Innehållsförteckning för 1037 från MoneyWeek

There isn’t as much fun in life as there is meant to be right now. So, here at MoneyWeek, we’re all grateful to the army of ordinary investors who hit the headlines last week. We’ve looked at the GameStop saga on page 20, but one of the fun things about it is the way it allows everyone to see what they want to see. Some see a political kickback against crony capitalism. Some see a series of unedifying market manipulations. Some (well, me anyway) see the saga as aside-effect of a huge rise in the number of people who are interested in markets, plus an encouraging gender and age shift (female participation is rising and Hargreaves Lansdown reckons the average age of its account holders has fallen to 37). That’s…

“Buy now, pay later” services will be regulated for the first time after a report revealed that users have racked up debt worth £2.7bn, says Adam Williams in The Telegraph. The sector, of which Klarna is the market leader, is controversial. Opponents warn that it encourages “shoppers to spend beyond their means”, with users able to “easily spend more than £1,000 online with few checks on whether they could afford repayments”. British fishermen have been banned from selling live mussels, oysters, clams and scallops to the EU, says Justin Parkinson on the BBC. As “a separate country”, the UK can’t transport the animals into the bloc, due to their highly perishable nature, unless treated in purification plants. UK shellfish catches were valued at £393m in 2019.…

Whither negative interest rates? The City is watching Threadneedle Street carefully for signs about whether negative interest rates could be in the pipeline, reports Gurpreet Narwan in The Times. The Bank launched a review of the idea last summer, studying how they have worked in places such as Japan and Sweden. It has also been consulting with commercial banks to establish whether the policy is “operationally feasible”. Lenders, who would lose out from lower rates, have highlighted the operational difficulties. The policy could prove counterproductive as banks move to protect their margins and rein in lending to the real economy, Mike Regnier of Yorkshire Building Society told The Guardian. Unprepared bank IT systems could also face a “Y2K-type” bug if they tried to handle negative rates. The early indications are…

”It’s grim up north” is a saying that doesn’t only apply to Britain, says The Economist. China’s divide, moreover, is getting worse. The south’s share of GDP has climbed to 65%, from 59% just five years ago. One problem for the north is a harsher climate, which has made Covid -19 more transmissible there over the past year. But the gulf is largely a structural phenomenon. The north is highly industrialised and has been buffeted by the shift from “construction-fuelled growth towards consumption and services” over the past few years. Its coal mines and oil reserves, meanwhile, were hurt by the fall in raw materials prices after 2013. The south “also makes the smartphones and sofas lapped up globally”.…

The London Stock Exchange is set for its best start to the year for initial public offerings (IPOs) since 2008, say Oliver Telling and Lauren Almeida in Investors Chronicle. After a “prolonged dry spell” compounded by the pandemic, companies that have been buoyed by lockdowns are lining up to float. Food courier Deliveroo, cybersecurity firm Darktrace and review site Trustpilot “should be hoping to ride on the back of a wave of enthusiasm for tech companies”. Online-dating app Bumble and online greeting-card retailer Moonpig are also set to list this year. Investors should be reassured that the UK market is not showing the signs of “overheating”.…

Online clothing retailer ASOS will spend more than £300m to buy Arcadia’s Topshop, Topman, Miss Selfridge and HIIT brands from the administrators of Philip Green’s insolvent group, says Jonathan Eley in the Financial Times. The deal involves an upfront payment of £265m for the brands, plus £30m for existing inventory. ASOS will also honour £35m of forward purchase orders. However, many of Arcadia’s 13,000 employees are likely to lose their jobs asthe agreement “does not include the group’s 70 stores, including its Oxford Street Topshop flagship”. The deal is not only ASOS’s “first acquisition of a fashion brand”, but also a “stark change from its strategy of creating its own brands”, says The Times. As a result, investors need to be aware of the problems of “integration risk [and] management…

