lockdown. Leeds city council reported the biggest rise, with 1,171 complaints in April compared with 780 in the same month last year. The increase in neighbourhood rows has led to a business boom for “professional peacemakers”. Warring neighbours can expect to pay from £375 to £2,500 per day (split between both parties) to outfits such as UK Mediation, who are being kept busy as restrictions on our movements continue to “put our relationships with those next door under ever more strain”. The boom could go on for months. Though…

Media tycoon James Murdoch stands to make around £47m from the sale of his shares in Tesla, says Jamie Nimmo in The Mail on Sunday. He was handed the share options (which give him the right to buy Tesla’s shares at a predetermined price) in 2017 on becoming a member of the electric-car company’s nominating and corporate governance committee – those options cost between $261 and $370 to acquire. Since then, Tesla’s share price has soared, to $1,209 as of last Friday. (Earlier that week, Tesla had even overtaken Japanese car giant Toyota in terms of market value.) Murdoch will be able to sell the shares from next year, netting the huge windfall. Still, even that vast sum is dwarfed by the potential $50bn bonus that awaits the carmaker’s founder,…

On the face of it, real estate investment trusts (Reits) and other stocks that hold property are lagging badly in this rally. The global iShares Developed Markets Property Yield ETF (LN: IWDP) is down more than 20% this year, even after rallying 30% from its March lows. Yet that figure doesn’t tell the whole story. Many industrial Reits – especially those that specialise in warehouses, such as Segro, Britain’s largest Reit – are near all-time highs. So are data-centre Reits such as Digital Realty Trust in the US, or housing Reits such as Germany’s Vonovia. It’s the Reits that specialise in offices, retail or hospitality that have been hard-hit, as epitomised by Land Securities; it’s down almost 45% this year and is up just 8% from its lows. “Land Securities…

The FTSE 250 index of mid-caps has done very well over the past quarter-century. As Anthony Lynch, manager of the Mercantile Investment Trust, noted in February, “the FTSE 250 Index of mid-cap companies has not only trounced the FTSE 100 since 1995 but has also beaten the S&P 500 Index over the same period”. In the last five years, however, the 11.6% return of the FTSE 250 has lagged the FTSE 100’s 15.5%. So this could be a rare opportunity to buy mid-caps at bargain prices. The £195m Schroder UK Mid Cap Fund (LSE: SCP) is on a 15% discount to net asset value (NAV). Admittedly, the performance of the £1.9bn Mercantile Trust has been 15% better over the last five years, but Mercantile trades on a discount of 10%…

A tax cut is the way to boost jobs Casey Mulligan and Stephen Moore The Wall Street Journal As part of the economic revival plan, President Trump favours suspension of the payroll tax. House speaker Nancy Pelosi opposes it, say Casey Mulligan and Stephen Moore. Pelosi is “pushing” instead for more relief, including an extension of the weekly $600 supplemental unemployment payments. The proposals create opposite incentives. The first rewards employees for returning to work and encourages small businesses to hire. The second would pay five out of six workers more to stay at home. Translated into figures, the first would boost employment by an estimated 2.7 million jobs, providing a 1.2% boost to GDP in the fourth quarter, while the Pelosi plan would eliminate an estimated ten million jobs…

iea.org.uk Auto-enrolment was introduced to “nudge” people into pension schemes, says Philip Booth, the idea being that most people would rationally like to save, but inertia keeps them from actually getting round to it. This is considered a success because most people do not opt out. But what about those people for whom saving into a pension makes no sense – the young who are saving for a house or paying down debt, for example, or those whose earnings are too low to make it worthwhile? They’ve been nudged into a scheme that they would perhaps like to opt out of, but they suffer from inertia too. What’s more, employers must contribute too and are barred from offering salary instead, so the nudge is really “a big shove”, as opting…

Being trapped at home with a partner during lockdown has clearly proved hellish for many couples. The number of people inquiring about a divorce rose by 42% between 23 March and mid-May, according to Co-op Legal Services. “Concerns about finances, employment, coupled with the fact that households are having to spend an increased amount of time together can add strain on relationships,” says Tracey Moloney, Head of Family Law at Co-op Legal Services. “The average 65 year-old divorcee typically has a pension worth just £26,100” If you are emerging from lockdown with divorce on your mind there is much to consider. “Negotiating a divorce at times of economic stability is difficult enough. As asset values fluctuate in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, the task of figuring out a fair…

