Innehållsförteckning för 1164 från MoneyWeek

If ignorance is bliss, the British public exists in a state of permanent ecstasy – when it comes to finance, at least. According to a new survey by Lloyds Bank, 29% of us don’t understand inflation, and half of us have some money we could invest but are deterred from doing so because we are worried about losing it or aren’t familiar with financial terminology: 77% of us don’t know what an asset class is, while 31% aren’t quite sure what shares are. One in four people thinks it would be easier to go on a first date or learn a new language than to start investing. This is jaw-dropping stuff, and certainly helps explain why so many Z-list celebrities interviewed about their finances by the weekend papers’ business sections…

“[This year] stockmarkets... both in America and globally... have risen to within striking distance of all-time highs... Risky assets... have proved astonishingly resilient to seemingly disastrous news... Bitcoin – once an emblem of the cheap-money era... has proved indestructible. Anyone who bought it before 2021 and held on is once again sitting on a profit... Even sales of non-fungible tokens, records that represent pieces of digital media, were 70 times higher in 2022 than in 2020... the everything bubble... seems to have survived the return of inflation... asset valuations have become maddeningly hard to justify. America’s stockmarket, where the earnings yield of the S&P 500 index [has fallen to] the Fed’s risk-free rate, is the most audacious example... Time to bet on a correction? Tempting, but... everything bubbles can survive…

Beijing has imposed more than $1bn in fines on technology giants Ant Group and Tencent Holdings owing to violations of consumer protection rules and anti-money laundering obligations, say Lulu Yilun Chen and Li Liu on Bloomberg. The news has boosted Chinese tech shares. The move has been seen as “signalling an end to a crackdown on the sector that had wiped out billions in market value and derailed the world’s biggest initial public offering”. Not so fast, says Lex in the Financial Times. While the fines, in addition to talk of “normalised supervision”, signals “that a three-year regulatory crackdown is drawing to an end”, it is “much too late to put Ant and Alibaba back on a path to strong growth”. Ant’s offer to buy back 7.6% of its shares…

Canada’s gold miner Dundee Precious Metals enjoys the cheapest production costs in the sector, says WirtschaftsWoche. It spent a mere $872 an ounce extracting gold from its two Bulgarian mines in the first quarter – 40% less than the sector’s average. It earns $1,000 of cash flow from every ounce it produces in Bulgaria. Meanwhile, it owns promising reserves in Ecuador and Serbia. The latter boasts 63 grams of gold per tonne of ore; the sector’s average is just over one gram. Dundee is debt-free and is sitting on cash of $473m. The market is currently valuing an ounce of its reserves at $172, compared with an industry average of $400, so the current dip in the share price is a buying opportunity.…

Politics & economics Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has ruled out extra borrowing to fund 6% public-sector pay rises for 2.5 million workers this year, ordering ministers to find £2bn-£3bn of savings from departmental spending cuts instead, says George Parker in the Financial Times. Independent pay-review bodies have recommended awards of around this level, well above the 3.5% proposed by the government: Hunt and Rishi Sunak are expected to make a final decision later this week. The pair will also have to weigh up whether a 6% pay rise is “responsible in a high-inflation environment”. Although ministers have previously warned that the private sector follows the state’s lead, from March to May this year, private-sector pay growth hit a record high of 7.7%. Rejecting the recommendations would “heighten tensions” with…

US president Joe Biden’s approval ratings seem to have fallen back a bit, leading to speculation that he may withdraw his bid for re-election. Despite this, punters on Smarkets think the odds of him appearing on the ballot of at least one presidential primary are 1.06 (94.3%). With £336,971 matched, they also have him as the strong favourite to win the Democratic nomination at 1.44 (69.4%), with Californian governor Gavin Newsom in second place, way out at 7.8 (12.8%). I’ve previously said that either Biden or the current vice-president Kamala Harris will be the Democratic nominee, and I see no reason to change my mind, though don’t bet more money if you’ve already taken my advice. Instead, the best betting opportunity at the moment is on Harris. With £3,793 matched,…

