Innehållsförteckning för 1196 från MoneyWeek

Isaac Newton, of all people, should have known that what goes up must come down. So I was intrigued to learn this week that he lost around $20m in today’s money in the South Sea bubble. Not only that, says financial historian Edward Chancellor on Breakingviews, but he sold his stock at an early stage before re-entering the market and investing his whole fortune in the South Sea Company. “Although Newton died a rich man, his niece said that he hated being reminded of these losses.” We are all susceptible to hype, and it must have been bedazzling to witness the surge. Between January and August of 1720, the South Sea Company’s stock rose by a factor of seven. At the apex the company was worth twice as much as…

“Economists [choose] data which [tells] a politician his preferred policy is correct… the profession’s forecasting skills are getting worse… in 2020, it was… reasonable [but wrong for economists] to think… pandemic disruptions were causing transient price increases… The Fed delayed responding… [central bankers then launched] a tightening campaign that past experience said would probably push the economy into recession. It didn’t… it is possible the combination of Covid… government stimulus and… government debt has created a black hole and we are approaching an event horizon where all our past observations of the economy are losing relevance. Whether or not… past results were ever indicative of the future, they aren’t now…People who make important decisions affecting all of us are flying blind.”…

“It has taken an energy crisis for Centrica to get back on its feet,” says Emma Powell in The Times. Last year’s profits for the owner of British Gas totalled almost £2.8bn, the second-highest on record. British Gas has been the “prime beneficiary of soaring energy prices”, thanks to Ofgem allowing a “sharp rise” in the energy price cap. That helped propel profits for the household-supply business from £72m in 2022 to £751m in 2023. However, no new share buybacks were announced alongside the full-year numbers, reflecting the “continuing furore” from campaigners over the group’s “bumper profits”. Simply deferring additional buybacks will do little to placate people angry about British Gas’s “surge” in profits, says Ben Marlow in The Telegraph. While Ofgem argues that the “ill-judged and comically ill-timed” price-cap…

Shares in Mondelez (formerly Kraft Foods’ snack division) look tasty, says Barron’s. The owner of the globally popular Oreo biscuit, as well as the Milka and Cadbury’s chocolate brands, makes around 75% of its sales outside the US and 40% in emerging markets, “where consumers are more interested in indulging than slimming down with… trendy weight-loss drugs”. It also bodes well that the group “has a history of successfully hedging commodity prices”, while there is little competition from private labels in its key markets of biscuits and chocolate. Mondelez consistently gains market share from its competitors and also boasts record free cash flow and a 2.3% yield.…

Politics & economics In theory, by-elections aren’t that important, says The Economist. Turnout isn’t high, they are not always a “reliable guide” to the country’s mood, and when it comes to passing bills, the Tory government still has a “respectable majority”. Nevertheless, watching the Labour party comfortably win two by-elections on 15 February, in Kingswood and Wellingborough, will prompt “despair” among Tory MPs. In Kingswood, the Tories’ share of the vote fell from 56% in 2019 to 35%; in Wellingborough it was down to 25% from 62% – the biggest drop the party has suffered since 1945. Overall, the share of the Tory vote has fallen by an average of 22.5% since Rishi Sunak entered No.10, the highest drop for a Tory incumbent since records began in 1950, says…

On 2 March, voters in the Australian constituency of Dunkley will be going to the polls to find a candidate to replace Peta Murphy, who died in December. At the moment, with £912 matched on Betfair, punters are expecting a comfortable ALP victory, with the Labor candidate at 1.14 (88%) against the Coalition candidate, who is at 3.55 (28.1%). Any other candidate is at 5.6 (17.8%). The Coalition, as represented in this case by the Liberals’ Nathan Conroy, could have a better chance of beating Dunkley than the betting odds would imply. By-elections tend to be tricky for the incumbent party and the seat has historically been fertile territory for the Coalition – in the 13-year period between 1996 and 2019, it was represented by Liberal Bruce Billson, followed by…

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate has been a huge shareholder in Apple for many years, holding more than $170bn worth of shares. The company ticks all of Buffett’s key investment criteria, such as generous margins and a market position that is so strong it is almost impossible for rivals to challenge. It has made him huge sums of money since he started accumulating the position 20 years ago. And yet Buffett might be having second thoughts. Last week it emerged that the company has trimmed its stake, selling shares worth $2bn from its portfolio. That could have been part of a simple tidying up of its holdings. But it may also be a sign that it is losing confidence in the company. Likewise, Jeff Bezos has sold shares worth almost…