In most ways, Britain’s response to Covid-19 has been the most chaotic in the world. We didn’t close our borders when it first started even though, as an island, it would have been relatively simple to control the flow of people. We let the virus escape into care homes. We locked down too late, then lifted restrictions too early. And we never managed to make a track-and-trace system work. The net result? One of the worst fatality rates in the world. There has, however, been one success. We managed to secure more vaccines than just about anyone, including a homegrown one from Oxford University and AstraZeneca. We approved them earlier and rolled out a rapid plan for getting them into people’s arms. By the start of this week, only tiny,…

15 February marks the 50th anniversary of the day when, after 150 years of proposals, debate and Royal Commissions, Britain finally adopted a decimal currency. The old system of 12 pennies to the shilling and 20 shillings to the pound was replaced by a simple 100 “new pence” to the same old pound. Only a few nostalgic diehards disapproved. It was widely thought that decimalisation was a precondition of Britain joining what was then called the European Economic Community (EEC) two years later. In fact, decimalisation had been progressing around the world since it was first adopted by the newly formed United States in 1786 and France in 1795. Canada adopted the dollar (a word derived from the central European thaler) upon self-government in 1867. In 1957, India replaced a…

capx.co Leftist columnist George Monbiot wants the government to establish a Ministry of Truth to snuff out views it considers “dangerous”, such as those concerning Covid-19. He should be careful what he wishes for, says Tim Worstall. In 2007, for example, he said that supplies of gallium, indium and helium – needed for green technologies – were close to exhaustion. Today, helium is available in vastly greater supply than it was then thanks to better technology. The price of indium has more than halved. And gallium supplies are estimated to exceed one million tons this year as the world uses about 400 a year, half of which is already recycled. Monbiot has been wrong on these and many other issues because he misunderstands the nature of reserves and of capitalism.…

For most MoneyWeek readers, the Reddit saga began as an intriguing distraction, but not something with a huge impact – not many of us are invested in struggling US retail chains. However, then silver came onto the radar of the WallStreetBets gang. As a result, it shot up by more than 10% to over $30 an ounce earlier this week, before suffering a sharp drop the next day. So what should you be doing if you own it? Our view is quite simple: write it off as a blip. Silver is volatile at the best of times. While the Reddit story resurrected many of the long-running conspiracy theories surrounding silver (mainly to do with investment banks manipulating the price, which is not entirely without basis in fact, but not something…

London-based activist investor Bluebell Capital Partners is calling for multinational food and drinks group Danone to replace its chairman and CEO after a period of chronic underperformance under his leadership, says Lina Saigol on MarketWatch. “A combination of poor operational track record and questionable capital-allocation choices” is behind Danone’s underperformance, according to the fund. Since chairman Emmanuel Faber took over in 2014, Danone has returned 21%, far below the 56% for the Stoxx Europe 600 Food & Beverage sector and 97% and 101% respectively for competitors Nestlé and Unilever. Danone said late last year that it would cut up to 2,000 jobs and conduct a“strategic review”.…

Thousands of savers who gave up valuable final-salary pension benefits did so after consulting financial advisers who knew they would only get paid if they recommended a pension transfer, new data from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the City regulator, reveals. The figures will increase the pressure on the FCA to explain why it took so long to outlaw a controversial charging model despite warnings it was fuelling the mis-selling of pension transfers. In October, the FCA announced advisers would no longer be allowed to charge contingent fees when giving advice on transfers. Such fees are only payable if the saver ultimately decides to transfer their pension savings, prompting concerns that many advisers were recommending such transfers simply to get paid – despite a widespread consensus that giving up final-salary…

When assessing investment trusts’ holdings it is important to understand the fundamentals underpinning the net asset value (NAV), the value of the fund’s portfolio, while also keeping in mind that sentiment affects prices and determines whether the trust trades at a premium or a discount to its NAV. Not all premiums and discounts are warranted, however. Investors can achieve powerful returns when they inspect the trust’s assets closely and come to appreciate that there is value in the portfolio mispriced or misunderstood by the wider market. Three examples can illustrate this situation. Retail parks are a bargain Retail property is a busted flush, right? Not so fast. Retail parks have performed well in terms of footfall and their tenants (such as Aldi, M&S Food, Halfords, Pets at Home, B&Q, Costa)…

