Innehållsförteckning för Issue 1015 från MoneyWeek

A few weeks ago we were mildly surprised to see Warren Buffett come round to our way of thinking on a few things. He sold most of his shares in Goldman Sachs and bought into gold miner Barrick Gold. As Charles Gave of Gavekal Research notes, this is a pretty comprehensive shift. Goldman is the kind of firm you own if you believe that Wall Street’s record of money-making via financial engineering is sustainable. Barrick is the kind you buy if you don’t. So the combined trades are tantamount to “selling by proxy the fiat money system” from which Wall Street’s financial engineers have long benefited. Perhaps Buffett is “starting to short the US central bank”, something we have been doing with our gold holdings for many years – and…

Gulf-based airlines may end up having to pay backdated royalties to the likes of Ed Sheeran and Adele, says Steve Bird in The Daily Telegraph, if a court case against Qatar Airways succeeds. UK copyright group The Performing Right Society for Music is taking the airline to court for using more than 5,800 songs without a licence. Most airlines are licensed to use music by their domestic copyright societies, but there is no such organisation in the Gulf. Piers Corbyn was fined £10,000 for breaking coronavirus laws following an anti-lockdown protest in London’s Trafalgar Square, says Chris York on Huffington Post. The brother of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn appeared on stage alongside conspiracy theorist David Icke. Piers Corbyn said there was “no justification whatsoever” for the fine.…

Special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) – also known as cash shells – have “suddenly become the hottest way to raise capital, especially in tech”, says Kara Swisher in The New York Times. A SPAC raises money through an initial public offering (IPO), then uses the cash to buy a business that wants to list on the stockmarket but doesn’t want to go through the IPO process. As such, they are “essentially a back door to taking a start-up public”. This appeals to many tech entrepreneurs, who believe that the investment banks that carry out IPOs tend to underprice them, leaving “billions on the table that should go to the companies, and not to Wall Street firms and their clients”. What’s more, most detest the hassle of taking part in an…

The amount of tax paid by firms in America has grown far more slowly than corporate profits over the past five decades. Corporate income taxes have risen by an average of just 0.7% per year after inflation since 1970, compared with an increase of 3.4% per year in profits. The difference is not solely due to lower corporate tax rates; until Donald Trump’s tax cuts in 2017, the top rate of corporate tax was little changed since the late 1980s. Instead, companies have become better at using accounting rules, tax breaks and loopholes to cut their effective tax bills. Hence taxes haven’t just lagged profits: they’ve also lagged GDP growth, which has averaged 2.5% per year. As a result, total US corporate tax paid has more than halved as a…

Thanks to “blowout earnings” – more than double the expected total – in its second quarter, Zoom’s shares have hit a record high, says Kari Paul in The Guardian. The company is now worth more than $100m. Sales rose by 355% year-on-year to $663.5m in the three months to 1 August, also eclipsing analysts’ estimates. Despite facing “intense criticism” over privacy, the videoconferencing company has benefited from a huge jump in users as countries have locked down. Zoom has become “nearly synonymous” with video hangouts. It is used for happy hours, teaching in schools and events. Zoom may have surpassed expectations, but its management certainly doesn’t think that this is a one-off, says Nico Grant on Bloomberg. The company predicts that the “explosive growth” will continue, with overall sales of…

In the US, Covid-19, law and order, and the economy are shaping up to be the key battleground areas in the November election. In his Pittsburgh speech on Monday, Democratic nominee Joe Biden “excoriated” President Donald Trump as a “threat to the safety of all Americans”, describing him as a “toxic presence” who has “encouraged violence” on the streets and is mishandling the pandemic, says Matt Viser in The Washington Post. Nevertheless, it is “entirely foreseeable” that the “anarchist uprisings” now taking place across urban America, led by people “bitterly opposed” to Trump, may lead to the “re-election of the person they most loathe”, says Andrew Roberts in The Daily Telegraph. They have already helped his polling figures and if the liberal-left continue to describe the nightly riots as “mostly…

