Innehållsförteckning för 1121 från MoneyWeek

Remember how last year we were told by every single self-important central banker in the West that inflation was nothing to worry about? It was, they said, mainly driven by short-term rises in energy prices and would be gone by 2022. Transitory, you see. Not structural at all. Good news. They were right. Some of the inflation we have been seeing has been transitory and short-term. Bad news. They were totally wrong. Much more of it is structural and long-term. Look at the consumer price index (CPI) numbers out from the US and the UK this week and you will see the story in the detail. In the US, prices are up 8.3% in the year to July. That’s a little lower than last month, thanks to the fact that…

“I continue to be astonished by the degree to which the… trends… of the global economy feel like a weird mirror version of the post-Great Financial Crisis [GFC] economy. Back then the big problem was slow growth and low inflation. This time… growth is red hot… and inflation is the big concern. Back then, the big eurozone problem was peripheral debt, and it was Germany calling the shots... This time around, the big Europe problem is energy, and the finger-pointing is aimed directly at Germany, and its past energy policy choices… even in the China conversation, the story is flipped. Post-GFC, the world was suffering from a lack of demand, and China proved to be the consumer of last resort... These days… China is… trying to cool off its housing…

Energy company Centrica and nuclear power giant EDF are floating the idea of a voluntary price cap on electricity “to help shield households from soaring energy prices”, says Jon Yeomans in The Sunday Times. The government wants to “break the historic link between electricity and gas prices”. At present the two types of wholesale prices are tied together, which means that “lower-cost forms of energy, such as nuclear and wind, are being charged at the same rate as gas”, which has “rocketed in price” since Russia slashed energy exports. We should ask ourselves why Centrica and EDF “have volunteered for duty so speedily”, says Nils Pratley in The Guardian. The two firms will be “looking for something for themselves – namely medium or long-term guarantees on prices”. As a result,…

An ageing population increasingly prone to accidents and falls, along with the obesity crisis, bodes well for makers of artifical hips and knees, says Börse Online. That makes America’s medical-technology group Stryker a promising long-term bet. Offerings range from joint replacements and spinal implants to surgical equipment. Stryker has always had a reputation for innovation, helping it fend off rivals; it is known for its robotic arm-assisted technology, for instance, which helps surgeons perform knee replacements with three-dimensional scans. The bottom line rose from $894m to $979m in the year to 30 June 2022, and there should be plenty more growth ahead.…

Politics & economics The dismissal of Treasury permanent secretary Tom Scholar by Kwasi Kwarteng on his first day as chancellor was a “brutal statement of intent”, says Larry Elliott in The Guardian. The message? “The days when Britain’s economic strategy would be determined by bean counters were over. From now on, growth rather than balancing the books would be the priority.” But removing what Liz Truss sees as the “dead hand” of the Treasury from the running of the economy is likely to prove difficult. Previous attempts to “cut Whitehall’s most powerful department down to size” have failed. Predictably, his dismissal sparked outrage, says Matthew Lynn in The Daily Telegraph. Critics say it is a “threat to the checks and balances” vital to a functioning democracy; it will…

The US midterm elections are only a few weeks away, and already it looks like the Democrats may do better than people expected only a few months ago. With £245,911 matched on Betfair, Republicans are still favourites to win control of the House of Representatives at 1.32 (75.8%), with the Democrats at 4 (25%). However, when it comes to the Senate, the Democrats are favourites, as with £20,495 matched on Smarkets, they are 1.56 (64.1%) to retain control, with the Republicans out at 2.56 (39.1%). One interesting contest is the Senate race in Colorado. With £45,801 matched on Smarkets, the incumbent Democrat senator Michael Bennet (pictured) is favourite to win, with the Democrat at 1.16 (86.2%), while Republican candidate Joe O’Dea is at 6.6 (15.1%). Bennet’s odds may…

