Innehållsförteckning för Issue 1025 från MoneyWeek

Thieves stole €600,000 worth of bags, jewellery and furs from the Parisian home of a Saudi princess, says the Agence France-Presse. The 47-year-old (whose name has not been revealed) had not visited the flat since August. She returned to find dozens of luxury items gone, including 30 Hermès bags and a Cartier watch. She was hospitalised in a state of shock. Lockdown has hammered the UK box office, with the top film taking in just £51 over the weekend, says Charles Gant in The Daily Telegraph. Only 22 cinemas were open, all in Scotland, which saw The Three Kings, a Scottish football documentary, top the chart on £3,521 overall, but that included preview takings.…

Hopes of a vaccine lifted oil markets earlier this week, with Brent crude jumping to $43 a barrel. Bulls were also cheered by the Saudi energy minister, who suggested that the so-called Opec+ output deal could be in for a “tweak”. The current deal sees major oil producers such as Russia and Saudi Arabia hold output 7.7 million barrels per day (mbpd) below 2018 levels. That figure is due to fall to 5.7mbpd in January, but the latest wave of lockdowns will hit global demand, prompting speculation that the output curbs could be extended deep into next year. Global crude oil demand was roughly 100mbpd last year, but the pandemic has reduced the world’s appetite for the fuel by about 10%. The oil outlook remains shaky, says Julian Lee on…

Lufax, one of China’s largest online peer-to-peer lenders, has floated on the New York Stock Exchange, raising $2.36bn, say Richard Henderson and Thomas Hale in the Financial Times – marking one of the biggest US listings this year. The company targets consumers and small businesses as well as China’s “emerging middle class”. Though geopolitical tensions between the US and China have “spilled over into markets this year”, Lufax emerged from its initial public offering (IPO) relatively unscathed. The shares, priced at $13.50, slid by as much as 14% before settling; the company is now valued at $32.9bn. It will use the IPO proceeds to expand overseas over the next five years.…

Shares in insurance group RSA surged by nearly 50% last week after it was revealed that Canadian insurer Intact Financial and its Danish counterpart Tryg have jointly approached it about a possible takeover, says the BBC. Valuing RSA at £7.2bn, the deal would be “the biggest takeover of a UK-listed company so far this year”. It would see RSA’s operations split up, with Intact keeping the Canada and UK divisions, and Tryg taking control of RSA’s Sweden and Norway units. The two firms have until 3 December to make a formal offer. No wonder RSA’s shareholders have reacted “ecstatically”, says Ian King on Sky News. RSA is “not a company that will be greatly missed”. Thanks to unwise acquisitions and poor cost control, it has become notorious for missing profit…

In between launching, scrapping and then relaunching the furlough scheme, unveiling another emergency support package and figuring out how to borrow another couple of hundred billion without anyone noticing, Chancellor Rishi Sunak is finally about to do something useful for the long-term strength of the City. The government is about to launch a review of the listing rules on the stockmarket, tasked with making floating a company more attractive. Lord Hill, anon-executive director of the Treasury, is being lined up for the job. Action is clearly needed Something needed to be done. The number of companies listed on the London market has almost halved over the last two decades. Over the last five years it has dropped from almost 2,500 to a little over 2,000. It is still falling and…

That was quick. In last week’s issue, Jim Mellon told Merryn that investors should buy Lloyds Bank (watch the interview at moneyweek.com/videos). Between that issue coming out on Friday, and Wednesday lunchtime, the share price had risen by 20%. Much as we’d like to claim the credit, the main driver was of course the surging hopes for a vaccine (see page 6). Lloyds was just one of many “value” stocks (companies that look cheap on their “fundamentals”, as measured byvarious financial ratios) to have rallied sharply on the news that we might soon be able to put the misery of intermittent lockdowns behind us. “Value stocks have rallied on hopes of an end to lockdowns” Value stocks have lagged growth stocks since at least March 2009 (when they had a…