Shares in JetBlue Airways soared by 19% after renowned activist investor Carl Icahn revealed that he had bought a 9.9% stake in the struggling US budget carrier, says Forbes. Icahn believes JetBlue’s stock is undervalued and is therefore an attractive investment opportunity. He is in talks to join the board. JetBlue’s stock was trading around $20 per share in 2021 and has been languishing at around $5 in recent months. JetBlue has struggled to turn a profit since 2019 owing to the Covid pandemic; its $3.8bn acquisition of Spirit Airlines and a partnership with American Airlines were both blocked on antitrust grounds. It plans to cut $200m in costs by the end of 2024 and boost revenue by $300m.…

“[The Home Shopping Network] hired me to sell a jewellery line they had lying around… It was a lot of fun, and I was on commission, so I did sell. I told women to steal their husbands’ wallets in the middle of the night and buy a bunch of jewellery and he’d never know. HR didn’t think that was appropriate. They told me that I shouldn’t be talking like that and I got fired.” American celebrity Janice Dickinson (pictured), quoted in The Telegraph “Your kids should get to keep it. Why, when your parents die, do you suddenly have to pay a whole chunk of money to the government? I think more people would invest and set up businesses and give to charity if we got rid of it. It’d…

telegraph.co.uk Most people in senior roles will have experienced “imposter syndrome”, says Helena Morrissey – the fear that you have been promoted beyond your abilities. Research suggests it affects men and women almost equally, and at least 70% of us experience it at some point in our lives. The self-doubt can become crippling and hence self-fulfilling. The way out of it is to adopt strategies that get you out of the panic of your mind and to focus your time and energy instead on the tasks immediately at hand. A good mantra to have is, “the process not the goal”. If you follow this, you will find that focusing on what you do day to day ultimately leads to stronger performance and achieving your goals. Accept that you will make…

● “Drivers were hit with an estimated £1.1bn-worth of fines by private parking companies last year, up by about 29%,” says Lucy Alderson in The Times. These companies are increasingly difficult to avoid. In 2012 there were 10,400 private car parks, according to the RAC Foundation, but this had risen to 43,000 by 2022. “Parking companies... are using unfair tactics to make motorists pay up,” Barrie Segal from Appeal Now – a website that helps drivers challenge fines – told The Times. “People are afraid and pay up, even if there was no violation.” If you receive a fine you think is unfair, write an appeal to the company. Include details of any errors and photos of any signs at the car park about terms and conditions. “If the signs…

● Entrepreneurs in the UK launched more businesses during 2023 than in any previous single year. Research conducted by NatWest Bank and the private company data platform Beauhurst reveals that more than 900,000 companies were founded over the course of 2023, a 12% increase on the previous year. The launches took the number of active companies operating in the UK to just over 5.3 million, which is also a record. ● Disabled business owners and leaders are struggling to overcome challenges holding their enterprises back, according to the Lilac Review, a new government-backed inquiry into how to support entrepreneurs with disabilities. Initial research conducted by the inquiry warned that disabled entrepreneurs face significant barriers to start and scale up businesses, including higher start-up costs, challenges accessing funding and support, and…

Taylor Swift may have been celebrating as the Kansas City Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers in the Super Bowl, but traders hoping for a rally in the S&P 500 won’t be as happy. The “Super Bowl Indicator” suggests that the US stockmarket tends to perform better after a team from the National Football Conference (NFC) league beats a team from the other key American Football division, the American Football Conference (AFC), on American Football’s biggest day of the year. Since Kansas City is in the AFC, this should theoretically be bad news. There does seem to be something to this theory. Research by AJ Bell’s investment director, Russ Mould, suggests that since 1967 the US stockmarket has returned an average of 10% in the 29 calendar years where teams…

2020 Château Bellefont-Belcier, Grand Cru Classé Saint-Émilion, Bordeaux, France It is somewhat haphazard writing about “fine wine” in this column, because this class of wine is more transient than traditional retail listings. Please search online if my noted merchants are out of stock – these wines are out there. I tasted 32 different 2020 Grand Cru Classé Saint-Émilions the other day. This exercise made me glance back to my en primeur notes to double-check that my picks looked as great out of the barrel as they did three years on. Led by my glorious headliner, a coming-of-age wine from the stunning Bellefont-Belcier, this superb tasting proved that top red Bordeaux can still offer incredible value for money. B-B is a deliciously sophisticated 2020 with remarkably controlled fruit and a terrifically…