• Boris Johnson is on the hunt for a spokesperson to front the government’s new daily televised press conferences. The prime minister had tried to recruit Riz Lateef (pictured), the leading presenter on BBC London, for the role, which comes with a salary of “at least” £100,000, say Tim Shipman and Rosamund Urwin in The Sunday Times. The current front-runner is Allegra Stratton, aformer journalist and now communications director for the chancellor, Rishi Sunak. Work is underway to turn a former colonial courtroom at 9 Downing Street into a studio for the start of the press briefings this autumn. • Matthew Moulding, the co-founder and executive chairman of The Hut Group, could pocket £725m in shares if the online health and beauty firm’s market value rises by around 30% to…

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, interest rates across the developed world were cut to near 0%. As a result, the world’s central banks have been forced to experiment with ever more radical monetary policies, from negative interest rates to quantitative easing (QE – printing money to buy government bonds and other assets). The economic slump caused by our reaction to coronavirus is now forcing central banks to delve even deeper into their tool boxes. Last week, the Federal Reserve changed its remit, in effect saying that it would now allow inflation to rise (within reason) above its 2% target in order to offset previous years of below-target inflation (see page 5). This week, Fed governor Richard Clarida indicated that “yield curve control” is another option the Fed…

■ Volatility hedge funds, those that bet on market volatility, turned out to be some of 2020’s biggest losers from the crisis, say Laurence Fletcher and Richard Henderson in the Financial Times. You’d think funds specialising in ups and downs — they buy and sell derivatives to profit from the movements of stocks, bonds and currencies — would thrive in periods of market turmoil . But this time they shorted volatility, assuming calm would endure. They lost 2.4% to July 2020 compared with the average 0.3% loss among hedge funds and the 2.4% return from the S&P 500. The VIX index of stockmarket volatility rocketed to 82.7% mid-March, higher than during the 2008 financial crisis, as investors panicked about the damage the pandemic would cause. Among those losing money were…

mises.org “Sustainability” is the political religion of our time, and yet at the same time our economic structures undermine its basis, says Pascal Hügli. “First and foremost, negative interest rates are eating into the structure of the economy and turning the world upside down.” When interest rates are negative, the “arrow of time” runs backward. The present is more valuable than the future, diminishing the attraction of providing for it. Once the future is neglected, the present too degenerates into stagnation. The concrete consequences of this are rampant consumerism as saving is not worthwhile; misallocation of capital as previously undesirable investments and projects appear profitable; a growing burden of debt; an artificially intense competition among economic actors; and the rehabilitation of zombie companies. All of this helps explain the rise…

At the start of the crisis in March I suggested investing in International Consolidated Airlines Group (LSE: IAG), the owner of British Airways. Those who took my advice would have endured a bumpy ride. The shares surged to 330p before falling back to 155p in early August, meaning that you would have had to close the position at the adjusted stop-loss of 200p. The stock is now at 216p, slightly below where it was when I first tipped it in March. Despite the roller-coaster ride, I think it is time to give the airline group asecond chance. One of the key reasons why IAG’s shares have done so badly is that the travel restrictions and border closures imposed by most governments in order to combat the virus have lasted longer…

Financial fraud has soared this year, with pension and investment scams especially rife. Since 2017 “almost £31m has been lost to pension scams,” reports The Times. Figures from Action Fraud show that it doesn’t matter what size your pension is, criminals will try to steal it. “Scammers targeted pensions worth as little as £1,000.” “If a deal comes with the promise of a discount provided you act fast, alarm bells should start ringing” Pension scams have many names. You may be told it is a pension loan, early pension-release, pension selling, cashing in your pension, or pension liberation. “These are all different names for essentially the same thing – an agreement to transfer your pension savings to something that allows you to access your funds before the age of 55,”…

Pension experts urge savers considering transferring their occupational pensions to different schemes to take professional advice. In some cases, taking advice is a legal requirement. If you’re in poor health, it is crucial: shifting your pension could leave your heirs facing an inheritance tax (IHT) bill if you die shortly thereafter. A landmark legal case just concluded after a long battle between HM Revenue & Customs and a bereaved family underlines the risks. HMRC argued that a mother with a terminal illness had transferred out of one type of pension plan into another knowing she would not live long enough to claim retirement benefits. Her aim, HMRC argued, was to prevent her sons from having to pay IHT on the money; when she subsequently died, HMRC told the sons they…