The cost of hitmen has dropped across Europe, because increasing numbers of “inexperienced and younger criminals” are now willing to carry out the crime, says Eamon Dillon on Independent.ie. A contract killing now reportedly costs between €10,000 and €100,000, according to a Europol report, “much less than it did in the past”. Europol has observed a significant spike in serious violent acts across the EU – highlighting gang wars in Sweden, Belgium, Denmark, Italy and Spain – which it puts down partly to the inexperience and youth of these new hitmen, and partly down to increased competition in the drugs trade, particularly the cocaine and cannabis markets, notes Paul Reynolds on RTE.ie.…

“Strategic competition with China is a defining feature of the 21st century.” White House press secretary Jen Psaki is talking tough on China, says Edward Alden for Foreign Policy. Yet there are still “frustratingly few details” about how President Biden will handle trade with the world’s second-biggest economy. He has even dodged the question of whether he plans to scrap Donald Trump’s tariffs of up to 25% on most Chinese imports. Investors are quite happy for trade with China to remain low down the to-do list, says Craig Mellow in Barron’s. The iShares MSCI China ETF has gained 10% already this year on hopes that Biden will provide less storm and stress than his predecessor. But “conflict delayed is not conflict resolved”. Investors have “priced in Biden being less aggressive,…

“We’re in a new world… where supply chains are broken up along the lines of separate empires. [Note that] over the past two years, the US has done everything it could to kill Huawei. It’s done so by cutting off the semiconductor supply chain to Huawei. [So] every Chinese company today is worried about being the next Huawei… in every industry. Until recently, price and quality were the [key] considerations in any corporate supply chain. Now... safety of delivery matters most, even if the cost is higher. This is a dramatic paradigm shift… It adds up to a huge hit to productivity. Productivity is under attack from... regulation, from ESG [environmental, social and governance] investors, and now also under attack from security considerations. This would only not be inflationary if...…

Six to buy Brunner Investment Trust Shares This trust buys high-quality companies worldwide, with 46% of the portfolio in the US, 46% in the UK and Europe, and Asia making up the balance. The biggest holding is Microsoft but a mix of investments across health, industrials and financials also give it exposure to the “reflation trade”. The trust has beaten its benchmark over the past five years but trades on an unjustified 16.3% discount to net asset value (NAV). Yielding 2.4% and with a reasonable 0.66% ongoing charge, this is a cheap way to access some of the world’s best businesses. 862p Cordiant Digital Infrastructure The Mail on Sunday UK broadband usage doubled in 2020. Surging internet demand depends upon a vast network of “data centres, phone masts” and cables,…

• A mooted merger between Exxon Mobil and Chevron to create a behemoth with a market value of $350bn looks “enticing on paper”, say Robert Cyran and George Hay on Breakingviews. It would be particularly good news for Exxon Mobile’s shareholders, as the stock has slipped by 25% over the last five years. Still, this is a “tricky time” for a deal. The Biden administration is likely to look askance at a US oil firm larger than many nationalised Opec ones, while any attempt to “curry favour” by offering big investments in carbon-friendly solutions would repel shareholders. • With crude prices “buoyed by... the prospect of an economic rebound”, investors in BP had been expecting a “more positive” ending to what has been a “grim” year, says Laura Hurst on…

Prime minister Giuseppe Conte proved unable to patch things up after his “shaky Italian coalition collapsed amid infighting”, says Tom Kington in The Times, so Italy’s president has handed Mario Draghi (pictured) the task of steering the country out of its worst downturn since World War II. Draghi, or “Super Mario” as he was nicknamed following his success steering the European Central Bank through the financial crisis, will be given the task of forming a government, something Conte was unable to do when former PM Matteo Renzi withdrew his support. Draghi enters a “vastly different arena” from the “polished and market-focused” world of central banking he is used to, says Miles Johnson in the Financial Times. Indeed, it’s possible he might not be able to form a government at all,…