Some high-profile founders have found it remarkably easy to raise fresh capital in recent weeks. Adam Neumann, the founder of the temporary office company WeWork, has just raised $350m for Flow, a start-up aiming to transform the residential apartment market, with a total valuation for the new business of more than $1bn. Travis Kalanick, the key founder of the taxi empire Uber, received $850m in funding for his new venture CloudKitchens, with Microsoft reportedly among its backers, putting a total valuation of more than $15bn on the new businesses. Reality TV star Kim Kardashian is getting in on the act, teaming up with investment giant Carlyle to start a media private-equity firm. Tennis star Serena Williams has also raised an extra $111m to expand her firm Serena Ventures. It is…

Leverage (or “gearing”) refers to the extent to which debt rather than equity is used to fund an investment. The term can be applied to a business – which might issue bonds to help pay for the construction of a new factory or take out a mortgage to allow it to buy an office building – but equally for the use of borrowings by an investment trust or hedge fund to increase returns. Leverage is also known as gearing; the latter term is more common in the UK, while the former is preferred in the US. The extent of a company’s leverage can be measured through ratios such as debt/equity. Let’s assume that a company has assets worth £100m and debt totalling £30m. Shareholders’ equity, which is equal to assets…

“I got a bit of flak because I bought him an Audi A1 that looked like a brand-new car. It wasn’t and it didn’t cost £25,000. Yes, it’s spoiling him, but I don’t mind children being spoilt as long as they’re not brats. There’s a big difference… my kids are very grounded.” Singer and reality television star Peter Andre (pictured) on the criticism he incurred for supposedly buying his son a £25,000 car for his 17th birthday, quoted in Metro “That’s what you’re paid for!” What the Queen reportedly said to James Callaghan when he asked her advice on a difficult issue, quoted in The Mail on Sunday “This isn’t the 1800s. You can’t pay me with a horse.” An unidentified lawyer to Donald Trump, who owed him $2m, after…

arstechnica.com Since evolution obviously depends on leaving behind offspring, it may seem hard to understand the value of celibacy, say anthropologists Ruth Mace and Alberto Micheletti. Yet our study of celibacy in Tibetan Buddhist monasteries shows it can make good evolutionary and economic sense. We studied villages of Amdo Tibetans who raise herds of yaks and goats, farm small plots of land, and pass wealth down the male line. We found that men with a brother who was a monk tended to be wealthier, owning more yaks. Yet there was little or no benefit for sisters of monks. This is probably because brothers are in competition over parental resources, land and livestock. As monks can’t own property, sending a son to a monastery eases fraternal conflict. Surprisingly, we also found…

The WisdomTree Physical Silver (LSE: PHSP) is an exchange-traded commodity (ETC) fund that offers a simple, cost-efficient and secure way to play physical silver by providing a return equivalent to movements in the metal’s spot price, minus fees. WisdomTree Physical Silver is backed by segregated, individually identified and allocated silver bars that are held by HSBC Bank. Wheaton Precious Metals (Toronto and NYSE: WPM), is one of the world’s largest precious metals (PM) streaming companies. It buys all, or part of, the PM or cobalt output from high-quality mines for an upfront payment and an extra sum on metal delivery. Wheaton has a portfolio of low-cost, long-life assets: it has streaming agreements with 23 operating mines and 13 development-stage projects. In 2022’s second quarter, WPM generated 43% of its revenues…

Those who think that an environmental Armageddon is inevitable and unavoidable, or that survival requires a return to the dream of the Diggers and Levellers of “three acres and cow” for every family, need read no further. Investment requires optimism and environmental improvement can be the driver of great returns. This was Ian Simm and Bruce Jenkyn-Jones’s thought process when they founded Impax Asset Management in 1998. It now has £35bn under management, including a £1.4bn investment trust, Impax Environmental (LSE: IEM), launched in 2002. IEM trades at net asset value (NAV) and has returned 74% in the past five years, well ahead of the global indices, so the Impax thesis clearly works. Investing in solutions IEM seeks to invest in companies offering solutions, including clean energy and energy efficiency,…

Homeowners will have breathed a sigh of relief last week when the government finally announced a policy to prevent energy bills skyrocketing, but the cost-of-living crisis is far from over. The next thing to worry about is your mortgage. “The historic low loan deals that buyers were blessed with for the past 12 years have been swept away by six Bank of England base rate rises so far this year,” James Coney in The Times. The Bank is expected to increase the base rate by 0.75 percentage points to 2.5% next week. In 2020 you could fix your mortgage for two years at an average rate of 2.24%, according to comparison site Moneyfacts. The best buys were far lower – less than 1% in many cases. Now the average two-year…