Arab states go on a debt binge Editorial The Economist The tourists may not have returned to Egypt, but investors have, says The Economist. Since May, foreigners have “snapped up more than $10bn in local-currency debt”; indeed, the six members of the Gulf Co-operation Council issued arecord $100bn in public and corporate debt in the first ten months of 2020. Arab states were already on aborrowing binge when Covid-19 arrived because of “low oil prices and sluggish economies”. The pandemic has only “increased their needs”. By next year, public-debt ratios in many of these countries will rise from an average of 25% to 47% of GDP. This isn’t always a “cause for concern” – Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and UAE have “well-provisioned banks or flush sovereign wealth funds” and capital is…

glistatigenerali.com After all the hype about how digital technology would “free us from the confines of capital and make the world more efficient”, it may surprise you to learn that Amazon is less efficient than Walmart, says Andrew Sentance. Amazon’s net assets surpass those of Walmart, yet its sales remain around $180bn, or around 30%, lower. And over the decade since 2012, Amazon has become less efficient and “generally gotten worse faster as the company has grown”. Every dollar the company invests in its fixed assets produces ongoing revenues of only $2, less than half the levels of Walmart. It’s not just the capital efficiency either – the people are becoming less efficient too, bringing in fewer sales per employee. Amazon did well selling books, DVDs and CDs out of…

London-listed fund Hipgnosis Songs (LSE: SONG) has raised over £1bn from investors looking to buy into a new, diversified asset class: music rights and royalties. The fund boasts a yield of 4.5% with the shares trading on a 4.4% premium to net asset value (NAV). Hipgnosis has been constantly raising fresh equity, in part to pay for new acquisitions. It has just announced the purchase of 42 catalogues from music major Kobalt Music Copyrights for $322.9m. Each of the compositions comes with a regular yearly stream of payments from a variety of rights. Some of those are performance royalties; others are mechanical royalties (streaming comes into this category). Sync rights cover using music in broadcasts, while there is also a catchall category called a master rights agreement, which gives the…

Small and medium-sized businesses in need of emergency finance will now have longer to use the state-backed loan schemes. Both the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS), offering advances of up to £5m, and the Bounce Back Loan scheme, which enables businesses to borrow up to a maximum of £50,000 or 25% of their turnover, will stay open until 31 January 2021. Both had been due to close at the end of this month. In addition, the government has agreed to allow some firms that have already taken out Bounce Back loans to have a second bite of the cherry. Those that have not borrowed the full amount for which they were eligible may make a second application to the scheme, provided their total borrowing does not exceed the maximum…

Only 32 out of 500 companies in the US S&P 500, or 6.4%, have a female CEO. It’s a similar story in the UK with 13 women running companies in the FTSE 350 (3.7%) and just 6 in the FTSE 100. Last year CEOs named Stephen in FTSE 100 outnumbered female bosses. For traders, akey question is whether the appointment of a female CEO has any short-term impact on a company’s share price. A 2019 study by François Longin and Estefania Santacreu-Vasut of France’s ESSEC Business School found that female investors react more positively to a female CEO, while male investors react more positively when a company appoints a man. Given that the majority of traders and portfolio managers are men, this would seem to suggest that appointing a female…

Spirit Aerosystems Holdings (NYSE: SPR) is the world’s largest aerostructures manufacturer. It is responsible for several pieces of Boeing aircraft. The stock has been hit by the pandemic as travel restrictions have hampered the industry. The group has closed facilities, reduced its dividend by 90% and furloughed employees; the slow production rate of the Boeing 737, which accounts for 60% of the company’s current backlog of orders, has also unsettled investors. This week’s news of avaccine boosted the stock by a fifth, but it is nonetheless down by 71% in a year.…

William Snow was born in 1807, going on to study at Eton and Cambridge before changing his name to William Strahan in 1830 in order to inherit a large fortune of around £200,000 (equivalent to £18m today) from his great uncle. Two years later he joined the family bank (then known as Snow, Snow, Strahan, Paul and Paul) as a partner. Over the next two decades his wealth and social position led to his being granted the honorary title of High Sheriff of Surrey as well as being appointed to the boards of various companies. What was the scam? By 1850 the bank was barely solvent, even taking into account the partners’ personal assets. Over the next few years things got even worse as they made large loans to support…

Going… An ancient British gold stater coin, dating from 43AD, just prior to the Roman invasion of Britain, is expected to fetch at least £24,000 with Chris Rudd of Norwich on Sunday. It depicts Caratacus, a ruler of the Catuvellauni tribe, riding naked on horseback with a shield and javelin, and bears the inscription “CARAT”, for his name. The other side is inscribed with “[C]VNO”, short for Cunobelinus, Caratacus’s father, with an ear of barley. The coin was found last November in a field near Newbury, Berkshire, 20 miles from where it was minted at Calleva Atrebatum (Silchester) and it has been described as “the most important single Iron Age coin ever found” in Britain. Caratacus and his brother, Togodumnus, fought the Romans in modern-day southern England, before retreating to…