Plans for “pension superfunds”, cleared by industry regulators in recent weeks, could pose a threat to financial stability, according to Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England. Pensions specialists have spent more than two years working on the concept of pension superfunds, through which a number of large defined-benefit pension schemes could be consolidated into one scheme. They argue that where employers are looking to offload their defined benefit pension liabilities – a popular option with firms keen to manage risk and costs – superfunds could offer a better alternative for members and scheme sponsors than working with an insurer, which is currently the only option. Pension superfunds were effectively given the go-ahead last month by the Pensions Regulator, which published new rules governing how such arrangements could work,…

An economist from the Anglosphere is likely to tell you that the euro is structurally flawed and must implode. An economist in one of the 19 eurozone countries would say it is a work in progress and will survive. As the euro is the most widely used currency in foreign-exchange markets and central bank reserves after the US dollar, an implosion would have devastating effects within and outside the EU and thus on all of our finances. Geeks are often derided for their arcane interests – Jeremy Corbyn collected manhole covers – but obscure hobbies can be useful. For money and history geeks like me there are clear lessons from the last European common-currency experiment. Now all-but forgotten, it lasted 61 years (the euro is in its 21st year), from…

The global hub of the shipping industry is the Baltic Exchange. It derives from the Virginia and Baltick Coffee House in Threadneedle Street, where merchants and captains used to meet to exchange news and arrange for goods to be shipped around the world. Today, it produces daily indices of freight rates and allows traders to speculate on the direction of these rates through freight futures. Perhaps the most important index is the Baltic Dry index (BDI), a composite of various dry bulk carriers costs used as a proxy for global shipping rates. Many economists believe that because international trade is an important part of the global economy, upward movements in the BDI suggest that the global economy is doing well and falls suggest the opposite. Since the global economy affects…

Premier Foods (LSE: PFD) is a British food manufacturer. It owns more than 20 major brands, including Cadbury, Mr Kipling and Oxo. Investors “swooped” on the shares after the group reported profit and sales growth for the year to 28 March, says James Crux in Shares magazine. And sales are expected to have jumped by a fifth year-on-year in the second quarter of 2020. CEO Alex Whitehouse said this was due to rising interest in cooking during the lockdown; sauces such as Sharwood’s and Lloyd Grossman were especially popular. The stock has gained 118% in a year.…

Gerard Lee Bevan was born in London in 1869 and, after studying at Eton and Cambridge, took a job as a clerk at Barclay, Bevan, Tritton, Ransom & Bouverie (which later become Barclays bank). He was later a junior partner with stockbroker Ellis & Co in 1894. By 1912, he was effectively running the brokerage as its senior partner. In 1916 he bought a large stake in the City Equitable Fire Insurance Company from the notorious company promoter Clarence Hatry, becoming its chairman. He was also appointed director of several companies. What was the scam? Bevan’s appointment as chairman gave him control of the money that City Equitable received in premiums. Instead of putting it in low-risk assets, such as gilts (government bonds), which can easily be liquidated in order…

With companies across Europe scrambling to borrow to fight the economic effects of the pandemic, investment bankers have enjoyed a windfall, says Lucy Burton in The Daily Telegraph. The amount of debt raised in Europe in 2020 has already made banks $7.5bn in fees — “the highest payday from bond and loan deals for the year to date since before the 2008 financial crisis”. NFL star Patrick Mahomes (pictured) signed a ten-year contract extension with the Kansas City Chiefs worth a record $503m (£403m), the biggest such deal in the history of North American team sports, says the BBC. The 24-year-old quarterback is set to stay with the Chiefs until 2031. Earlier this year, he guided the Chiefs to their first championship win in 50 years.…

“For some [emerging-market] companies that are key enablers of longterm technological change, we believe that share prices don’t yet fully reflect the positive outlook. South Korean consumer electronics and semiconductor companies Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix continue to benefit from industry consolidation and now rising demand from other sectors aside from smartphones. The global market for DRAM memory chips... has now become a global oligopoly with Samsung and SK Hynix two of the three players (alongside US-listed Micron)... Market-leading semiconductor chip makers TSMC and MediaTek, both in Taiwan, are also well-positioned to benefit in a post-Covid-19 world [amid] the rollout of 5G networks and rising demand from servers as people consume more data and employees work from home around the world.” Ross Teverson, Jupiter…