Could downsizing be a good way for more older people to free up cash locked up in valuable property – and increase the stock of larger homes for families? Australia’s government has just announced changes to the law to give pensioners financial incentives to downsize. In the UK, however, many older people are reluctant to move home, even if doing so could make life more comfortable financially. That partly reflects people’s emotional ties to their homes, but there is also anxiety about the cost of moving. Instead, older people tend to choose equity-release plans – sales have doubled over the past seven years – which allow them to stay in the property, borrowing against its value to generate cash that can be used to boost income or for another purpose.…

The recent assassination of former prime minister Shinzo Abe was a shocking tragedy, yet he leaves behind an important legacy. The trend of increased activism in Japan, due largely to Abe’s resolve in pushing through corporate-governance reforms, continues to build momentum and offers increasingly fertile territory for active managers. We look for high-quality firms that are under-researched and undervalued, where through our engagement we feel we can unlock significant value. We want to be constructive partners, sharing ideas with management on how to rectify the share-price undervaluation. In our view, low valuations, growing shareholder value and engagement are a powerful combination for generating high returns. “Wacom is involved in big data, virtual reality and artificial intelligence” Drawing strength from digital pens With a market share of almost 60%, Wacom (Tokyo:…

Let’s check in again on one of the world’s daffiest, most mismanaged and most entertaining economies – Argentina. We’ve been visiting the country for 25 years, invested in property there 15 years ago, and typically spend two or three months a year there, mostly trying to keep the locals from stealing our property. During that quarter of a century, the currency, the peso, has gone from one to one with the dollar, to three to one when we bought our property, to 150 to one now. (The unofficial or black-market rate is almost twice that at 270 to one.) In 1910, Argentina was the world’s seventh-richest country. Now, GDP per person puts it at No. 65, below Kazakhstan and Guyana. Not everyone is enjoying the ride. At the start of…

Oberlin College, a well-known US liberal arts college (essentially, a type of university) in the state of Ohio will pay $36.59m over claims that it falsely accused a local bakery of racism, says The New York Times. In 2016, a member of the family that runs Gibson’s Bakery caught a black Oberlin student shoplifting, leading to a fight in the street and the arrest of three students. Several hundred Oberlin students then protested in front of the bakery for two days, accusing the firm of racial profiling. The bakery filed a lawsuit alleging that members of the administration at Oberlin College took sides in the dispute by attending the protests and thus defamed it. The administration members claimed that they had been trying to act as peacekeepers, but in 2019…

Chile’s recent rejection of a “woke constitution” is good news for the global energy transition, says Craig Mellow in Barron’s. The country is the world’s top copper producer and the second-largest lithium supplier. The proposed constitution threatened mining investment. Chile has failed to make the most of the country’s deposits of lithium, a crucial component of batteries for electric vehicles. Australia is the world’s biggest producer, even though “Chile has 50% more reserves”. The world needs more lithium. Lithium carbonate prices in China have surged by 80% since 1 January and are at record highs around 495,500 yuan (£62,084) a tonne. “Few... commodities have witnessed a price explosion as epic as lithium’s”, with prices up by 500% in 18 months, says Alex Kimani for OilPrice. Goldman Sachs thinks the market…

The discount on Russian crude is narrowing, says Egor Gornostay of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Urals crude, the Russian benchmark, usually trades at a modest discount to Brent, but that gap widened steeply after the invasion of Ukraine. Western sanctions, difficulties securing shipping insurance and reputational risks for those dealing in Russian crude meant that by April, Moscow was getting $35 a barrel less for its oil than the global benchmark. However, since August the discount has begun to close as Russia has rerouted its oil – India, China and Turkey have been happy to snap up discounted fuel. Moscow’s weekly export duty receipts have been running above pre-war levels of late.…