Dominic Chappell (pictured), the former owner of retailer BHS, was sentenced to six years in jail this week for tax evasion, says the BBC. The 53-year old former racing driver “controversially” bought the high street chain from Sir Philip Green in 2015 for just £1, when it was losing around £1m a week. A year later, the company collapsed, resulting in the loss of 11,000 jobs and leaving a £571m pension deficit in its wake. The jury at Southwark Crown Court heard that Chappell had failed to pay £584,000 in taxes from the £2.5m he was paid for his only year in the job, spending it instead on two yachts, a Bentley, and a trip to the Bahamas among other things. The judge declared that Chappell was not “of positive…

Pfizer’s vaccine trial (see page 16) has delivered a “shot of adrenaline for the markets”, says Russ Mould of AJ Bell. Fifty million doses could be ready by the end of the year and 1.3 billion by 2021, raising hopes that an end to the pandemic is finally in sight. The news caused euphoria on world markets, with the MSCI All-Country World Index closing at an all-time high and America’s S&P 500 setting a new record on Monday. The FTSE 100 broke through the 6,000 level, rising more than 6% over the first two trading days of the week to register its highest closing level since June. The pan-European Stoxx 600 hit an eight-month high. Oil prices leapt by 9% and Japan’s Nikkei hit a 29-year peak (see page 7).…

“Everyone loves an early inflation. The effects at the beginning of an inflation are all good. There is steepened money expansion, rising government spending, increased government... deficits, booming stockmarkets, and spectacular general prosperity, all in the midst of temporarily stable prices. Everyone benefits, and no one pays... In the later inflation, on the other hand, the effects are all bad. The government may steadily increase the money inflation in order to stave off the later effects, but the later effects patiently wait. In the terminal inflation, there is faltering prosperity, tightness of money, falling stockmarkets, rising taxes, still larger government deficits, and still roaring money expansion, now accompanied by soaring prices and ineffectiveness of all traditional remedies. Everyone pays and no one benefits. That is the full cycle of every…

Three to buy GlaxoSmithKline Shares GSK’s shares are on a deep discount compared to peer AstraZeneca. They yield 6.5% but analysts think dividend cover next year will be tight. Yet the market is missing key strengths: a robust vaccine division – notably thanks to its Shingrix vaccine – and a “strong pipeline” at the oncology franchise. The consumer healthcare joint venture with Pfizer will also unlock cost savings and better margins. On a price/earnings ratio (p/e) of 11 the stock is appealing. Buy. 1,221p Hiscox The Mail on Sunday “Should you buy an insurer in the middle of a global catastrophe?” Hiscox is a diversified player, offering everything from “big ticket insurance” of oil rigs to niche retail policies for art and kidnap cover. With Covid-19 striking so broadly this…

• Martin Sorrell has been accused of attempting to destabilise WPP, the advertising agency he founded, after he called on Mark Read, WPP’s current CEO, to step down, says Alex Barker in the Financial Times. Sorrell argues that Read has “throttled key businesses, lost experienced staff and sold assets that have since soared in value”. This attack comes as Sorrell’s new company, S4 Capital, “comfortably” beat analysts’ expectations on Monday. S4’s shares have risen by 140% since January, giving it a £2.4bn market value – a quarter of WPP’s. • Shares in Beyond Meat have plunged by a fifth after the company missed expectations on “both revenue and net profits”, says Jamie Powell in the Financial Times. Year-on-year sales increased by just 3% in the third quarter of 2020, hardly…

As soon as the media started declaring Joe Biden the winner of the US presidential election on Saturday, congratulations began to flow in, says The Economist. Even “erstwhile allies” of President Trump, including the autocratic leaders of Russia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, tweeted “cautious acknowledgements” of the result. Yet while most outsiders agree his “game is up”, Trump has refused to concede, instead “rage-tweeting” that the results in several key states were “rigged or fraudulent” and launching law suits. So far, despite the lack of any “specific or meaningful evidence”, almost all Republicans are going along with Trump’s “dangerous fiction” about election fraud. Trump does not, however, seriously intend to cling on to power, says Daniel DePetris in The Spectator. Indeed, he is quietly “talking about running again in 2024”,…