Sweden’s MIPS has come up with a product that, like airbags, could one day be a standard safety feature, says Florian Soellner in Der Aktionaer. It makes a “Multi-directional Impact Protection System” for helmets. There is a second protective layer made of rubber lining the outer shell. The layers can rotate against each other, imitating how the brain’s cerebrospinal fluid rotates inside the skull: the body’s natural defence against blows to the head. The system is popular in the growing cycling industry while the prevalence of head injuries in industrial accidents also bodes well. The group simply licenses its technology to helmet makers, keeping costs down and margins high. A highly auspicious stock.…

Online fashion retailer Boohoo has lost a quarter of its market value following revelations that many of its clothes are “made at a Leicester garment factory where workers were paid less than the minimum wage”, say Rob Davies and Annie Kelly in The Guardian. An undercover reporter for The Sunday Times has found that staff were being paid “as little as £3.50 an hour in the factory”, and “were not wearing protective masks to stop the spread of Covid-19”. Boohoo has denied knowledge of the conditions, putting the blame on a rogue subcontractor, and has pledged to investigate, says the Financial Times. Still, the firm’s pleas of ignorance are unconvincing as subcontracting “has long been a problem in the UK’s garment industry”. Leicester in particular has attracted the attention of…

Sir Keir Starmer has “transformed Labour’s political fortunes” in the three months since he took over as leader”, says Rachel Sylvester in The Times. But if he is level pegging with Boris Johnson in the polls, on the “critical issue” of economic competence, Labour still lags “way behind” the Tories. This is “disastrous” at a time when more than 60% of voters rank the economy as the top priority. Starmer has “said little about economic policy” and the party position of take “whatever the Tories spend and double it” isn’t possible when a Tory chancellor is borrowing more than £200bn. If Starmer wants to get to No. 10, he must “face down the left and reclaim the mantle of economic competence”. According to areport from Labour Together, Labour’s disastrous defeat…

After several weeks in which punters have fled President Donald Trump, there has been a mini-revival in his prospects in the betting markets. This is perhaps down to a few scattered polls showing that the contest for the presidency in November may be slightly closer than many think, as well as a sense that things can’t get any worse for him. As a result, with £44.2m matched on Betfair, Trump’s odds have tightened a bit to 2.66 (37.5%). Similarly, the odds on his opponent, Joe Biden, have moved out a bit, though he is still odds-on to win at 1.76 (56.8%). I don’t think Trump is worth backing at the current price, and I wouldn’t put any more money on Biden if you have already done so. Instead, I’d go…

António Horta-Osório did a decent enough job as chief executive of Lloyds Bank. But whether shareholders will be all that sorry to see him leave office is open to question. The bank is back on astable footing, but it has hardly been making a fortune for investors. Over the last five years the shares have plunged from 80p to 30p and while much of that was lost during the Covid-19 crisis, the price was still at 60p before any of us had heard of Wuhan. With the dividend now scrapped for this year in response to the epidemic, it has hardly been a great asset to own. After all that, shareholders might well feel it is time for a change. Safe and dull is not good enough Whoever takes on…

In weightlifting, a barbell is a long and relatively light metal bar to which heavy weights are attached at both ends. Similarly, a barbell investment strategy means weighting a portfolio towards the two extreme ends of an asset class with nothing in the middle. This generally means the investor ends up with a combination of lower-risk, lower-return and high-risk, higher-return holdings. Unlike a real barbell, the amount invested at each end of the portfolio isn’t necessarily the same. For example, you might have 80% in safer assets and 20% in riskier assets, depending on what will produce the best balance of risk and return. The traditional use of the barbell approach is in bond investing. A bond barbell consisted of very short-term bonds (which offer lower yields but will mature…