A £6bn deal to buy cybersecurity company Darktrace collapsed last week after US private-equity group Thoma Bravo pulled out, says Gareth Corfield in The Telegraph. After three weeks of talks, Thomson Bravo said that “an agreement could not be reached on the terms of a firm offer” ahead of a 12 September deadline. Hours later, the Cambridge-based business admitted that “millions of pounds in revenue had been wrongly recognised in this year’s accounts instead of last year’s”. As a result of both pieces of news, Darktrace’s shares plunged by more than a third – even though it also said sales were up by 45% on last year’s restated figures. Technically, the restatement, which came about after it spotted “that $3.8m of revenue entered in the first half of 2022 should…

US insurance giant AIG is planning to spin off its life-insurance and asset management business Corebridge on the New York Stock Exchange, says the Financial Times. AIG plans to sell 80 million Corebridge shares at between $21 and $24 a share in order to raise between $1.7bn and $1.9bn. The price would value the company at around $13.5bn, a far cry from an estimate of $22.2bn made when private-equity group Blackstone bought a stake last November. The decline is due mainly to a slump in equity prices this year, with the S&P 500 stock index falling 15% since the Blackstone valuation; recently listed companies have also struggled. AIG has already delayed the initial public offering (IPO) twice.…

● UK firms have been “under siege from abroad… but one industry darling that is unlikely to attract a sea of suitors… is banking upstart Revolut”, says Ben Marlow in The Telegraph. Last week, the accounting watchdog raised concerns about work done by its auditor. Now the firm is reportedly carrying out ”a sweeping cost-cutting review”. Revolut was valued at £24bn in its latest fundraising and is supposedly set for a big IPO, but “talk of going public must be taken with more than a pinch of salt” until co-founder and CEO Nikolay Storonsky (pictured) gets the house in order. With losses of £200m on turnover of £261m, the firm is “light years away from living up to such a rich price tag”. Revolut and its peers have put “much-needed…

“Losing in financial markets can certainly lead to later prosperity if lessons are learned – just don’t lose too much,” says Bill Gross, the retired fund manager once known as the “bond king” (see page 36), in his latest commentary. “My first bond trade… involved investing $10,000 (margined) into 30-year Treasury bonds. Two weeks after the purchase I was wiped out.” The key lessons are to be wary of leverage and a lack of diversification, and many traders may learn that the hard way in future. Today, bonds and stocks have been levered up by $6trn-$7trn of Fed balance-sheet expansion and $5trn (15% of GDP) of “unnecessary fiscal spending”. Markets are overextended. Ten-year Treasury bond yields of 2.8% and price/earnings ratios of 40 or more for growth stocks can’t be…

arnoldkling.substack.com People who are well-informed about economics are nevertheless often ignorant about the realities of business, says Arnold Kling. They will claim, for example, that “all” Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos did was spot a niche anyone could have seen and exploited with similar levels of success. “That is like saying that all Dwight Eisenhower had to do to make D-Day a success was pick Normandy as the landing spot.” When Bezos was building his business, in order to compete with Walmart he needed to match its logistical system. All Walmart had to do to compete with him was build a website. And yet Bezos won. That took incredible skill. “Building a business, especially an innovative business in a complex environment, demands that you get many, many difficult decisions right.” You…

Which stocks do you buy when recession looms? High-technology firms? Utilities? The safest consumer staple (a retailer of essential items)? The problem is that shares in these sectors may still be holding their own, despite signs of an impending downturn. Investors’ expectations may still be bullish over the long term, with pullbacks seen as a buying opportunity. In other words, there may not be many chances to snap up these stocks on the cheap. Contrarians, by contrast, go where most other investors are afraid to tread. Consumer cyclicals are a classic case in point. We’re talking about companies that are highly dependent on how much money people can afford to spend on discretionary items such as holidays, furniture, cars and entertainment. Buy in the depths of gloom Shares in these…

Cevian Capital, Europe’s largest activist investor, has taken a 5.1% stake in manufacturer SKF, says Reuters. Cevian said that SKF, which is the world’s biggest maker of industrial bearings, is significantly undervalued – calling it “a Swedish industrial gem with a strong core business” – and said it supported SKF’s current strategy. However, analysts speculate that the investment could provide a catalyst for SKF shares to perform more strongly, due to expectations that Cevian would ultimately try to shake up the business. Cevian has previously pushed for reorganisation or management change at firms, including Irish cement maker CRH and UK telecoms group Vodafone, where it has built stakes this year.…