• The board of S4 Capital, the advertising agency founded by Martin Sorrell (pictured) after his acrimonious departure from media giant WPP, has said it is to “return executive and non-executive directors’ compensation to the levels they were in March… with effect from 1 October”. Pay had been halved in March in light of the pandemic, but third-quarter revenues were up 53% compared with the same three-month period last year. As executive chairman, Sorrell was paid a total of £272,000 for 2019, including a £100,000 salary. • WHSmith has ditched plans to hand its chief executive, Carl Cowling, shares worth roughly nine times his £525,000 basic salary in a special, one-off award, says Sky News. The retail chain is reported to have been consulting with leading shareholders over the proposal…

“Duration” is a measure of risk that usually relates to bonds. It describes how sensitive a given bond is to movements in interest rates. Think of the relationship between bond prices and interest rates as being like a seesaw: when one side (interest rates) goes up, the other (in this case, bond prices) goes down. Duration (you can find the measure in the fact sheet of most bond funds) tells you the expected percentage change in a bond’s price in response to a one percentage point (100 basis points) change in interest rates. The higher the duration, the higher the bond’s “interest-rate risk” – that is, the larger the change in price for any given change in rates. This is also known as “modified” duration. Duration can also refer to…

“Rich is the absence of worry about money… I was working in a French theatre in London for nothing… and I remember the artistic director… talking about the fact we weren’t earning money as some kind of virtue. I remember feeling annoyed about that.” Actor Andrew Scott (pictured), quoted in The Times “I’m a woman. I’m 5ft tall. I’m Welsh. I’m middle-aged. I’m from a very ordinary background and I’m the sort of person who’ll chat to somebody in the ladies. Fintech start-ups are all young white guys with goatees – usually with rich parents. People did think I was crazy, that no one ‘starts a bank’, especially people who looked like me, but I’d reached the stage where I was prepared to fail. I was 54 and confident enough…

fastcompany.com Even before the “new abnormal” of lockdown, most of us were tired most days of the week, says Elizabeth Hartke. Now we are juggling the demands of family, school and work from our homes. “Life got a whole lot more exhausting.” Here are some tips for recharging. Set a start time: Most of us begin the day checking phones and messages, relinquishing control of our mood, energy and schedule. Set clear boundaries around your work. Take time to celebrate: Don’t just plough through your list of tasks, but set yourself rewards for completing them. Giving yourself something to look forward to will help lift mental fatigue and boost efficiency. Change your view: We often mistake eye strain for tiredness, so set regular screen breaks. Exercise or relax: Taking a…

Elliott Management has taken a stake in US software company F5 Networks in order to boost its “lagging” stock, says Corrie Driebusch in The Wall Street Journal. While F5’s shares have gained 3.4% this year, the Nasdaq Composite index has risen by a third. Elliott’s stake falls below the 5% threshold that would require regulatory disclosure, but it is one of the biggest investors in the $8.8bn company. F5 Networks focuses on web applications, ensuring apps such as Netflix run smoothly. Elliott also questioned the purchases of Shape Security and Nginx Software, indicating that F5 lacked a clear integration strategy and might have overpaid. Elliott has always used its muscle to advocate deals, buybacks or management shifts to lift a stock.…

With much of the UK in lockdown many of us will be doing our Christmas shopping online this year. A third of all festive spending is expected to take place online, says the Centre for Retail Research. That is a rise of 25%, or £5.6bn, on 2019. If you plan to settle down with your laptop and your Christmas list, here are some points to bear in mind. “A third of all festive spending will take place online this year” Scammers are ready to take advantage of people in the Christmas shopping rush, so think about how you’re paying. “The safest way to pay for things online is by card,” says Paul Davis, retail fraud director at Lloyds Bank. “Paying by bank transfer is just like handing over cash, so…