Some tweaks to the rules on pensions. Removing some EU rules on broker research. And a relaxation of “prospectus” rules. In the end, chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s Mansion House speech on Monday evening did not quite live up to its billing as a major loosening of the red tape holding back the City. If he wants to revive the UK’s financial sector, he needed to be a lot more radical. If there was ever a year to make big changes to the way the City works, then this was surely it. The number of quoted companies has been falling for years, but the decline has started to accelerate, and now a series of major businesses have relocated to New York to take advantage of easier rules and higher valuations. Even Paris…

An intangible asset is anything that a company owns that isn’t physical. Decades ago, the majority of assets were either buildings and machinery – often referred to as plant, property and equipment (PPE) – or financial assets such as cash or securities. These are known as tangible assets. However, over time, intangibles have grown to become a greater proportion of assets for many firms. In some sectors, intangible assets may now be a far more significant part of a company’s value than tangible assets, even though much of this may not be fully reflected in its accounts. Valuable (and sellable) intangible assets include intellectual property, such as patents, copyrights and trademarked brands. Since the money that a firm spends on creating and maintaining these assets is usually classed as an…

“When Dynasty started, I was in economy [class] with my husband, Ron [Kass], and my daughter, Katy, who was eight. We were flying back to London and somebody sneered: ‘Alexis Colby in steerage! How can you do that?’ At that point I said: ‘Right, that’s it. We’re not economising any more.’ I figure I deserve the lifestyle that I work for.” Actor Joan Collins (pictured), who says she still needs to work at the age of 90, quoted in The Times “My wealth has come from a combination of living in America, some lucky genes, and compound interest.” Warren Buffett, quoted on The Motley Fool “Some observers may liken the battle between Musk and Zuckerberg to the war between Iran and Iraq where Henry Kissinger remarked that it was unfortunate…

littletoller.co.uk At the height of the Covid crisis, Oxford’s allotments were full for the first time in decades, says JC Niala. Sites without waiting lists since the 1960s now had one. This is not a surprise. From the Dig for Victory campaigns of World War II to the oil-induced inflation of the 1970s, national crisis has always seen a growth in the appeal of growing your own food. But it’s not just about food. Allotments are “a different kind of place in which different values prevail”, as David Crouch and Colin Ward put it in The Allotment. They are also an escape from the drudgery of everyday life, and an opportunity to experience connection with a community and to build your own utopia. Where else can you rent land in…

One way to invest in a broad range of luxury-goods companies, rather than picking individual shares, is through the Amundi S&P Global Luxury UCITS ETF (Milan: GLUX). This aims to track the S&P Global Luxury index. The exchange-traded fund (ETF) has investments in about 80 major luxury-goods companies, mostly in the US or Europe. The five largest holdings are luxury conglomerates Richemont, LVMH, Hermès and Kering, as well as carmaker Mercedes. It has an ongoing charge of just 0.25% Perhaps the best-known luxury conglomerate is LVMH (Paris: MC), which is Europe’s largest listed company. Ben Laidler of eToro is impressed by the fact that it has “75 luxury brand ‘maisons’ across six segments”. Sales have nearly doubled between 2017 and 2022, and are expected to keep growing at roughly 12%…

I have lived in London and been a customer of Thames Water for over 40 years. I row regularly on the Thames, cycle alongside it and walk beside it, including following the Thames Path up to Oxford. I have never swum in it or paddle-boarded on it, but I see people doing so all the time. These are activities that would have been unthinkable 40 years ago. In a country in which moaning and complaining is a national sport, I am a very happy customer. My bills have gone up by an annualised 3% in the last decade and were higher before that. When, a couple of years ago, my usage appeared to go through the roof, workmen came round, replaced a pipe and changed the meter. Thames Water cancelled…

Outsourcing has always had a controversial reputation. While almost all companies in both the public and private sectors subcontract services such as security, maintenance and cleaning to outside firms, there has always been doubt over whether the practice delivers the promised value for money. The collapse of both Carillion and Interserve within the last five years also highlights the risks for the companies who take on others’ work. Finally, some argue that changing working patterns mean there will be less demand for facilities management. So it was perhaps not surprising that in late 2020, shares in outsourcer Mitie, which provides services ranging from commercial cleaning to large energy projects, had fallen by more than 80% from their peak. A shrewd strategy However, since then Mitie has become one of the…