Going… A stash of silver coins discovered in 2019 by two detectorists near Braintree, Essex, was heading for auction with Noonans Mayfair in London this week, says BBC News. It is thought that the hoard of 144 coins was hidden by its owner in 1066, the year of the Battle of Hastings. “Twelve shillings was a considerable sum of money, and its retrieval must have been prevented by some great personal misfortune,” says Bradley Hopper of Noonans Mayfair. An “extremely rare” Harold II penny (pictured) from the Guildford moneyer Leofwold was among the 122 pennies from the hoard entered into the sale. It was expected to fetch up to £6,000. The sum total raised from the auction was estimated at around £180,000. Gone… A rare Celtic gold coin dug up…

Bridge by Andrew Robson Finesse or Squeeze? West led the Queen of Spades v Six Clubs, East overtaking with the King. Declarer felt safe to duck, reflecting that East would have likely opened a Weak Two with six Spades. East continued with the Knave of Spades, and declarer won the Ace. He crossed to the King of Trumps, cashed the Ace of Hearts, discarding the Queen of Diamonds (throw a low Diamond and the Queen blocks the suit), then ran all his Trumps. Every last one. * Forcing bid, mainly asking, “Have you got a Spade stopper for Notrumps?”** “Actually I have a very big hand with the Ace of Spades, and am interested in a slam.”*** Three key cards. West discarded down to the King-ten of Diamonds, dummy down…

Wilbert Napoleon, an Amazon Prime customer in California, renewed his annual subscription last June for $139. Amazon afterwards announced customers would have to pay an extra $2.99 a month to watch its Prime Video service free of advertisements. In response, Napoleon has launched a class auction lawsuit against Amazon on the basis that he and tens of millions of others had already paid for an advertisement-free service. Amazon’s decision was part of a “mad dash to boost streaming income after years of rampant investment and spiralling blockbuster budgets”, says Dave Lee on Bloomberg. It didn’t help that Amazon’s $1bn Lord of the Rings series, starring Welsh actress Morfydd Clark (pictured), “failed to attract much critical or popular acclaim”. But that’s not Napoleon’s problem. True, Amazon will probably point to its…

“Astonishingly high cocoa prices” look set to persist, says Warren Patterson of ING. The chocolate ingredient was the best-performing commodity of 2023, with a 70% gain amid tight supply from producers in west Africa, which accounts for more than 70% of global output. Poor harvests for a third season in a row are fuelling a supply crunch. Cocoa prices are at their “highest level since at… least the 1960s”, says Evie Liu in Barron’s. The pandemic brought an increase in comfort eating and demand is rising in emerging economies, but supply is struggling to keep up. The 2023 West African growing season was blighted by “heavy rains” and infectious diseases, then “El Niño brought strong winds… that dried out many cocoa pods”. Supply is unlikely to recover soon – “cocoa…

It has been a tricky decade for miners, says The Economist. Booming demand for raw materials in the 2000s saw the industry overexpand, leading to a painful crunch that lasted for much of the 2010s. Mining shares have only climbed by 10% since the start of 2014, even as wider markets have doubled. Angry investors are making miners cautious about launching new projects: annual combined capital expenditure by the world’s top 40 miners fell by 42% between 2013 and 2022. “Glacial” rules governing permits in many countries are also slowing progress. Yet, the world needs 6.5 billion tonnes of metal between now and 2050 to decarbonise. If Western firms don’t dig up the required nickel, copper, iron ore and aluminium, then Chinese miners will.…

The prospect of a bidding war for Currys has prompted a 36% jump in the stock after Chinese e-commerce group JD.com “emerged as a potential suitor” for the electricals chain, says Isabella Fish in The Times. News of JD.com’s interest comes after Curry rejected a £700m takeover approach from Elliott Advisors, the US investment group, on the grounds that it “significantly undervalued the company and its future prospects”. Tycoon Mike Ashley could end up being a “kingmaker” in any contest after building up an 11% stake in the group. Currys doesn’t seem an “obvious object for anyone’s obsession”, as its business of selling phones, TVs, laptops and washing machines “faces fierce competition”, says Aimee Donnellan in Breakingviews. Operating profit margins were less than 1% in the six months to 31…