The latest changes to the Self-Employment Income Support Scheme (SEISS) mean self-employed people eligible for help will now receive support equivalent to what is on offer to employees through the Job Retention Scheme. The government said last month that it would offer a third round of the SEISS, to cover the period from 1 November to 31 January 2021, with eligible self-employed workers able to apply for a grant of up to 40% of their typical three-monthly profits, up to a maximum of £3,750. Now, however, the chancellor has decided to double that grant to 80% of profits, with a maximum pay-out of £7,500. There will also be a fourth round of SEISS grants to cover the period from 1 February to 30 April, though the government has yet to…

Thanks to the announcement from Pfizer of very positive preliminary results from the final stage trails of its Covid-19 vaccine, which suggest that the pandemic will eventually be controlled, the market has surged, which means that all of my six long tips have made large gains. Industrial and construction-equipment firm United Rentals jumped from $182 to $210. Media group and broadcaster ITV went up from 73p to 89p; Carnival Corporation from $14.03 to $19.25. Homebuilder Bellway rose from 2,435p to 2,831p and National Express from 152p to 218p. Even Mitchells &Butlers, the newest tip, went up from 163p to 215p. While you might expect my short tips to do badly in the market surge, they actually did reasonably well, with two of three depreciating. Electric truck company Nikola fell from…

Zoom Video Communications’ (Nasdaq: ZM) video and online chat services have been among the key beneficiaries of the pandemic. With increasing numbers of people relying on the company for meetings, education and socialising, it’s no wonder it notched up an additional 46 million downloads in September, says Barney Cotton on Business Leader. The stock has gained 624% in 2020; following the slide early this week it was still up by 526% over 12 months. Investors had been pencilling in another surge in downloads due largely to the second wave of the virus; they are now reassessing the outlook.…

This snippet of history from the Thelema website sets the scene for this truly magnificent wine. Here is an edited quote: “François Rabelais was a monk, doctor and writer (about wine among other subjects) in 16th-century France. He imagined a utopian abbey on the banks of the Loire, which admitted both men and women, encouraging them to live together in great luxury. Only one law governed its members: ‘Fay ce que vouldras’ – Do what thou wilt! This was, of course, the Abbey of Thélème.” This was the inspiration for Gyles Webb’s estate on t he slopes of the Simonsberg Mountain, which he acquired back in 1983. Rabelais is the name of the top wine here and Gyles’s son Thomas sent me a bottle of this 2017 to taste a…

The Pokémon craze (see main story) started in the 1990s. But a decade or so before that you had Star Wars figures. This suggests that collectable children’s toys have a habit of resurfacing years down the line once the children have grown up and become nostalgic adults. One elderly couple from Stourbridge in the West Midlands seemingly became the beneficiaries of this trend last week when a collection of Star Wars toys left to them by a neighbour sold for £250,000 with Aston’s Auctioneers. The neighbour, Peter Simpson, had spent several decades collecting the plastic  figures and spacecraft before his death in December last year, says Neil Johnston in The Times. They had no idea how much the toys were worth, so their son invited in an expert to value…

If you have been watching the news over the past couple of weeks, you might have come away with the impression that the US presidential election is the most important thing happening in the world right now and that we should turn our thoughts and emotions towards it as if our favourite dog were dying in the corner of the room. Actually, as the election dust settles, it looks more and more like the world will not have changed at all. “Whoever’s in the Oval Office, the jackassery must continue An election campaign is like a dust storm. In the middle of it, you can see little else. But when it is over, everything remains the same. Investors figure no big change is coming. With the election out of the…

Up until last weekend, in his 117 career starts, Carlos Ortiz (pictured) had only managed seven top-ten finishes and was ranked 160th in the world, reports Dave Shedloski on Golf World. On Sunday, the 29-year-old beat the world number one, Dustin Johnson, to become only the third Mexican to win on the PGA Tour, netting $1.26m in prize money. HM Revenue & Customs cut the UK’s level of “underpaid” tax to its lowest yet, says Oliver Wright in The Times. The “tax gap”, an estimate of the difference between the tax that should be paid and what is actually paid, fell to 4.7%, or £31bn, in 2018-2019. A combination of evasion, error, and criminality made up the gap: £4.6bn was blamed on tax evasion, £4.5bn lost to criminal attacks, and…