The UK is ranked by most surveys as the second-biggest market in the world for fintech funding, putting it in prime position to grab a big share of the global market. Analysts reckon fintech revenues will grow sixfold to $1.5trn by 2030. Payments and bank data are two areas ripe for disruption, and here the UK is well and truly in the lead. The Open Banking initiative has allowed a whole new technology sub-sector to emerge, which can plug into your banking information as well as enable easier payments. Other countries are now following suit, with 74 countries in the process of rolling out next-generation real-time payment systems. I’d also argue the growth of UK fintech has been a huge net win for UK savers and investors, as new entrants…

The state-pension system, like the NHS, is 75 years old: the National Insurance Act came into force in July 1948. Many people overlook this valuable benefit when they plan their retirement finances. Pension experts often talk about the state pension as insufficient to sustain you through a financially comfortable retirement. This may be true, but it can still provide a very solid foundation for your income in later life. If you’ve qualified for the full rate, the state pension is worth £204 a week this year – the equivalent of £10,600 a year – and it’s guaranteed for the rest of your life. Calculations from Fidelity underline the value this offers. For a 65-year-old in good health, it would take £205,000 of pension savings to buy an annuity income offering…

2021 Journey’s End, Destination Chardonnay, Stellenbosch, South Africa £30.90, vinvm.co.uk I love scoops! My most recent epic discovery was with Rollo Gabb, owner of Journey’s End and his winemaker Mike Dawson, at his newly renovated Quo Vadis Restaurant in Soho, London. While my featured chardy has already found a footing in our market, no fewer than six other star wines passed my lips, and all of them will arrive in the next month or two on our shores. 2022 Journey’s End V6 Sauvignon Blanc was a compact, pin-sharp, lightning bolt of citrus and herb notes, while 2022 Journey’s End V1 Chardonnay showed uncommon breeding, resonance and restraint, redolent of a fine white Burgundy from a gentler era. 2021 Journey’s End V5 Cabernet Franc has more flair than many red Loires,…

Going… In 1981, a newly engaged Lady Diana Spencer (pictured) attended one of Prince Charles’s summer polo matches, wearing a red sweater with a whimsical white sheep – and solitary black sheep – motif. The media speculated endlessly over what the “black sheep sweater” symbolised. A few weeks later, the sweater’s makers, Sally Muir and Joanna Osborne’s knitwear label Warm & Wonderful, received a request from Buckingham Palace for a new one, because the original had been damaged. Last March, Muir and Osborne came across the damaged original in a box in the attic. It is expected to sell for up to $80,000 with Sotheby’s in New York on 14 September. Gone… The white dress worn by Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia in the original Star Wars film in 1977…

The odd relationship between Twitter’s owner Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerburg (pictured), whose Meta Platforms recently launched Threads, a direct challenge to Twitter, got weirder this week. Not content with organising a cage fight with Zuckerberg, Musk tweeted they should have “a literal d**k-measuring contest” and called his rival “Zuck the cuck”, a slang word for “cuckold” used in alt-right circles. Zuckerberg responded by celebrating the early success of Threads, which had signed up 100 million users in a week – the fastest-ever growth by an internet application. Musk is the gift that keeps on giving, says Clare Duffy on CNN Business. Not only has he distracted people’s attention from Meta’s own problems, but, as Herbert Hovenkamp of the University of Pennsylvania puts it, “Musk has done one thing after…

Credit markets are adjusting to life without the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor), the benchmark for lending markets since the 1980s, says Deutsche Bank. Whether you were a “business funding your expansion, an exporter protecting against... currency rate fluctuations, or a pension fund... Libor will have played a key role”. At the peak, contracts worth $350trn used Libor as the main reference rate. Libor was compiled with quotes for short-term borrowing from a panel of London banks, says Joe Rennison in The New York Times. Because submissions “were not... linked to actual trading” the system was open to manipulation: “$10bn in fines was meted out across the financial industry” when accusations of rigging came to light after the 2008 crisis. That set off a decade-long process to end the financial…

The Zimbabwean stockmarket has delivered a world-beating 800% rally this year, says Ray Ndlovu on Bloomberg. Yet the surge is not cause for celebration. Foreigners have largely abandoned the Harare bourse, which, with a market capitalisation of $1.8bn, is a minnow next to neighbouring South Africa’s $1trn stockmarket. With annual inflation running at 175%, the stockmarket is one of the few places where locals can seek protection from a currency that loses value every day. The largest banknote is no longer “enough to pay for a single tomato”. In a country where “the scars of hyperinflation run deep”, market observers say the “furious rally” suggests locals are preparing for another bout of ruinous price rises.…