China’s eHI, a car rental and chauffeur-services outfit, is reportedly considering a return to the US market, says Bloomberg. The group, founded in 2006 and with a presence in more than 500 Chinese cities, raised $120m in an initial public offering in New York in 2014. It then went private following a $937m buyout by its boss Ray Zhang in 2019. Having opted not to float in Hong Kong in 2021, it now hopes to relist in the US and raise about $300m, perhaps as soon as this year. There has been an exodus of Chinese companies from US exchanges in recent years as tension between the two superpowers has mounted, and a return to America by a Chinese firm is a rarity.…

● “Barclays has been agonising about its outsized investment bank for ages,” says Aimee Donnellan on Breakingviews. Now, to boost the bank’s return on tangible equity from 9% to 12% by 2026, CEO C.S. Venkatakrishnan (pictured) wants to reduce the size of the investment bank, which has swollen to 58% of the group’s £343bn of risk-weighted assets, to around 50% by 2026. The plan is to do so by keeping the investment bank’s size the same, but growing other operations, notably US credit cards and UK retail and wealth, by $50bn. High British interest rates and a flatlining economy (which are depressing demand for mortgages and loans), along with rampant competition for credit cards, pose risks. The CEO’s plan makes sense, but “investors burned by previous false dawns will only…

■ Warren Buffett’s investment vehicle, Berkshire Hathaway, sold ten million shares, about 1.1% of its stake in Apple, in the final quarter of 2023, says The Wall Street Journal. It leaves the conglomerate with a 5.9% holding in the technology giant, worth about $167bn. Berkshire’s position in Apple had grown to an outsized share of its $300bn portfolio. Although Apple’s shares have surged by 367% since the end of 2018, they haven’t outpaced their big rivals, and the firm was recently eclipsed as the most valuable listed US company by Microsoft. Apple is facing regulatory scrutiny of its App Store practices, falling sales in China, and concerns over its growth prospects. Berkshire has also reduced stakes in PC maker HP by 78% and media firm Paramount Global by 32%. It…

bloomberg.com If you had to buy your own state pension, how much do you think it would cost? asks John Stepek. The UK state pension is rising to around £11,500 annually for the 2024-2025 tax year. A single 68-year-old man in good health wanting to buy a lifetime income of that amount that rises with inflation would have to hand over around £235,000 to an insurer. This is only a rough answer, but it’s enough to demonstrate two points. One is that you might think being handed a quarter of a million pounds by the government when you turn 68 is pretty generous. The second is that you might wonder whether it is really affordable. This is in fact why the affordability of the state pension is such a hot…

Could fitting a black box in your car cut your insurance premiums? Some firms use black-box, or telematics, technology to cut premiums for people who pay top rates for car insurance, such as young or new drivers. The black box monitors your car to see if you are driving safely. “Your black box can be a physical device fitted to your car and it usually will contain a Sim card that sends data to your insurer, or it can just be an app on your phone that collects the data,” says Lucy Alderson in The Sunday Times. “The idea is that being monitored encourages safer driving, so the insurer can offer you a cheaper deal because you are less likely to make a claim.” Insurers can also use the technology…

Can your business afford to pay the “real living wage”, calculated by the Living Wage Foundation to be £12 an hour, or £13.15 in London? Unlike with the statutory “national living wage”, set by the government at £10.42 an hour, there is no legal compulsion for employers to do so. However, roughly 14,000 employers around the UK have made a public commitment to pay at least this minimum to all staff. Crucially, the Living Wage Foundation sets its recommended rate by researching what it genuinely costs people to maintain basic standards of living. The government’s rate – which increases to £11.44 in April – is, by contrast, arbitrary – it was known for many years simply as the “minimum wage”. Unfortunately, however, some employers are finding it difficult to keep…

My seven long tips have done well in the last four weeks, with six out of the seven rising. Computerservices firm Computacenter increased from 2,830p to 2,922p. Moonpig, which sells greeting cards and gifts online, rose from 161p to 187p, while kitchen-supplier Howden Joinery advanced from 785p to 802p. Budget airline easyJet jumped from 500p to 563p, recruiter SThree climbed from 381p to 429p and airport retail outlet concession operator SSP Group rose from 200p to 224p. The only exception is trading platform firm IG Group, which fell from 766p to 700p. Overall, my long tips are currently making total profits of £1,657. Sadly, my short tips didn’t do as well, with all but one rising. Payroll technology-provider Paycom increased from $192 to $195, Solarenergy company Sunrun went up from…