Renewable energy stocks are on a roll, and the outlook for Denmark’s Orsted is especially auspicious, says Wirtschaftswoche. It is the world’s biggest operator of offshore wind farms, ranging from Britain’s Hornsea to Changhua, off Taiwan. According to Wood Mackenzie, a consultancy, $200bn will be spent worldwide on offshore wind over the next few years. Orsted’s activities also include a venture with shipping group Maersk to develop offshore vessel-charging buoys for battery-operated ships and a collaboration with fertiliser group Yara to produce ammonia with renewable, asopposed to fossil fuel-generated, hydrogen.…

Last week Sainsbury’s added its name to a “long list of firms that have cut jobs since the pandemic began”, says Ben Chapman in The Independent. The supermarket will axe about 3,500 jobs, mostly across its Argos stores, and supermarket meat, fish and deli counters, as it adapts to a “rapid shift towards online shopping”. The company has blamed the pandemic, which it argues has accelerated the decline of bricks-and-mortar shopping, with “almost 40% of Sainsbury’s sales now online, compared to 19% a year ago”. The job losses are bad news for workers, but sadly necessary to facilitate “much-needed” price cuts, says Lex in the Financial Times. These low prices will help Sainsbury’s deal with the “fiercer” post-lockdown competition from the likes of Aldi. Closing down Argos, which faces intense…

The government has suffered a heavy defeat in the House of Lords over its controversial Brexit legislation, says the BBC. Peers voted by 433 to 165 to remove a section of the Internal Market Bill that would give ministers powers to break international law. The government said it would reinstate the clauses when the Bill returns to the House of Commons later this month: ministers say it provides a “safety net” in case the EU interprets the agreement, particularly the section on Northern Ireland, designed to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland, in an “extreme or unreasonable way”. The government admits the legislation breaches part of the Northern Ireland protocol as set out in the Withdrawal Agreement signed with the EU, but says it has a responsibility…

Most bookmakers have paid out on Biden’s victory (see main stories), but Trump’s bizarre refusal (at the time of publication) to concede defeat has apparently convinced a few punters. Indeed, with £600m matched on Betfair, Biden’s odds are at a ludicrously long 1.1 (90.9%), while punters have Trump at 10.5 (9.5%). Nothing is completely risk-free, but this is as close to free money as you’ll get (though don’t place more money if you’ve already bet on this market). The US presidential election has been very good for this column. As far back as January 2018 I tipped the Democrats to win the presidential election at near evens. I then followed this up in August 2018 by suggesting that you should lay (bet against) Trump’s re-election. In January 2019, I suggested…

Boris Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine tsar, Kate Bingham, has charged the taxpayer £670,000 for a team of eight full-time PR consultants to oversee her media strategy, says Gabriel Pogrund in The Times. Bingham, who is also the managing director of venture-capital firm SV Health Investors, has already spent £500,000 on the team, which is contracted until the end of the year, according to leaked documents. That would work out as £167,000 a year for each consultant – “more than the prime minister’s salary”. There are fears in Whitehall that their work duplicates that of around 100 staff at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), in which her taskforce sits. Her own hiring has also prompted suspicions of cronyism. Bingham is married to Tory minister Jesse Norman and studied…

If the US is serious about tackling the biggest challenges facing the country right now, it needs to embark on a new “green” Marshall Plan, says Jeremy Grantham. Grantham, who co-founded US asset manager GMO in 1977, believes the US government should take advantage of historically low interest rates to finance “a long, sustained and massive public works programme”, similar to the scheme that helped to rebuild Europe in the wake of World War II, “at negative real rates”. While Covid-19 is today’s obvious concern, Grantham is more worried about longterm issues. “I believe income inequality is eating away at the economy from the inside with the lack of economic progress for workers reducing demand.” This problem goes back to the financial crisis, if not beyond. “The great waste in…

capx.co “When will I use this in real life?” The question teachers are often asked is worth considering anew as the world of work is changing dramatically, says Sam Dumitriu. The number of youngsters working for themselves has doubled since 2000. More than half of 14- to 25-year-olds have thought about starting a business. Educators should be doing more to “equip students with the mindsets and traits that will allow them to succeed in the modern world”. The ability to “stick at a task in the face of adversity, to proactively find creative solutions, and identify opportunities” will become more relevant in the coming years, even for those who don’t become entrepreneurs. And there is evidence that teaching it early helps. One large study with nearly 10,000 subjects found that…