Just days after welcoming her son, Santiago, into the world, television personality Dani Dyer shared a picture of her baby boy in a £169 blue Givenchy sleeping suit, says Sophie Jane Evans in The Sun. Dyer is the latest in a wave of famous faces to prescribe “designer wardrobes, stylish looks and lavish lives” for their children, who unknowingly sport garments worth hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of pounds. “Youngsters are now so well kitted out with designer gear that they may top their fashion-savvy mums and dads in the style stakes.” Harper Beckham, Victoria and David’s daughter, “was never going to have a small clothing collection”: the nine-year-old debuted one of Victoria’s autumn collection dresses worth £1,583. Reality TV personality Sam Faiers’s daughter, only two, “has already amassed a £4,000…

• Wetherspoons’s chairman Tim Martin (pictured) “has an extra £50m in his pocket” after selling almost 4.4 million shares in the pub chain last week, says The Daily Telegraph. The share sale has reduced his stake in the FTSE 250 pub operator to just under 21.9%, down from 25.2%, worth about £330m. It follows a previous sale, in December, when he sold a stake worth £5m, and a similar tranche last summer. Martin has agreed not to sell any more shares in the business until results for the year to the end of July are released in September. • Wall Street bank Goldman Sachs has cut the pay of its chief executive, David Solomon, by $10m after it was forced to pay “billions of dollars” to settle an international investigation…

The exodus from Hong Kong begins Matthew Brooker Bloomberg “What happens to a global financial centre when hundreds of thousands of residents head for the door?” asks Matthew Brooker. Hong Kong is the latest to pose the question as the UK starts taking applications for Hong Kong residents under a visa programme introduced in response to China’s 2020 national security law, deemed a “clear and serious” breach of the agreement with Britain that Hong Kong would remain free under Chinese rule. The UK expects 321,000 visa applications over the next five years, but it could top a million, 14% of Hong Kong’s population. The number of British National (Overseas) passport holders – a preliminary step before joining the visa programme – surged 445,000 in the year to August 2020. This…

cato.org/blog US president Joe Biden has announced his plans to “Buy American” with the aim of redirecting federal spending, especially on defence, to boost the country’s manufacturing sector, says Scott Lincicome. This is a popular idea, but a misguided one, for four main reasons. First, US manufacturing does not need a hand. Although its share of the economy has declined, as in many other countries, output, financial performance and investment remain strong. Second, many US laws already authorise the federal government to support or protect certain US industries on national-security grounds. Third, those existing laws provide a cautionary tale regarding the efficacy of such measures. Case studies of past government support for steel, shipbuilding, semiconductors and machine tools, for example, show that unintended consequences abound. In each case, “the outcome…

You have to hand it to them. They had a good go at giving the suits a run for their money. But now it seems that the army of ordinary speculators (more than eight million at last count) who banded together on social-media site Reddit under the “r/wallstreetbets” bulletin board, has been defeated. “Buy and HODL” (see jargon box below) was the battle cry. But as of the time of writing, GameStop – the original battleground stock – has slid from a peak above $400 to below $100, while other target stocks have also tumbled. Meanwhile, in the commodities market, silver spiked on rumours that it was next, then tumbled as rapidly as it had gone up (see page 22). Is the dream in ruins? Has “The Man” crushed the…

In short, not very. One angle that has been pored over and amplified by many in the press is the idea that Reddit users are angry about 2008. We’ve already noted above that the “rebellion” started as a value investing thesis, but some posts on the website do point to a generalised anger about bailouts in 2008 and a re-run of “Occupy Wall Street”. Yet hedge funds and short-sellers are the wrong target for this rage against “too big to fail”. As Michael Lewis’s book, The Big Short (and the film of the same name) explain, short-sellers were among the few institutions to spot and warn of the risks in the housing market in 2008. Moreover, short-sellers were not bailed out at any point during the financial crisis – it…

■ Aviva, one of Britain’s top asset managers, has warned that it will sell its stakes in 30 of the world’s largest oil, gas, mining and utilities companies unless they do more to tackle climate change, says Attracta Mooney in the Financial Times. The “blunt message” from the fund manager, which oversees £355bn, goes further than other asset managers, who have hitherto remained invested in order to effect change from the inside through “engagement”. Unless Aviva receives the companies’ net zero-emission goals and sees them consider climate risks in their strategies over the next one to three years, it will use the “ultimate sanction” and divest entirely. While the group didn’t single out any firms in its announcement, it has holdings worth billions in BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Rio Tinto…