Asset manager Macquarie Group has decided to pump an extra £550m into Southern Water, says Hans van Leeuwen in the Asian Financial Review. Britain’s debt-soaked utilities are grappling with soaring costs and mounting political pressure to revamp infrastructure. The equity investment will raise the total Macquarie-led investment in Southern Water to £1.7bn. It comes just two years after Macquarie bought a two-thirds stake in Southern. Southern blamed above-inflation increases for energy, along with costs for the maintenance and upgrade of its network, for the top-up. It also cited higher funding costs even after “significant deleveraging”. Southern recently had its debt downgraded by ratings agency Fitch, triggering a ban on paying dividends that will last until at least 2025. Southern Water has a long history of problems, including being fined £90m…

Israel’s Oddity Tech, an online retailer of beauty and wellness products (brands include IL MAKIAGE and SpoiledChild) is poised to float on America’s Nasdaq exchange. It has priced its shares at $27-$30 each. At the top of the range the group would raise $315m and be worth $1.7bn. The group is hoping to “ride a tsunami of enthusiasm from investors for other beauty and skincare stocks [that] have been lifted by the popularity of TikTok”, according to The Information. Business is certainly booming: in the first quarter of 2023 Oddity achieved net income of $19.6m, up from $3m in the first three months of 2022, notes MarketWatch. Sales soared from $90.4m to $165.7m.…

To “widespread surprise”, Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte, widely regarded as a competent “scheming tactician”, has announced the end of a political career that made him the second most senior national leader in the European Union and the longest-serving Dutch prime minister in history, says The Economist. He unexpectedly dissolved the government when his coalition partners rejected plans for tighter asylum rules that had been the subject of a months-long negotiation. Rutte said he will leave office after elections expected in November, and will stay on as a caretaker PM until then. A populist revolt Part of the problem was Rutte himself – the PM was “increasingly seen as part of the problem rather than the solution to the government’s political difficulties”, says Eline Schaart in Politico. His “lack of…

Washington, DC US inflation slows:The pace of rising consumer prices in the US slowed to 3% year on year in June from 4% in May, and to within a single percentage point of the Federal Reserve’s 2% target, says Gwynn Guilford in The Wall Street Journal. Inflation, according to the consumer price index (CPI), is now rising at its slowest rate since March 2021, and well below the recent peak of 9.1% in June last year, as underlying price pressures have eased. Used-car prices and airline fares have fallen sharply, although services inflation is continuing to prove “sticky”. “Core” consumer price inflation, which strips out volatile food and energy costs, fell from 5.3% in June to 4.8% last month, compared with a year earlier, and from 0.4% to 0.2% on…

● Shares in airline and tour operator Jet2 dropped 10% after executive chair Philip Meeson announced his retirement, says Alistair Osborne in The Times. Some investors may fear that Meeson will sell his 18% stake, valued at around £440m. “Yet a bigger reason is that the man who built the business so successfully over 40 years is stepping down from the cockpit.” Back in 1983, Meeson bought a tiny company called Channel Express, which flew flowers from the Channel Islands. Four decades later, it’s Britain’s biggest package holiday group, and its market value has risen from £12m when it listed in 1988 to £2.4bn. For that performance, Meeson, a former aerobatics champion, “deserves a victory roll”. ● “Currys has a cyclical problem and a secular challenge,” says Lex in the…

China is facing a similar problem to post-bubble Japan and will need to act firmly to avoid the same mistakes that led to the latter’s lost decade, says Richard Koo, the economist best known for his 2008 book The Holy Grail of Macroeconomics: Lessons from Japan’s Great Recession. After Japan’s bubble burst in the 1990s, households and companies focused on paying down loans and increasing savings – and they continued doing this regardless of how low interest rates became. “That’s the right thing to do at the individual level,” Koo tells Bloomberg. But when everybody is doing so at the same time, that acts as a drag on growth. “If someone is saving money or paying down debt, you need someone else to borrow and spend that money to keep…

samdumitriu.com The A428 connecting St Neots to Cambridge is a major bottleneck to growth in the city, says Sam Dumitriu. Cambridge has created jobs at a faster rate than homes, but commuters often hit a nine-mile stretch of single carriageway to find it jammed by traffic or accidents. A proposal to upgrade the road has been stuck since 2003 and still isn’t expected to deliver until 2026. Why? The vast majority of residents are in favour and road-building would not threaten any endangered species. But building has been held up by a campaign group that argues that building new roads increases traffic and hence carbon emissions. In Wales, campaigning isn’t even necessary since new roads can only go ahead if they meet strict environmental criteria. All major road-building projects in…