Today’s low-growth macroeconomic environment makes it very hard for investors to find growth companies with a profitable outlook. Our approach consists of identifying trends disrupting traditional business models in order to find promising secular, or long-term, growers. We thus develop a multi-thematic portfolio invested across sectors and geographies. We seek out companies with large and expanding markets for their products and services and an opportunity to penetrate those markets. We are very conscious, however, that most of the available information is already encapsulated in the stock price. We therefore try to develop a view that diverges from the consensus. Covid-19’s boost to e-commerce JD.com (Hong Kong: 9618) is one of the leading e-commerce players in China. E-Commerce is a typical example of the disruptive trends we focus on. With the Covid-19…

OnlyFans is a social network where individuals can post content – workout videos, for example – and receive payment direct from their followers. But unlikmostsimilar services, OnlyFans also allows pornographic content. That hs made it popular with adult entertainers, not to mention laid-off workers looking to make extra cash by selling X-rated content online, says Ruchira Sharma on iNews. Now singer and ex-Disney star Bella Thorne (pictured) has been accused of ruining the platform for other users. Thorne reportedly charged $200 for an image that fans thought would be nude. When it turned out it wasn’t, the platform saw a wave of refund requests. Apparently, as a result OnlyFans introduced a $50 cap on such “pay-per-view” images and a $100 cap on “tips”. Those more reliant on OnlyFans for income…

“The global fawn fest over Shinzo Abe’s departure takes the you-do-not-know-what-you-have-until-you-lose-it sentiment to new heights,” says William Pesek in the Nikkei Asian Review. If we take “brutally honest stock of all that Abe failed to do with his 2,800-plus days in power”, we see that just one of the three much-touted “arrows” that made up “Abenomics” was fired successfully. The Bank of Japan’s aggressive monetary policies helped deliver “the longest expansion since the 1980s” – although this failed to kick off “virtuous cycles of rising wages and consumption”. But the promise of pro-growth fiscal policies “fell to earth”, while that of massive deregulation “never got deployed”. That may be too harsh, reckons Ma Tieying of investment bank DBS. True, annual GDP growth of 1% under Abe was only modestly higher…

“Apple’s stock split… triggered major changes [in the Dow Jones Industrial Average], which is weighted by share price instead of by market value. Amgen, Salesforce.com and Honeywell International entered the 30-company index, while Exxon Mobil, Pfizer and Raytheon Technologies are out. Those ousted stocks might seem unattractive based on recent performance … [but] a 2008 study … found that stocks removed from the index outperformed those added over a five-year period by an average of more than 100 percentage points since 1928… Mean reversion – expectations eventually catching up with reality – explains much of the phenomenon … Weak returns for the removed stocks imply expectations are low… The strategy isn’t foolproof [and] removal from an index isn’t reason alone to buy a stock, but investors shouldn’t forget that dumpster…

Two to buy CVS Investors Chronicle Britain’s largest veterinary-services company operates more than 500 practices. Levels of pet ownership have risen steadily over the last ten years and “rocketed” under lockdown. The number of insured pets has risen too, which will “help to protect CVS’s income in an economic downturn”. The reopening of its small-animal sites has boosted sales. The forward price/earnings ratio of 23 does not fully reflect the company’s potential. 1,205p DFS Furniture The Times People forced by the pandemic to stay at home are “using their spare cash to make their homes and gardens... a bit smarter or... a bit more bearable”. That has bolstered the home-improvement sector. Sofa retailer DFS is a“post-lockdown winner”, with orders worth £70m in the six weeks since it reopened its stores.…

Last week Rolls-Royce warned that its future “could be at risk” after it plunged to a record £5.4bn half-year loss, says Simon Foy in The Daily Telegraph. It says the collapse in air travel has crushed demand for its engines. So it has signalled its intention to raise £2bn from asset sales, including its ITP Aero division, which makes turbine blades for jet engines. Meanwhile, the firm’s chief financial officer, Stephen Daintith, is leaving to join online grocer Ocado. Daintith’s move looks “rational” given the “ugly” short-term outlook, says Nils Pratley in The Guardian. What’s more, Rolls-Royce’s stock has fallen to a near-ten year low while its debt is “rated as junk”. Still, it shouldn’t panic just yet. Not only can it sell assets, but it also “still has some…