The heartfelt reaction to the death last week of radio DJ Steve Wright, aged 69, is proof of the continuing hold radio has on our lives, says Gillian Reynolds in The Guardian. Like Kenny Everett and Alistair Cooke before him, some voices become such a familiar part of our everyday lives that we feel their loss as a personal tragedy. You might think there’s nothing to it – just “someone to play the music and burble in between” – but you “have to love radio to be very good at it”, and Wright did. He started aged 12, running his own station at school before getting a job as a researcher at the BBC. He eventually landed his own show on Radio 1 – Steve Wright in the Afternoon ran…

After two failed attempts, Prabowo Subianto has “finally clawed his way” to the top of the world’s third-biggest democracy, says Frances Mao for the BBC. The former general and current defence minister is on course to become president of Indonesia as counting continues following elections last week. Once a political opponent of sitting president Joko Widodo (known as Jokowi), Prabowo’s campaign was boosted by the implicit support of his former rival, whose son is Prabowo’s running mate. Still enormously popular, Jokowi was barred from running again by term limits. Once known as a “temperamental military man” with a penchant for “fiery nationalist speeches”, Prabowo has undergone an “image makeover” that portrays him as an “affable grandfatherly figure”, says Bloomberg. He pitched himself as the candidate most likely to advance Jokowi’s…

NatWest’s shares jumped by more than 5% last week when it announced its biggest yearly profit since the financial crisis, says Kalyeena Makortoff in The Guardian. The £6.2bn earned in 2023, up 20% from the year before, will set a high benchmark for Paul Thwaite, who was also confirmed as permanent CEO on Friday. Thwaite became interim CEO last summer after an outcry over the decision to withdraw banking services from Nigel Farage forced the exit of Alison Rose. Thwaite will be running the bank alongside incoming chair Rick Haythornthwaite. There is a general feeling that Thwaite’s appointment is “probably what’s needed for NatWest”, says Ben Martin in The Times. It should provide stability following a difficult period for the group, which not only saw Rose depart, but also commissioned…

Six to buy AstraZeneca Investors’ ChronicleFourth-quarter performance at this pharmaceutical giant disappointed, with core operating profit undershooting forecasts by 14%. That reflects falling sales from Covid treatments and rising spending on research and development (R&D), with the latter climbing to a chunky 24% of revenue in 2023 (up from 22% a year before). Those R&D investments should yield results eventually: Astra has one of the strongest pipelines in the sector. Exclude Covid products and total revenue rose by 15% last year, with particular strength in oncology. On 15 times earnings, the shares are reasonably priced to get a stake in “world-leading science”. 10,234p Jet2 Interactive InvestorNever mind the recession. Package holidays, which tend to be perceived as offering value, are thriving, putting a tailwind behind the UK’s largest tour operator…

Britain’s recession has been described as “technical” and “shallow”, but in the “brutal political arena ahead of a general election” it was given a different name: “Rishi’s recession”, say George Parker and Valentina Romei in the Financial Times. One of Rishi Sunak’s five promises at the start of 2023 was to “grow the economy”. Instead, GDP shrank by 0.1% and 0.3% in the last two quarters of 2023. Unless the figures are revised, “the ‘R’ word will be hanging around Sunak’s neck” until the release of the next quarterly figures in May. The announcement last week is clearly embarrassing for Sunak, says David Smith in The Times, but it “also puts the ball firmly” in the Bank of England’s court. The Bank was too slow to nip inflation in the…

What was already a “bad legal week” for Donald Trump – featuring setbacks in a classified documents case and his criminal trial over alleged hush money – ended with a “staggering defeat in his civil fraud case”, says Hugo Lowell in The Guardian. The case, brought by New York attorney-general Letitia James, ended with a judge ordering Trump (pictured) to pay roughly $450m to the state, after finding him liable for conspiracy to manipulate his net worth in order to get a real-estate loan from Deutsche Bank. The judgment will “almost entirely drain his accounts of cash” and bars him from running the Trump Organisation for three years. Trump’s “casual relationship to the truth has come back to bite him”, but nevertheless the judgment smacks of “political overkill”, says The…

If anyone thought that Bill Ackman’s online activism and campaigning against anti-Semitism had distracted him from managing Pershing Square Holdings (LSE: PSH), this month’s London meeting for investors will have convinced them otherwise. In 2023 the investment return of Pershing Square was 26.7% and the shares returned 36%, while the S&P 500 gained 26.3%. And this return was earned despite owning only one of the “Magnificent Seven” stocks that drove the US market: Alphabet, bought early in the year. Moreover, “it gets harder to beat the S&P when the S&P does well”, says Ackman, as PSH likes to protect good returns through hedging. Over five years, PSH has produced 31.2%, twice the return of the S&P 500. That was preceded by two difficult years, but since the inception of the…