When a company is floated on the stock exchange the press like to highlight the amount that the major insiders such as the CEO become “worth” by multiplying the share price by the number of shares the managers own. However, while technically accurate, this can be misleading since the insiders are usually not allowed to sell any of their shares before a certain period, known as a “lockup”, which is typically 180 days. This is designed to align the interests of insiders with those of the other shareholders and make it harder for insiders to hype the company before dumping the overvalued shares. However, while lockups may help bolster the share price of a newly promoted company in the short run, any uplift is likely to be temporary. This is…

There is a growing number of smartphone apps using Open Banking to help pinpoint ways you can save money. Open Banking is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and you will never be asked to share your bank login details. If you become worried about security you can remove access at any time. ● Chip calls itself a “wealth app”, offering “one place for savings and investments”. It uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help you “automatically build your savings without thinking about it”, sweeping what it thinks you can afford to save into a savings or investment account. Chip pays 4.26% on balances up to £250,000 in instant-access savings, as well as a 90-day notice account and a prize savings account, where you can win a share of £50,000 each…

● For couples where only one partner works – or where one earns substantially less – pension planning can become troublesome. There is a good chance one partner will have all the savings. The other partner is then vulnerable later in life if the relationship breaks down, but also misses out on tax relief on pension savings. This is why many pension experts recommend working partners take advantage of rules that allow them to contribute to their non-working partner’s pension. It is possible to pay up to £240 per month into a pension plan for the non-worker, with an additional £60 of tax relief available from the state. ● Thousands of members of public-sector pension schemes will soon have a decision to make. As a result of a landmark legal…

eToys.com was founded in 1997 by Toby Lenk and startup backer Bill Gross. After considering several ideas they came up with a plan for saving parents time by selling a large range of toys over the internet, which was then still in its infancy. They received initial funding of $15m from venture-capital firms Sequoia Capital, Highland Capital Partners and Idealab, shortly followed by an additional $100m in funding from private institutional investors led by Promethean Asset Management. What was the investment? When the company opened for business in October 1997, four out of the five items from its first order turned out to be unavailable. Even in 1998 sales were only $34.7m. By the end of March 1999, it had sold items to 365,000 customers and a few months later…

Hip hop turns 50 years old this year. The sound that has become one of the world’s biggest-selling music genres was born out of parties in the South Bronx area of New York City in the early 1970s, and is often dated very specifically to a party in August 1973 at which DJ Kool Herc invented the break-beat style of deejaying to extend the instrumental part of a song. Auction house Sotheby’s is getting into the swing this month, by teaming up with entertainment company Mass Appeal to present its third dedicated hip-hop sale on 25 July. Before then a range of genre-defining original art, historic studio equipment, trainers and jackets, flyers and posters and rare artefacts will be on public display at Sotheby’s in New York, highlighting the role…

Emerging markets (EMs) are on course for another disappointing year. The MSCI EM index lost a fifth in 2022 in dollar terms. It regained 4.9% in the first six months of this year, but that is still well short of the 15% average rise across developed markets in the same period. On a price/earnings (p/e) ratio of 13.6 (compared with 20.3 across developed markets) EMs are undoubtedly cheap. So could we be due a rally? A decade of disappointment EMs’ discount to developed-world stocks has not been this large since they suffered a series of currency crises in the 1990s, says John Authers on Bloomberg. “Buying EM stocks worked out brilliantly the last time they were this cheap”: the new millennium ushered in a “potent” bull market fuelled by China’s…