■ For self-employed savers managing their own pension arrangements, the ability to manage accounts digitally has obvious advantages. Two new “digital pension solutions” from relatively new players in the market, Raindrop and PensionBee, may therefore appeal. Both offer features such as a single online platform though which you can manage your pension contributions and investments, and a consolidation service to switch old pensions into the new plan. Such competition is welcome in a market where a lack of innovation has long been a problem. Far too many traditional pension providers still lack digital functionality, making it much more difficult for savers to engage actively with their retirement planning or even to keep track of how much cash they have put by. This is particularly frustrating for self-employed savers with no…

S4 Capital (LSE: SFOR) is a high-end advertising agency led by former WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell. It recently made its seventh acquisition since March 2020, says Lauren Almeida in the Investors Chronicle. The firm has also announced plans to move into the Chinese market through a merger with Shanghai-based creative agency Tomorrow. Analysts estimate that S4 Capital’s profit for 2020 totalled between £279m and £300m, up from £171m in 2019, while the company’s share price has risen by 202% over the last 12 months.…

Manfred Schmider was born in 1949 in the German city of Karlsruhe. From a young age he was interested in business, and started out selling life insurance and then used cars. In 1986 he set up FlowTex with Klaus Kleiser in order to sell and rent out machines that used a special technology, licensed from America, which it was claimed allowed utility companies to drill and lay lines and cable without the need to dig up the ground above, thus greatly reducing disruption. By 1999 the apparent success of the company had made Schmider a multimillionaire and one of the most respected entrepreneurs in the region. What was the scam? Initially FlowTex raised money legitimately from investors and banks. But when the technology proved impractical, Schmider turned to fraud, inventing…

“This is a seriously fascinating new release and I was prepared for a £50 price tag” 2018 De Loach, Chardonnay, Russian River Valley Chardonnay, Sonoma County, California £25.49, reduced to £22.49 each by the case of six bottles, thewinereserve.co.uk; £23.99, nywines.co.uk; £23.49, haywines.co.uk The problem with tastings on Zoom and YouTube interviews is that there is nowhere to hide when you are asked to tell the audience your thoughts about a wine, particularly if you haven’t tasted it before. I always “say what I see” and this doesn’t always go down well! On a recent JCB LIVE interview with flamboyant wine magnate Jean-Charles Boisset I was put on the spot with one of his wines. Thank goodness it was stunning! In fact, it was so good that it leapt straight…

Mission Economy A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism Mariana Mazzucato Allen Lane, £20 Many argue that the Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated the “power and importance of the state in a crisis”, says Tom Kibasi in The Guardian. Economist Mariana Mazzucato agrees and thinks that a greater degree of central direction might be useful in the longer run, too. In this book she argues that policymakers should follow the example of the Apollo project, which put a man on the moon, and “unleash the full potential of the state to solve some of the great challenges of the 21st century”. Ending the consensus that has seen the state “retreat” from active involvement in the economy could help solve everything from the climate crisis to the digital divide. Not so fast, says…

Last week, in what must be some kind of Bubble Climax, the price of a video-game purveyor, GameStop, traded as high as $370. That’s almost 80 times higher than its price this time last year and more than 26 times higher than it was at the start of this year. Every old-timer on Wall Street knows you’re supposed to buy low and sell high. But this is no old-timers’ market. This is a casino, where gamblers bet against each other – all with chips furnished by the Federal Reserve. What has played out in the stockmarket was a high-stakes poker game between those betting that GameStop’s shares would go down – mainly a couple of hedge funds – and those betting that they could force the price up. “Stocks are…

£400bn The combined increase in wealth of the world’s ten richest men during the Covid-19 outbreak, according to Oxfam. The charity claims that figure would be enough to pay for a coronavirus vaccine for the world and reverse the poverty increases since the pandemic began. $500,000 The first prize for an essay that presents the best evidence for the existence of an afterlife in a new competition launched by US property and aerospace billionaire Robert Bigelow. There are also $300,000 and $150,000 runner-up prizes. $3.7trn The total value of lost wages worldwide due to the pandemic in 2020, equivalent to 4.4% of global GDP and almost 9% of all working hours last year, the International Labour Organisation, a UN agency, estimates. Women and the young were the hardest hit. 20,000…