We all need to cut our energy use this winter, but some tips on how to do so are more useful than others. One, from AO Logistics, was to reduce the number of times you open your fridge and freezer doors and grab things more quickly. “The engineer did not go into detail about how much money such a diligent homeowner would actually save by shaving seconds off their fridge-opening times, probably because it would amount to pennies’ worth of electricity,” says Tom Haynes in The Telegraph. Another top tip came from Jorvik Tricycles which suggests powering up your iPhone by cycling rather than through the mains. “The reality, though, is that plenty of electrical appliances are fairly cheap to run, even at today’s rates.” Charging a phone overnight typically…

● Savers reaching the point of retirement will need an additional £90,000 in order to achieve the same standard of living as would have been possible before inflation began spiralling out of control. That’s the conclusion of new research from pension investment website PensionBee. It calculates that someone retiring in 2021 would have needed a starting pension of £19,000 a year for a comfortable old age – but says that figure will rise to £21,000 by 2023 if inflation averages 10% this year and next. Savers would need a pension fund worth £330,000 to generate £19,000 of income, but £420,000 to get to £21,000, PensionBee’s analysis shows. ● Large companies including BT, Ford and Marks & Spencer have lost a legal challenge against government plans to change inflation calculations, potentially…

Shares in Yellow Cake (Aim: YCA) have soared thanks to the rising price of uranium, says The Motley Fool. The company buys and holds physical uranium, which has appreciated as high oil and gas prices caused by the war in Ukraine have prompted a rise in demand for alternative fuels. Many countries are now restarting nuclear-energy programmes in an effort to divest from traditional energy sources. Yellowcake saw the value of its holdings rise by 203% in the year to 31 March 2022. The company also launched a $3m share buyback scheme in April. In the past year the shares have risen by 43%.…

Brian Hunter was born in 1974 in Calgary in the Canadian province of Alberta. After graduating with degrees in physics and applied mathematics, he briefly worked on a construction site before joining energy firm TransCanada as an analyst. He later moved to Deutsche Bank but, despite some early success as a trader, was fired when his team lost $51.2m in a single week. He was then hired by hedge fund Amaranth, rising to become head of the energy desk. At one point he made more than $1.2bn in profits, mainly from bets on energy prices in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. What was the trade? Hunter’s strategy was to trade energy futures – contracts to deliver energy at a prespecified price at different times of the year. He would typically…

9diDANTE, Purgatorio, Vermouth di Torino Superiore, Italy £22.95, masterofmalt.com; £24.95, barspoon.co.uk No, I have not decided to broaden my repertoire from wine scribe to general drinks connoisseur. But for one week only, I have decided to alert you to a spirit that recently blew my mind – and in any case there is a link to the world of wine. Allow me to set the scene. I was dining at an incredible restaurant in Geneva, Le Restaurant du Cheval-Blanc in Cologny. My friend and bartending savant Katalin Bene is the mind behind the cocktails and other specialist drinks here, and she is working on some recipes for my Jukes drinks business. To set the scene, she served two mesmerising cocktails, and one was based on my featured vermouth, knowing, as…

Oil Leaders An Insider’s Account of Four Decades of Saudi Arabia and Opec’s Global Energy Policy Ibrahim Al-Muhanna Columbia University Press, £28 The great economist Adam Smith famously wrote that “people of the same trade seldom meet together, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices”. One of the most notorious of such conspiracies is the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec). In its six decades of existence, it has exerted control over the world’s energy supply and its list of member states reads like a roll call of some of the world most notorious regimes, from Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela to Gaddafi’s Libya and Saddam’s Iraq. Ibrahim Al-Muhanna relates the history of the oil cartel over the last 40 years. Al-Muhanna…