On Monday the “telecoms sector’s worst-kept secret” was made public when Philip Jansen, the CEO of BT, finally announced his departure after months of speculation, says Katie Prescott in The Times. While “rumours that he could not wait to jump ship” may have been exaggerated, “there are few companies that come with so much public pressure or that feel so much like a game of whack-a-mole”. Jansen was “frequently frustrated by the constraints of the highly regulated, critical infrastructure business”. He was recently forced to apologise by telecoms regulator Ofcom for saying that BT was “an unstoppable machine” whose network expansion would “end in tears” for some competitors. Jansen “has been broken by one of the country’s most cumbersome organisations”, which still operates “like a forgotten government department”, says Ben…

Four to buy Rank Group Shares “Big changes are on the cards” for British gambling as the state prepares new legislation targeting problem gambling and online gaming. Rank, which operates Grosvenor Casinos and Mecca Bingo, stands to gain from the levelling of the playing field between virtual and physical casinos. The new rules may allow it to quadruple the number of gaming machines per venue and install more highly profitable bingo machines. The post-Covid recovery in gambling continues amid the slow return of overseas visitors to the UK. Shareholders may find themselves holding a royal flush. 90p Saga Interactive Investor This over-50s insurer and holiday operator has had a tough few years. Covid forced it to halt the dividend and investors’ concern over the cost of living has also hurt…

In a “major breakthrough” for Nato’s push to strengthen its alliances, Turkey has agreed to support Sweden’s bid for membership, says Bloomberg. The move is an “about-face” on Turkey’s previous threat to veto Sweden’s accession and comes “after months of arduous negotiations”. Demands to explicitly link Swedish accession to Turkish membership of the EU were rebuffed, but Turkey won assurances on several “key demands”, including Sweden’s approach to supporters of Kurdish separatists, progress toward lifting defence-related sanctions, and negotiations over upgrading the customs union and on visa liberalisation. US president Joe Biden said Turkey’s purchase of US F-16 fighter jets was also “in play”. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s U-turn suggests he has calculated he could benefit from mending his sour relationships with the US and other Nato allies, say…

Landing in the UK this week after a fortnight in Japan, I can’t be the first traveller to feel that you would struggle to guess which country had suffered a lost decade. There are plenty of issues with the Japanese economy: nobody should be in any doubt about its many shortcomings, such as the entrenched sexism that diminishes the contribution of half its population. But at least the government never succumbed to self-defeating austerity as an excuse to stop investing. Take the impressive Shinkansen train network – extensive, comfortable, frequent, fairly priced and not full to bursting. It puts Britain’s endless squabbling and penny-pinching over HS2 to shame. Train stations that employ both modern technology and helpful staff also contrast with the UK’s latest plan to close ticket offices. You…

BoE calls time on happy hour Will Dunn The New Statesman Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey has rightly incurred the public’s wrath, but his predecessors, Mark Carney (2013 to 2020) and Mervyn King (2003 to 2013), have “questions to answer as well”, says Will Dunn. Real incomes have stood still since the 2008 financial crisis. King has been accused of failing to see the preceding asset bubble as a problem, or to realise that the US credit crunch would spread to the UK, or to regulate the banking activity that led to bailouts. The Bank also followed the US example and kept debt “unrealistically cheap” with near-zero interest rates and quantitative easing (QE). Welcoming Carney in 2013, George Osborne declared that “active monetary policy”, not government, was…

ben-evans.com There’s little doubt that the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) represents a generational change in what we can do with software and what tasks can be automated, says Benedict Evans. And the change is happening rapidly, causing anxiety about the future of work. But what is forgotten at times like these is that “automation means jobs”. Humanity has been automating work for 200 years, and every time there is a new wave of automation, whole classes of jobs go away, but new classes of jobs get created too. There is “frictional pain and dislocation” in that process, of course, and sometimes the new jobs go to different people. But, over time, the total number of jobs does not go down, and the end result is that we have all…

“By 2030, China’s middle class is expected to eclipse that of the US and Europe combined” Over the past 15 years, many of us have seen our incomes squeezed by recessions, a pandemic and inflation. So you might expect the demand for luxury goods to have fallen. But the sector is thriving. Ben Laidler, global markets strategist at investment platform eToro, notes that according to consultants Bain, the value of the personal luxury-goods market – beauty products, watches, jewellery and shoes – has almost tripled from €122bn to €354bn since 2002. The trend has been a boon for the producers of these items and their investors. Jamie Ross, portfolio manager of Henderson EuroTrust, notes that if you’d invested in luxury conglomerates such as LVMH a decade ago, you would “have…