The past week has seen some dramatic moves on the Betfair market for who will win the US presidential election. With £70.8m matched, Donald Trump and Joe Biden are equal, with both at 2.02 (49.5%) to win. Indeed, at one point Trump was actually odds-on to be the victor, before falling back slightly. Interestingly, markets are implying that there is a 2% chance that neither will be the winner, with Biden’s running mate Kamala Harris at 150 (0.67%) and vice-president Mike Pence at 300 (0.33%. Incredibly, Hillary Clinton is at 340 (0.29%). I think the betting markets are wrong and that Biden should be considered the clear favourite to win since he still has solid leads in most of the key states, including several that Trump won in 2016. True,…

“It’s been a year filled with eye-popping rallies for the richest names in the tech world,” say Sophie Alexander and Nico Grant on Bloomberg. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos saw his net worth climb by $13bn over a single day in July, while Elon Musk, the billionaire tech entrepreneur behind electric-car company Tesla, added $8bn in 24 hours to his bank balance last month. “Both men have reached record levels of wealth, with Bezos crossing $200bn and Musk surpassing $100bn last week.” Now it’s the turn of Eric Yuan, founder of Zoom Video Communications. Yuan extended “the scorching pace of his wealth accumulation on Tuesday” when shares in the virtual-meeting company surged by 32% on the back of a favourable quarterly review. That gain boosted his net worth by $5.2bn to…

Despite dire warnings of imminent collapse from the investment Jeremiahs early this year, the technology sector has been a star performer. In the first half of 2020 the 28% return from the £2.6bn Polar Capital Technology Trust (LSE: PCT) and the 37% from the £800m Allianz Technology Trust (LSE: ATT) helped cushion investors from the market turbulence. So why did the bears get it so wrong? Ben Rogoff, manager of PCT, says that the tech sector, with earnings growth of around 150%, has driven all the earnings growth of world markets since 2009. As for the pandemic, he agrees with Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, who says: “We’ve seen two years of digital transformation in two months.” The sector’s valuation, with a forward price/earnings multiple of 23.5, may look expensive…

Invest to keep the taps running Neil Newman South China Morning Post Hong Kong is “notorious for its dependence on imports”, particularly water, says Neil Newman. Indeed, one of the alleged reasons the British agreed to return the territory so swiftly in 1997 was China’s ability to “turn off the tap”. The Dongshen Water Supply Scheme accounts for 70%-80% of fresh water used today and around 52% of total water consumed. Water security is a“growing global concern”. With an estimated global population of 7.8 billion, we already struggle to provide enough fresh water. By 2100 the population may reach 10.9 billion. Cape Town became the first major city to run out of water in 2018; Mexico City is sinking up to 38 centimetres a year due to groundwater extraction; even…

unherd.com We are now used to public displays of love for the NHS, says Henry Jeffreys. In private, though, we share tales of “incompetence, bureaucratic indifference, misery and tragedy”. My wife, for example, had apotentially life-threatening condition that left her in pain and in need of help, but she was just passed around among dozens of specialists, none of whom took responsibility. With every person she dealt with, she had to start from the beginning. This is fairly routine. Under the Covid-19 regime, things have got worse. Our Polish friends think the whole thing is a joke and go home for treatment. True, the NHS’s staff are often heroic, and they can deliver great care under difficult circumstances. So why can’t the NHS be the best version of itself more…

Among the more exotic financial instruments used by traders are options. These give you the right (but not the obligation) to buy or sell a financial asset at a predetermined point for a specific price. Call options, or calls, allow you to buy at a certain price, while put options, or puts, let you sell. Because puts usually only cost a small fraction of the value of an asset, they can help magnify your gains, compared with simply buying the asset, provided you get both the timing and the direction right. In reality, most options either expire worthless, or end up being worth less than their original price. As a result, some traders specialise in selling options, especially “out of the money” options. These require a large price movement to…