$88,000 The fine levied by the Russian government on Wikipedia for publishing information about the war in Ukraine that it considered to be false. Wikimedia Foundation was fined five million roubles after a recent change to Russian law criminalising “misinformation”. $30m The estimated sale price of a Los Angeles mid-rise adorned by work by graffiti artist Banksy. The building in LA’s “Fashion District” was decorated with the artists’ piece Swing Girl in 2010, and is set to be sold to the highest bidder next month after its current owners declared bankruptcy during the Covid-19 pandemic. $4.1bn The cost of US space agency Nasa’s ongoing Artemis I moon mission, the debut flight of which has been cancelled for the second time. The planned flight on Saturday was delayed as Nasa’s technicians…

Moscow’s “indefinite shutdown of Nord Stream 1”, Russia’s main gas connection to Germany, “was supposed to be the Kremlin’s big weapon that would send the wholesale price to new stratospheric levels”, say Ben Hall, Valentina Romei and Sam Fleming in the Financial Times. So far it hasn’t worked. Although they remain historically elevated, European wholesale gas and German electricity prices have instead fallen by 40% and 34% respectively since spiking late last month. Russia’s share of EU gas imports has fallen from 40% to just 9% since the war began. With German storage tanks 88% full, “confidence is growing in… capitals that Europe can get through the winter without severe economic and social dislocation or energy rationing”. Reforming the electricity market On Wednesday European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen…

Shares in outsourcing giant Serco fell by 7% on Monday after its CEO Rupert Soames announced that he will step down, says Brian Donnelly in the Herald. Soames is widely credited with “leading a major turnaround” at the group, which provides services ranging from school inspections to public transport on behalf of the government. The group’s earnings per share rose ninefold during his nine-year tenure. Soames will be succeeded by Mark Irwin, the CEO of Serco’s UK & Europe Division. Soames deserves great credit for the fact that Serco still exists, says Nils Pratley in The Guardian. Its survival “wasn’t guaranteed” when he took over in 2014. The firm was grappling with a scandal relating to overcharging for electronic tagging and was also “an operational and balance-sheet mess”. Soames “inherited…

Six to buy Accesso Technology Group The Sunday Times This Aim-listed provider of virtual queuing and ticketing software boasts 1,000 clients across 30 countries, including Legoland and Madame Tussauds. The less time customers waste queuing, the more money they spend inside. The industry was “walloped” by Covid-19, but recovering demand allowed Accesso to turn a $12m profit last year. Though a recession could herald a tougher period ahead, the long-term shift towards digital ticketing provides a steady tailwind. The shares are on a “reasonable” price/earnings (p/e) ratio of 11. 578p Hunting Shares This energy-services group sells equipment such as the Titan perforating gun, which is used to drill oil and gas wells. The group is heavily exposed to the US, where rig counts have soared by more than 50% over…

The far-right Sweden Democrats (SD) looked like being “the big winner” in Sweden’s election on Sunday, says David Crouch in The Guardian. At the time of writing, with overseas votes still to be counted, the right-wing bloc had a narrow lead. But although the balance of power remained too close to call, the Sweden Democrats were set to be the second largest party, overtaking the centre-right Moderate Party – a “seismic shift” given that the SD emerged from Sweden’s neo-Nazi movement and “still struggles to shake off accusations of extremism”. The SD’s “pariah” status was ended when the Moderates said they were willing to work with them in 2020. The SD increased its share of the vote, mostly from working-class former Social Democrats, in each of the last nine elections,…

In MoneyWeek 1115, I discussed how Terry Smith views the resilience of his portfolio in a higher-inflation environment, with quality as its defining characteristic. But what do we mean by quality? Every fund group has a different perspective and there is no firm definition. However, I identify a quality stock using three main factors: profitability and returns; stability and consistency; and financial strength. I like to invest in companies that have high gross margins and good returns on capital. A high gross margin usually indicates pricing power and a sensible competitive environment. Similarly, a good return on capital, which has been consistent over a number of years, suggests that there are barriers to entry in the industry. Consistency is important because companies with cyclical returns require investors to finesse the…