In May, Hargreaves Lansdown (HL) reported annual revenue growth of 28% to £188m for their third quarter (to 31 March 2023). That growth comes as HL refrains from passing on the benefit of rising interest rates to clients holding cash in their accounts, which has more than offset the impact of reduced trading volumes as the FTSE and Aim markets lag well behind the performance of their US counterparts. It remains unclear how sustainable the windfall profits from rising interest rates are. Wise, the currency trading platform, has already said it will share the benefits with customers. HL was founded more than 40 years ago by Peter Hargreaves and Stephen Lansdown, who still own 32% and 20% respectively of the shares capital, despite stepping back from day-to-day operations. Institutions that…

After losing confidence in RIT Capital Partners, we added AVI Global Trust (LSE: AGT) to the MoneyWeek investment-trust portfolio in March. As we noted at the time, AVI ticks several MoneyWeek boxes: it has a value remit with a global portfolio and a large allocation to Japanese equities. The trust focuses on three main areas for investment: investment trusts on a discount to net asset value; family-controlled holding companies; and Japanese stocks. It aims to “identify valuation anomalies” and “exploit these inefficiencies that exist in markets”, says Joe Bauernfreund, the trust’s investment manager and chief executive of Asset Value Investors (AVI), the management company. The current market is the sort of environment where this approach “thrives”, he says. “Careful stock selection” pays off when uncertainty prevails, although he is keen…

Over the last four weeks two out of my seven long tips have risen, while five have declined. Builder DR Horton advanced from $115.17 to $118 and discount chain B&M Value Retail rose from 539p to 544p. But computer-services group Computacenter dropped from 2,302p to 2,144p, brick and tile manufacturer Ibstock Brick slipped from 130p to 126p and estate agent Savills fell from 901p to 835p. Gamma Communications declined from 1,200p to 1,136p and Clarksons went down from 3,070p to 2,965p. Overall my long tips are making total net profits of £301. Of my seven short tips, four rose and three fell. Payroll company Paycom increased from $311 to $336, electric car-charging specialist EVgo rose from $3.82 to $4.45 and ticketing firm Live Nation jumped from $85.89 to $92.42. Realestate…

The number of self-employed people in the UK is climbing again, having fallen sharply during the Covid pandemic. Data from the Office for National Statistics shows 235,000 additional Britons registered as self-employed over the year to April, taking the total to almost 4.5 million. But what does being self-employed mean for your retirement planning? With these workers no longer part of the auto-enrolment system, whereby employers offer all staff access to a pension scheme, there is growing concern that many are not making adequate provision for retirement. Less than a third of self-employed people are current saving through a pension, according to IPSE, an association representing self-employed workers. Two basic options How you set up your pension as a self-employed worker will depend on how you’ve chosen to work: as…

In the year to May, British food inflation, as reported by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), eased from an annual pace of 19.1% to 18.4%. According to a recent report by Savills, however, total expenditure at grocery stores only increased by 10%, implying a dramatic drop in volumes. Yet food store sales volumes, which rose about 8% during the pandemic as people worked from home, are only down by 2.3% year on year. Savills attributes the remaining gap to trading down, and there is some evidence for this in the 15.2% growth in own-label sales and the growth in market share of discounters such as Aldi and Lidl, which in the last year have seen sales growth of 24% and 23.2% respectively. Perhaps there has also been a boom…

The live-action film Barbie, starring Margot Robbie (pictured left) as the eponymous fashion doll, is set for release on 21 July. And, as you might expect, it is a riot of pink. So much so, in fact, that when coupled with pandemic-related supply disruption, paint maker Rosco couldn’t supply enough of its fluorescent pink to the film’s set designers. But aside from cornering the market in that particular hue, the film’s release has provided another opportunity for those looking to turn a profit by raising interest in the collectable dolls. BonusFinder, an online gambling aggregator, analysed which Barbies have appreciated the most and from which decades, using data from BarbieDB. Unsurprisingly, the first-ever Barbie is the most desirable. Priced at $3 in 1959 ($32 in today’s money), the resale value…