■ Holiday homeowners are being caught out by the taxman for not declaring rental income from foreign properties. “Tax on income from rental properties overseas has jumped by 17% amid a series of crackdowns,” says Marianna Hunt in The Daily Telegraph. There were 81,000 British taxpayers who declared income from overseas property in 2017-2018, the most recent figures available. “We expect the value of income declared will be even higher this year as HMRC has really been turning up the heat on overseas landlords,” Matthew Grief of accountants Moore told The Daily Telegraph. The maximum fine for failing to declare overseas income is now double the tax owed. ■ The number of dormant pension plans could more than triple by 2035 due to auto-enrolment. The government scheme to encourage more…

• More than four years after the government announced it would introduce “pension dashboards” to help savers plan for retirement, the initiative has still to come to fruition. And now it seems that problems with implementation may render dashboards unusable when they do finally arrive. The idea of a pension dashboard is that every saver should have online access to information on all their pension schemes in one single place. Once savers can see how much they have saved across all their pension plans, including those from different employers and individual plans, it should be much easier to plan for retirement. However, getting dashboards up and running has proved hugely difficult, with employers struggling with the technology and pension providers complaining about the large costs involved in setting up the…

Synairgen (Aim: SNG) is a micro-cap biotechnology company with a focus on respiratory diseases. The shares rocketed by 400% on 20 July when management announced positive results from the company’s phase-two trial (the second of three stages of clinical trials) of a Covid-19 drug, says James McCombie in The Motley Fool. If formal approval of the drug is granted, it could boost the share price further. The overall biotech sector has seen share prices surge over the last six months. Synairgen’s stock has gained more than 3,300% in 2020, and 1,972% over the past 12 months.…

Joyti De-Laurey was born Joyti Schahhou in 1970 in London and grew up in Hampstead. She worked as a sales assistant in an Aston Martin showroom before setting up asandwich bar business with her spouse Tony De-Laurey. When it failed she signed up as a temp and was sent to Goldman Sachs. She gained a reputation for being an efficient worker and was hired asa full-time personal assistant for investment banker Jennifer Moses, also taking on tasks for Moses’ husband, Ron Beller. When Moses left Goldman, De-Laurey went on to work as an assistant to banker Scott Mead. What was the scam? Goldman personal assistants were expected to help organise the private lives of their bosses. De-Laurey would later claim that this involved routinely forging the signatures on personal cheques…

• Manchester United’s Harry Maguire (pictured) has uttered the most stupid words in the English language, says Rod Liddle in The Sun. “Do you know who I am?” Maguire explained to the Greek police officers who arrested him last week that he was “very rich”, and then he tried to bribe them. (Maguire was handed a suspended sentence for repeated bodily harm, attempted bribery, violence against public employees and insult after arrest – he is appealing the conviction.) “It now seems to me that he gets so much force behind each header because he has reinforced concrete between his ears.” The problem is Maguire has too much money and “as a result is completely insulated from the real world”. “Say sorry to the Greeks, Harry. And then shut up and…

£5.25 The average discount received by diners from the government’s Eat Out to Help Out scheme, which ended on Monday. In the first three weeks of the month-long scheme in August, 64 million discounted meals were served at 84,000 outlets, costing taxpayers £336m. Diners were entitled to up to £10 off each, Monday to Wednesday. $56.14 How much an American wearing a face mask for a day saves the US in lost GDP by helping to obviate the need for more costly lockdown measures, according to The Economist using Goldman Sachs figures. “Not bad for something that you can buy for about 50 cents apiece.” 16p The average fall in weekly pocket money compared to a year ago, as family finances have come under pressure, according to a Halifax survey…

Brexit, trade wars and a pandemic may not seem like the most promising business backdrop, but the turmoil has proved very profitable indeed for independent economic consultancies, says Philip Aldrick in The Times. Combined annual sales at Britain’s six biggest consultancies have risen by 70% since the Brexit vote in June 2016 – from about £75m at the end of 2015 to £130m last year. Planning a marriage proposal imminently? You could save a few pennies on the engagement ring – diamond producer De Beers is cutting diamond prices by nearly 10%, with rival miners expected to follow suit. Dem dh has been hit by Covid-19, while the US dollar’s recent drop against the pound should mean extra savings for UK buyers (diamonds are priced in dollars).…