Big Tech shakes up healthcare David Wainer The Wall Street Journal The potential rewards of fixing America’s “broken” healthcare market are so huge that Amazon – along with other firms ranging from Walmart to Apple – is having another go at disrupting the industry, says David Wainer. Its recent $3.9bn purchase of One Medical gives it the “foothold” it failed to create organically. What many target acquisitions such as One Medical have in common is an approach known as value-based care, which, unlike the fee-for-service model, encourages medical providers to prevent illness as they share in the savings (although it is too early to say whether the approach will “truly benefit patients”). Amazon’s strategy, meanwhile, is to provide primary care directly to consumers and then leverage that relationship to sell…

quillette.com The idea, popular ever since Malthus, that human population growth and progress are in danger of depleting the planet’s limited resources, needs refuting, says Robert Zubrin. Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley’s new book, Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet, does an excellent job at that. As they show, human numbers have quadrupled since the 1950s, but in virtually every category human well-being has radically improved. Malthusianism has “no relationship to reality”. But the authors err when they assert that this has only been true since the industrial revolution. “This is nonsense.” Starvation has sometimes occurred under conditions of siege, famine or social oppression, but it is not, nor has it ever been, a general feature keeping a lid on population…

■ Investors have pulled money out of funds that focus on British companies at the fastest rate in a decade, says the Financial Times. Savers have withdrawn £6.6bn from UK equity vehicles so far in 2022, outstripping the £4.8bn withdrawn in 2016, the year of the Brexit referendum. Data from the Investment Association showed withdrawals accelerated in July, which also marked the 12th consecutive month of net outflows. Further data from funds platform Calastone shows the pace of selling appears to have picked up in August. The outflows showcase the “lack of faith in British stocks” as new prime minister Liz Truss takes on significant economic challenges. Investors have also blamed “lingering uncertainty over the Brexit process for the haemorrhaging of cash from UK funds since 2016”. UK stocks have…

● Annuities have been unpopular in recent years as low interest rates and the introduction of pension freedoms gave us all alternative ways to turn our savings into income. But now rates are rising they can once again make a valuable contribution to pension planning again. “The average rate secured last month was 6.44%, meaning a 65-year-old could swap a £100,000 pot for income of £6,440 a year throughout their retirement,” says Lily Russell-Jones in The Times. In January the rate was 5.06%. Now the question is when you should buy an annuity. Gone are the days when you were forced to buy one upon retirement. So, the best option is “flex now, fix later”, according to pensions consultancy LCP. The older you are when you purchase an annuity the…

Britons over the age of 65 own property worth almost £440bn, according to estate agent Savills. These houses now generate more than £10bn of income each year. Around 1.5 million over-65s own buy-to-let properties that generate retirement income, with many using their investments as their main source of income in old age. The data reveals the extent to which the buy-to-let boom of recent years has seen many people eschew private-pension plans as retirement savings vehicles in favour of investment in property. But it is also a concern: a series of tax and regulatory changes in recent years have the potential significantly to reduce the return on buy-to-let investments. For older people dependent on this income, that could cause real problems. The biggest change of all is the way in…

Online-clothing retailer ASOS (LSE: ASC) has just seen its share price hit a ten-year low, says Shares. According to The Sunday Times, ASOS privately told City analysts that annual profits will be at the lower end of the £20m-£60m range forecast in June (at that stage the City had pencilled in £92m). Inflation is raising costs and customers battling the cost-of-living crisis have cut back on spending. In addition to a series of profit warnings, ASOS has faced a Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) probe into complaints from suppliers over cancelled orders. The stock has fallen by 79% in 12 months.…

Zelensky A Biography Serhii Rudenko (translated by Michael Naydan and Alla Perminova) Polity, £20 Just six months ago, Volodymyr Zelensky was barely known outside of Ukraine, says Andrew Anthony in The Observer. Foreign observers might have heard his name when it was claimed that Donald Trump had threatened to withhold aid payments in return for revealing dirt about Hunter Biden’s business dealings. Then Russia invaded his country and Zelensky suddenly become “a global figurehead, an international hero, a modern David standing up to the brutal Russian Goliath”. This book, by Ukrainian political commentator Serhii Rudenko, covers the biographical and political backstory behind this “overnight sensation”. It is essentially an updated version of a work published in Ukraine last year under the title Zelensky Without Make-Up, and the “stitches of…