Record iPhone sales helped Apple deliver revenues of more than $100bn for the first time ever over the Christmas quarter, says John-Paul Ford Rojas on Sky News. The company’s results beat Wall Street estimates, with Mac computers and iPad tablets also boosting sales. Apple’s value surged to $2.4trn during the pandemic, as lockdowns have “spurred customers to buy or upgrade devices”. Britain has “officially been gripped by jigsaw puzzle mania”, says Zoe Wood in The Guardian. Sales of jigsaws reached £100m in 2020, a38% jump on last year, asCovid-19 curbed socialising. The most popular jigsaw type is the 1,000-piece format.…

Dassault Systèmes looks solid as a rock, says Börse Online. The French software group’s computer-aided design (CAD) products help engineers construct planes and cars; 90% of the world’s planes and 80% of its cars are made with them. Then there is its Product Lifecycle Management software. This tracks and analyses an item from its initial design all the way through its lifecycle, improving overall efficiency and trimming costs. Dassault is also active in the medical sphere, designing software platforms to integrate data relating to clinical trials and the production of drugs. The group is debt-free and enjoys high annual single-digit sales growth.…

Last week the UK government formally applied to join the 11-country Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), which includes fast-growing economies such as Mexico, Malaysia and Vietnam as well as Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. The “key perk” of the trade bloc, which was formed in 2018, is a pledge to eliminate or reduce 95% of tariffs, says the BBC. It also provides data-sharing agreements. The countries involved make up about 13.4% of global GDP, making it one of the largest trading blocs in the world, but CPTPP nations account for just 9% of UK exports, which is “less than we export to Germany”. Membership also ensures investors get the same treatment as domestic firms. In 2017, CPTPP nations accounted for around £1 in every £12 of…

The electoral rise of the Scottish National Party over the past seven years has led to a collapse in Labour’s fortunes north of the border. Although it won 41 MPs on 42% of the vote at the 2010 general election, this declined to just one MP on an 18.6% share in 2019. Similarly, its representation at Holyrood has declined from 44 seats (out of 129) before the 2011 election to just 24 in 2016. Polls for the Scottish elections in May suggest that it will come in third place behind the Tories. The collapse in Labour’s fortunes has been accompanied by turmoil in the leadership. Even if you exclude acting leaders, no fewer than five different people have been in charge of Scottish Labour in recent years (Iain Gray, Johann…

Four top SoftBank executives, including Rajeev Misra and Marcelo Claure, are “sitting on a potential collective gain of as much as $1.2bn after receiving unusual loans from the company last year to buy its shares”, says the Financial Times. The four were granted the loans, worth around $600m, as part of their incentive packages, approved in February of last year. Having used the money to buy the shares, the one-year “lock-up” clause, restricting the sale of some of those shares, is set to expire next month, “giving the lieutenants of SoftBank’s founder, Masayoshi Son, the option to begin cashing in on the gains”. Misra, who runs Softbank’s Vision Fund, and Claure, Softbank’s chief operating officer, could each be sitting on paper gains worth $500m each. They are already among the…

“The City in the late Nineties was booming. I was being handed £1.5m to do interiors by these young bankers suspicious of ‘curtain jockeys’ [designers over-reliant on lavish curtains to transform a room] who liked my brash, camp James Bond interiors. £1.5m then was a fortune, now it wouldn’t cover my carpet budget.” Interior designer Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, (pictured) quoted in The Times “Had I sold them for low prices, it would have been obvious they were fake.” Fraudster Han Van Meegeren, who sold Hermann Goering a fake Vermeer, when the judge at his trial admonished him for selling at high prices, quoted in the FT “There was never any lockdown. There was just middle-class people hiding while working-class people brought them things.” Writer and art critic J.J. Charlesworth on Twitter…

conservatives.global Many people seem to think that the “new normal” – working from home, panicking about disease, submitting to the state – is here to stay. But “nothing is inevitable”, says Tom Hewitt, so “before deciding to succumb”, it’s worth considering whether we really want to. The daily slog to the office, for example, may now be strictly unnecessary for many. But for all the irritations of office life, humans are “fundamentally social beings”. Permanent home working means we “risk losing the human stimulation we need to learn, enjoy and be inspired”. Similarly with travel. “Nothing can replicate the dynamism of meeting other people in person or the thrill of experiencing new environments.” Most pertinently, the value of rich, meaningful lives also relates to public-health policy. Before Covid-19 we did…