Commerzbank, Germany’s second-largest lender, announced the resignation of its CEO and chairman last week, says Patricia Kowsmann in The Wall Street Journal. The group has been under pressure from activist investor Cerberus Capital, a US private-equity firm which holds over 5% of the company. It sent a letter to the chairman, Stefan Schmittmann, last month complaining about the bank’s lack of strategy and failure to “implement even its own progressively less ambitious plans”. CEO Martin Zielke has acknowledged that he bears responsibility for the bank’s “unsatisfactory” performance. Commerzbank’s shares have sunk by 25% this year. It lost €295m in the first quarter as the smaller companies on which it relies were hit by the virus.…

“That’s never been a problem for me, and I think that’s because of my family. That’s not the way the system should work, of course, but if the door is open, walk through the door.” Eve Hewson (pictured), daughter of Irish pop star Bono, on why she has not struggled to find work, quoted in The Sunday Telegraph “If I weren’t beautiful, do you think he’d be with me?” Melania Trump on being asked if she’d be with her husband if he weren’t rich, quoted in The Times “Risk is what’s left over after you think you’ve thought of everything.” US financial adviser Carl Richards, quoted in a Price Value Partners note “When I worked with Isabella Rossellini, Ihad a three-day shoot booked by L’Oréal from 7am to 10pm. I…

bbc.com/worklife A couple of years ago, Maria Konnikova took asabbatical from her job at the New Yorker to train as a professional poker player, says David Robson. The aim was to explore the role chance plays in our lives. She went on to win one of the most prestigious live poker tournaments and the $84,600 prize money. Her book on her experiences is not, though, about how to play poker, but “how to play the world”. Poker is a good model for life as, unlike, say, chess, “much of what you need to know is hidden from you”. Skill is helpful over the long run, yet in every moment you are at the mercy of chance. Humans tend not to be very good at realising this and acting accordingly. In…

Several thousand high-earning savers could be in line for compensation after a landmark High Court judgment that Pension Protection Fund (PPF) rules amount to age discrimination. The dispute centres on the retirement incomes paid by the PPF, the industry lifeboat scheme, to members of defined-benefit pension schemes when their employers go bust. The PPF guarantees that members who have reached retirement age and begun drawing their pension will not lose any benefits. But for those yet to reach retirement age, there is a cap on the payout: around £41,400 for savers aged 65. A dramatic impact Since most pensions do not exceed this cap, few people are affected. But for higher earners with substantial pension entitlements, the effect can be dramatic. In one case considered by the High Court, a…

“The space economy is already worth $340bn; it could reach $1trn by 2040” Everyone knows the name of the first man on the Moon and the historic words he spoke there. You may even remember the name of the second man on the Moon. But what about the last man on the Moon? History seems to have forgotten him. In December 1972, Eugene Cernan and his crewmate Harrison Schmitt, astronauts on Apollo 17, spent 22 hours exploring the Moon’s Taurus-Littrow Valley, driving around in the lunar rover (setting a lunar land-speed record of 11.2mph in the process) and collecting over 100 kilograms of rock samples. As Cernan climbed the ladder back into the lunar module, he said: “As I take man’s last step from the surface, back home for some…

Covid-19 is not the first and won’t be the last black swan event to shake the world economy, and it will have far-reaching consequences. What will these be for investors? Carlota Perez’s work on technology revolutions is an important starting point. Perez shows in her timeless book, Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital, that repeated surges of technological development over the past three centuries follow large economic shocks. This is because new technology is adopted by firms given no other option to survive, as seen in the age of steam and railways, steel and electricity, mass production and the automobile evolution. In this age of information and telecommunications, it’s difficult to argue against the importance of digital transformation or a culture of innovation. Before this year, business leaders and investors could…

This last fortnight hasn’t been kind to my long tips, with all five declining. International Consolidated Airlines Group (ICAG) slipped from 264p to 225p; energy giant Royal Dutch Shell declined from 1,376p to 1,314p. Television group ITV fell from 80p to 70p. The pubs were allowed to reopen in England last weekend, but pub chain JD Wetherspoon failed to profit; the stock slipped from 1,161p to 1,002p. Even equipment company United Rentals, currently my most profitable recommendation, went down slightly, from $158 to $151. Overall, the profit on my long tips fell from £2,128 to £700. The performance of my short tips was more mixed. On the one hand two out of the three went in my favour, with health insurance broker eHealth declining from $107 to $104 while electric…