■ Between January and September of 2020, Qian Yongqiang’s QQQ Capital Management recorded gains of 275%, making it the top-performing hedge fund in the world, according to Eurekahedge data. QQQ says assets under management rose to $1bn last month. However, the gains have come with concentration risks “many fund managers would balk at”, says David Ramli on Bloomberg. QQQ has over athird of its assets invested in Chinese education companies, and though they’ve soared this year, concerns about regulatory crackdowns have hurt them. One “plunged” after several analysts’ downgrades. Still, QQQ has done well since its inception. Qian “turned professional” in 2018, starting QQQ with $100m out of his own pocket. The fund returned 40% that year despite running for only three quarters, and in 2019, it rose by 31%,…

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) still struggling with reduced levels of demand because of the Covid-19 pandemic will now be able to make use of a revamped Job Retention Scheme (JRS) until at least the end of March. Chancellor Rishi Sunak last week announced he would extend the JRS, which had been due to close at the beginning of December, and also reintroduce more generous terms that had previously been withdrawn. As a result, any SME that is struggling to keep staff on the payroll because there isn’t enough work for them will now be able to put employees on furlough and claim the cost of most of their wages from the JRS. “You can re-employ people you have made redundant” Importantly, the scheme applies to all businesses across the…

Social media and technology stocks have done extremely well this year thanks to central banks’ liquidity and a sense that the pandemic may have fundamentally reshaped the global economy. One of the big winners has been Twitter (NYSE: TWTR). It fell in March but had returned to its pre-Covid-19 level by the summer. It then reached a peak of $50 in late October, its highest level in over six years. Even though it has fallen recently, it is still up by over 50% from the start of the year. However, there are good reasons to think that the latest slide may have further to go. Under fire from both sides In the weeks before the US presidential election Twitter was caught in the firing line between the two sides, with…

I have a simple investment philosophy: buy good businesses run by competent and honest people, and buy them at a price that leaves enough of a margin of safety for mistakes or bad luck. I try to buy companies that other people are not looking at. That is where I find bargains and an adequate margin of safety. This process tends to lead me away from big stocks. As a result, Fidelity Asian Values has most of its capital deployed in small companies (those with a market capitalisation of up to £5bn); stocks above that threshold only make up about 20% of the trust’s holdings. The trust also has a value bias given myfocus on companies that are mispriced, either because they are yet to be discovered by investors or…

“An extraordinary 97% of Aston Martin’s value went up in smoke. Now, it’s ‘funded forever’” The latest James Bond movie has been put on hold due to government restrictions related to Covid-19 (see page 40). Not so 007’s prize carmaker, Aston Martin, says The Sunday Times. The veteran British sportscar marque has spent the year being “shaken and stirred” by a new boss – the Canadian “petrolhead”, Lawrence Stroll. Stroll, 61, has a large private collection of Ferraris and is a big mover in Formula One: in 2018, he led the buyout of the Force India team, renaming it Racing Point. Still, he wasn’t an obvious candidate to take the wheel at Aston, having made his name, and $2.6bn fortune, in fashion – notably as a driving force behind the…

• One day the actress and purveyor of wacky wellness products Gwyneth Paltrow (pictured) is going to “take off her mask and reveal… that she is nothing more than apractical joker”, says Lorraine Kelly in The Sun. “How else do you explain her utterly bonkers list of Christmas presents on her demented website? It features a lamp made out of bread and continues her fascination with her noonie – by offering up a vulva colouring book, a vagina-scented candle and a steam cleaner for one’s entire nether regions.” And none of this comes cheap. A single roll of “sustainable” bog roll will set you back £26. “It’s like that old Harry Enfield sketch where he ran a shop full of old tat in an achingly trendy part of London that…

¥2bn The combined value (£231m) of the four million transactions in Chinese yuan using the country’s “digital yuan” central-bank currency. The transactions took place in four trials that have been running for most of this year in Shenzhen, Suzhou, Xiong’an and Chengdu, according to People’s Bank of China governor Yi Gang. $14bn The total cost of the campaigns for US president and Congress, making this year’s elections the most expensive in US history, and more than twice as costly as the $6.5bn spent on the contests four years ago, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. £232,000 The average size of a self-invested personal pension (Sipp) held with Interactive Investor, according to the online investing platform. Contributions between January and October rose 34.7% among 30- to 39-year-olds and by 18.3%…