• Warren Buffett (pictured) has celebrated his 90th birthday with a “new headline-grabbing stock pick” to satisfy his sweet tooth for “big juicy deals”, says Tara Lachapelle on Bloomberg. His conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway has spent $6bn acquiring 5% stakes in five of Japan’s “storied trading houses”: Itochu, Marubeni, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo and Mitsui & Co. While it might seem strange that “America’s number-one cheerleader” has dumped shares in a bunch of US financial institutions and used the cash to move into a country that “isn’t exactly known for being the world’s bastion of growth”, the “simple rationale” for his interest is that they are “cheap relative to the cash flow” they generate and “screen well” using Buffett’s familiar investment criteria. The Japanese companies are certainly “cheaply valued”, says Michael Mackenzie in…

With only three months left, and with the Covid-19 crisis still absorbing our leaders’ energies, the chances of a trade deal as our transitional agreement with the EU comes to an end seem more remote that ever. Britain appears to have reconciled itself to leaving without any kind of arrangement. Most of the EU is slowly coming to the same conclusion. The gulf between the two sides looks too wide to be bridged. The EU wants Britain to remain within its legal and regulatory control, while the UK wants to make its own laws, and set its own standards. Both sides would prefer not to do a deal than compromise on those principles. Some much needed competition That is reasonable. The British have rightly concluded that the cost of tariff-free…

Every now and then, a niche commodity comes along: some rare yet essential substance that the world simply can’t get enough of. Small-cap natural resource companies (particularly Canadian ones), are quick to “pivot”, as the corporate jargon goes, and “focus” on said commodity. Word gets out that there is a shortage. Next thing you know, you have an investment mania. I’ve seen it happen with potash, graphite, rare earth metals, cobalt, vanadium, even marijuana (though quite how essential that is, I’m not so sure). Such manias never last, but they can be very profitable if you get your timing right. And I think I’ve spotted the next one – helium. In fact, I’m quite pleased to have been early on this one, alerting readers at the start of 2019 that…

Japanese firms have become more responsive to activist investors in recent years (see pages 4 and 9). At Sony, however, US activist investor Third Point, run by billionaire Daniel Loeb, has thrown in the towel. It has ditched most of its shares after repeatedly clashing with the Japanese technology giant over requests for divestitures of non-core businesses, says the Nikkei Asian Review. Third Point began to sell its shares in Sony a few months ago after publicly calling for the company to spin off its semiconductor divisions and sell shares of Sony Financial Holdings, a listed subsidiary. Sony responded by completing a full buyout of Sony Financial Holdings in July, “making clear it had no intention of taking Third Point seriously”.…

“I’m the Welsh Imelda Marcos.” Actress Catherine Zeta-Jones (pictured) on her shoe collection, quoted in The Mail on Sunday “The markets are the product of 1999 and 2007 hooking up for a one-night stand.” A tweet by Danielle DiMartino Booth, writer and founder of financial research group Quill Intelligence “I have to explain to the TV Licensing Authority why King George III hasn’t paid his TV licence since 1820.” A tweet by Rachel Mackay, the manager of historic royal palaces at Kew, after TV Licensing sent a letter to the “current occupier” of Kew Palace marked “action required immediately”. “When Idid my documentaries we had time and money, which is what made it all work. You could get to know someone, be in situations when everything wasn’t planned in advance.…

ft.com Knowing how to say no at work is an “essential skill”, says Pilita Clark. Knowing how to do it when “job insecurity is rife” is even more vital. There are three reasons why “saying yes to all requests is a bad idea”. First, it can obviously lead to exhausting workloads. Second, being “overwhelmed and knackered” raises the chances of making mistakes. But most importantly, saying no can help make you “influential and indispensable” – which is invaluable in these insecure times. The most valued people in the office are not the ones who take on the heaviest workloads or are the best at office politics, but those who “demonstrate their worth by being easy to work with and competent”. That means sticking to what you’re good at, rationing your…