On The Beach Group (LSE: OTB) is a British online travel agent specialising in short and medium-haul package holidays to Europe. Its results in the half-year to 31 March 2020 have laid bare the “devastation” caused by Covid-19, says Jim Armitage in the Evening Standard. The pre-tax loss was £34m compared with a £12m profit a year earlier. Sales slumped by 66% to £21.4m, adds Shares magazine. The company reported a significant increase in bookings from mid-June, “albeit from a very low base”. The share price has fallen by 41% over the past 12 months.…

2018 Cordillera de los Andes, Chardonnay, Miguel Torres, Limarí Valley, Chile £13.99, 64 branches of Waitrose and at waitrosecellar.com There is a covert faction out there of determined and vehemently loyal palates with rather select desires. This rogue, outlying army of olfactory specialists has a lifelong and fully fledged passion for brazenly oaked chardonnay. Now don’t get me wrong, this is not the head-banging, death-metal, high-octane, marmalade-hued, vinous poison of yesteryear. We all agree that that 15% alcohol, American oak-fermented, hangover-syrup has thankfully been confined to the great wine spittoon in the sky, hopefully never to return. No, this fiercely loyal chardonnay sect adores full-bore, gloriously proportioned chardonnay that is rewarded with epic-quality carpentry because it is of such high quality and undeniable gustatory prowess. I, too, love this style…

Club shirts 1. Barcelona (1991-1992 away shirt) £599.99 ( RRP: £27.99, overall appreciation: 2,044%) This rare shirt (pictured, left) was worn in FC Barcelona’s first-ever European Cup triumph under Johan Cruyff – one of the most famous nights in the side’s history. 2. Napoli (1990-1991 home shirt) Worth £499.99 (RRP: £27.99, overall appreciation: 1,686%) Napoli’s home shirt featuring the Scudetto shield and Mars sponsorship was worn by Diego Maradona in his final season in Naples. 3. Manchester United (1986-1988 third shirt) £449.99 (RRP: £24.99, overall appreciation: 1,701%) To say third kits from this era are a rare commodity would be an understatement. This was also Sir Alex Ferguson’s first season in charge, and a classic Adidas design makes this one of the most valuable Man Utd shirts. 4. A.C. Milan (1999-2000…

• Model Elle Macpherson (pictured) is giving her friend, the actress and “Queen of woo-woo wellness”, Gwyneth Paltrow, a run for her money, says Alison Boshoff in the Daily Mail. Last week, Macpherson “rhapsodised” on social media about a “personal ozone device ” for the kitchen, without explaining how it works. She has also had a “holistic sound acupuncture facial” from Goddess Lashes for $250 and a lymphatic drainage massage “in search of the flattest possible stomach”. Her company, WelleCo, sells “alkalising” nutritional supplements, such as her Super Elixir. For £62.50, it is “your daily alkalising greens supplement formulated by nutritional doctors using 45 premium wholefood ingredients for nourishment at cellular level”, apparently. “Elle seems to be going all out to be Goopier than Gwynnie.” • “This week alone I…

When the government gets involved in a project, you expect corruption and incompetence. With no need to satisfy customers, no concern for the bottom line and no worries about creditors or bankruptcies, the feds can pay off friends, punish enemies, squander resources and double down on policies that don’t work. But in their recent takeover of the whole US economy, even we were surprised. Governments, state and federal, aimed to stifle the spread of Covid-19 by locking down the economy. But just last week, the US reported a “record number” of new infections. The infections are becoming more and more common, say the reports, among young people. And testing has revealed that the virus is, or was, more widespread than previously thought. “We expect incompetence from the feds. But this…

£1.1m How much Prince Charles, as the Duke of Cornwall, received from the unclaimed assets – or bona vacantia – of residents of Cornwall who died without leaving a will or having surviving relatives, in the year to March. The money is invested for good causes. $1.4bn The combined value of the almost 1.1 million stimulus cheques that had been issued to Americans who had filed a tax return in 2019, but have since died, according to US watchdog, the Government Accountability Office. The Inland Revenue Service believed it did not have the legal authority to withhold the $1,200 cheques, aimed at stimulating spending. S$9,000 How much (around £5,200) a group of British men living in Singapore were fined each for going on a “bar crawl” during the country’s lockdown…