Hedge funds: hedge funds are the same as normal funds except a) they can use strategies such as shorting that regulators consider too risky for “retail” investors and b) they charge a lot more. Their mystique is pure branding – like most actively run funds, they struggle to beat the market long term. YOLO: You Only Live Once, with the implication being, why not take a big bet on a high-risk stock? Needless to say, some unfortunate investors will be learning the answer to that the hard way. HODL: “Buy and hold” rather than trade. The term caught on after a drunken bitcoin investor captured the popular imagination with the late-night typo, “I AM HODLING”, on a cryptocurrency messaging board in 2013. Diamond hands: holders who will never sell until…

When is it right to take a profit? The temptation to cash in lest the share price reverses is strong, but it conflicts with the age-old maxim of running your winners and cutting your losers. Advisers and wealth managers often encourage profit-taking, as clients will hate the thought of profits disappearing much more than they relish the prospect of further gains. If the price goes on rising, the adviser was just being cautious; if it falls, they will look foolish and could be fired. It pays to be patient The best professional managers, however, do not trim successful holdings unless the share price becomes wildly overvalued or they foresee a change in the company’s fortunes. They regard focusing on the laggards and losers as a more productive use of their…

Since the 1980s banking customers in the UK have enjoyed seemingly free current accounts. We can open an account, then deposit, transfer or withdraw money all without paying a penny. But free banking is anything but free. Someone is footing the bill – and it may be you. “‘Free’ banking is not free. Someone is footing the bill – and it may be you” Banks make their money from current account customers in two main ways: hidden fees and cross-selling. Stay in the black and stick to straightforward transactions and you may feel your current account is free. But someone who is using their overdraft is probably paying enough in charges to cover the costs of your account. Alternatively, you may have started with a current account but your bank…

■ For savers with small pots of pension savings – from a former job, for example, or simply a short-lived individual plan – conventional financial planning wisdom is that it makes sense to consolidate them. Moving a number of small pension funds into one single scheme, probably the one in which you are currently actively saving, is convenient and can sometimes reduce costs. However, don’t assume this is always the right course of action. For savers looking to maximise their flexibility on retirement, small pensions can provide some useful options. Normally, once you start cashing in pension savings, the amount you may continue contributing to your retirement fund drops to just £4,000 a year. This can be problematic if, for example, you want to carry on working – and receiving…

Real-estate investment trust Land Securities (LSE: LAND) had a dismal 2020, says Royston Wild on Yahoo Finance. With its £11.8bn portfolio highly exposed to the effects of continued national lockdowns – many of its retail and leisure properties have been mothballed – the group saw a pretax loss of £835m between March and September, down from a loss of £147m a year earlier. With restrictions set to endure for much of 2021 and the rise of home-working boosting vacancy rates, prospects are grim. The stock has slid by 31.2% in a year.…

• They may look like a Sylvanian Families suitcase or Stuart Little’s rucksack, says Jane Moore in The Sun. “But closer inspection reveals designers are cashing in on the trend for wireless earphones by producing tiny carry cases ranging from around £300 to £1,200.” Some people have too much money. Witness “my latest guilty pleasure”, Netflix’s reality series Bling Empire, which follows around a bunch of rich Asians with millions, if not billions, at their disposal. “The rampant vacuity is compelling escapism in these challenging times,” but the show “plumbs hidden depths by showing that however much you splash out on the latest designer ‘must-have’, it doesn’t insulate you from feelings of abandonment, loss, insecurity and loneliness.” • When Ed Miliband called for a mansion tax in 2014 to save…