The last four weeks have seen a mixed performance by my three long tips. Royal Dutch Shell produced better second-quarter earnings than many analysts expected, but the oil giant’s shares fell from 1,179p to 1,086p. Even though it is set to be removed from the FTSE 100, media group ITV remained steady at 58p. Industrial and construction equipment group United Rentals appreciated from $160 to $177, thanks to an unexpectedly good earnings report. My three long tips are making a collective profit of £1,301 owing to the £2,484 in profits from United Rentals. My three short tips have also gone in different directions. Electric-truck maker Nikola increased from $36 to $40, thanks to an announcement that it will sell 2,500 trucks to a waste-disposal firm. Exercise-bike manufacturer Peloton also rose,…

“Most people wouldn’t normally take out travel insurance for a staycation – after all, the NHS will cover health problems,” says David Byers in The Sunday Times. “However, travel insurance will protect you if, for example, you have to cancel your holiday before it starts because of a family illness or bereavement.” Travel insurance will also pay out if your belongings are stolen during your trip. You may also be covered for the cost of additional travel and activities for a trip you can no longer go on. “If your holiday company double-books your accommodation and then refunds you, you might still have lost out financially because you paid for a ferry or train to get there. Almost all policies will cover this.” If you already have an annual travel…

Are you paying fixed fees on your workplace pension plans? If so, these could destroy the value of your savings – particularly where you have small pots of cash to which you are no longer contributing, such as plans with previous employers. Most workplace pension schemes charge fees as a percentage of the value of your savings. Unfortunately, some levy a fixed cash amount instead. Where your pension savings are small, such charges will erode the value of your money over time. They could even wipe it out altogether, according to pensions specialist LCP. The firm is urging the government to abolish fixed fees as part of its wider review of the pension charges that providers of workplace pensions are allowed to make. Such fees are particularly damaging for low-paid…

ITV (LSE: ITV) is fighting for its place in the FTSE 100 after a “dizzying fall” in the share price this year, says Francesca Washtell in the Daily Mail. The broadcaster’s advertising revenue has slumped as firms are cutting marketing budgets. The company’s market value has fallen by 61% this year and it looks set to fall into the mid-cap FTSE 250 index in this month’s quarterly reshuffle. ITV cancelled its 2019 final dividend in March and has reneged on its promise to pay a full-year dividend for 2020. The share price is down by 45.4% in a year.…

2018 Paul Cluver, Chardonnay, Elgin, South Africa About £20, frontierfinewines.co.uk, caviste.co.uk, dunells.com, nywines.co.uk, handford.net, harrogatefinewine company.com , thesavanna.co.uk, houseoftownend.com, winedirect.co.uk, buywineonline.co.uk I have three beautiful wines this week, all perfectly priced and from one of the most famous estates in the whole of the Cape. I also have masses of stockists, so get stuck in! Paul Cluver Jr, his winemaker Andries Burger and I have spent many hours talking and drinking chardonnay together. These guys are obsessed with the variety and their cool Elgin vineyards are ideally placed to summon up gravitas, freshness and also the effortless class found in their wines. My headline wine is a beauty, drinking now and perfectly treading the fine line between dreaminess and alertness on the palate. In addition to this, please seek out 2018…

“If you are looking to make an extra bit of cash… it may be worth having a look in the loft,” says Stephanie Rendall in The Scotsman. Toys that have long-since been packed away, gathering dust, could be valuable collectables. “Nostalgic boomers and millennials have been listing their attic finds online for years as a quick income supplement.” Hot Wheels cars (see left) “are now being listed online for hundreds of pounds”, with one seller offering their vintage toy for £434.36, “which is a dramatic increase on the original price – the equivalent of merely 48p when it first went on sale”. But even more recent toys from the 1990s are also in surprising demand. Take Beanie Babies, for example. These cuddly critters were “collectables to start with, and many…

A reader wrote in to mock the fact that, in our online diary, we had betrayed our complete ignorance of such basic matters as how to keep a cow from bloating, yet this had not prevented us from buying a ranch in Argentina. Perhaps, he speculated, we have more money than sense. Life offers plenty of opportunities to make a fool of yourself. The more money you have, the bigger the fool of yourself you can make. A poor man builds himself a small house. Architectural snobs tut and sniff. “The man knows nothing about classical proportions,” they say. The rich man builds a mansion… and they roll on the ground, clutching their stomachs, laughing to burst a gut. “What a monstrosity,” they gasp to one another. “One of our…