Pay reform will spark a bloody war Soumaya KeynesFinancial Times On average, women are paid less than men and “they don’t like it”, says Soumaya Keynes. Is transparency the answer? In the EU, a major reform means that by 2026 “employees will have the right to hear ‘objective’ criteria for pay and progression, as well as what others doing work ‘of equal value’ earn”. Employers will have to put salary bands on job advertisements. But will it work? A recent Harvard Business School study finds that people tend to underestimate what their bosses earn and work harder when they find out. Transparency in job advertisements seems to have raised pay. But policies that shed light on the gender-pay gap are particularly tricky. Rather than raising pay for women, employers tend…

capx.co The UK never wanted “net neutrality rules” – which prevent internet service providers (ISPs) from discriminating in the delivery of web traffic – but was forced to accept them as part of EU membership, says Matthew Lesh. Post-Brexit Britain has retained the rules, but the communications regulator, Ofcom, is taking advantage of Brexit freedoms to interpret the rules more flexibly. Ofcom will now allow ISPs to experiment and innovate. Advocates for net neutrality say the rules were needed to ensure that the internet stays “free, open and accessible”. But critics have long argued they are not needed – ISPs have no incentive to limit your access to the web – and undermine legitimate efforts to manage network traffic and offer innovative deals to consumers. Under the previous rules, all…

Investment in research and development (R&D) generates the new products, processes and services that can give a company an edge over its competitors. New products and processes that are patentable also provide a “moat” – an enduring competitive advantage – preventing the innovations resulting from R&D from being copied by rivals. The amount a company invests in R&D is therefore a useful guide for investors seeking the most innovative companies likely to draw ahead of their competitors over the next few years. The extent of R&D at a company is known as R&D intensity, which is the ratio of investment in R&D to sales. However, one cannot just compare the R&D intensities of different companies because the average intensity of different sectors varies markedly. R&D is a crucial factor in…

After years of struggling to find a savings account that can outstrip inflation, there are now more than 950 that fit the bill. But savings rates are falling so you need to lock in an inflation-busting rate before it disappears. Everything is topsy-turvy with savings rates now. Traditionally, the longer you are willing to lock your money up for, the better the rate of interest. But at present the best rate on a five-year fixed-rate account is 4.51%, whereas you can get a rate of 5.21% on a one-year bond. The best possible rate is 5.45% on Market Harborough Building Society’s 195-day notice account. “The inversion… is because we’re in a period of high rates expecting rate cuts,” Anna Bowes, co-founder of Savings Champion, told The Guardian. Many banks and…

Time is starting to run out to take advantage of a government-backed loan scheme launched in the wake of Covid. The Recovery Loan Scheme (RLS), which was launched 18 months ago, could help your business access finance in what is an increasingly tight credit market. But the initiative is due to come to an end on 30 June. The RLS offers loans of up to £2m and is available to companies with turnover of up to £45m a year, as long as they have been trading for at least two years. Finance is available through a variety of different types of credit, including straightforward term loans and overdrafts, as well as asset-finance and invoice-finance facilities. Credit is not guaranteed: you will have to apply for finance to a provider taking…

For the last few decades General Motors (NYSE: GM) has served as a symbol of how a previously dominant company can be laid low by a combination of economic trends, technology and poor decision-making. Perhaps the group’s worst choice was to discontinue the production of the EV1, its pioneering electric car, in 1999 (despite a positive reception), leaving a gap in the market that would later be exploited by Tesla. By 2008 things were so bad that GM had to get a government loan, filing for bankruptcy in 2009. While it is still the second-largest company in the world by sales, it is only in twelfth place in terms of market value. Moreover, a strike, which was only settled at the end of last year, caused disruption and will push…

Inflationary pressures and tighter monetary policy mean that businesses worldwide have come under pressure in recent years. But unlike in previous rate-hiking cycles, emerging markets were broadly ahead of the curve when it came to raising interest rates and bringing inflation under control. As a result, interest rates have already started coming down in some emerging economies – most notably in Brazil, Hungary, and Poland – which bodes well for both consumption in these countries and the companies operating in them. Our investment trust makes use of an extended toolkit to deliver returns, which in practice means the ability to increase gross exposure, take both long and short positions in stocks, and generate additional income and manage risk through options. We scour the breadth of the market-capitalisation spectrum to identify…

As my cable-car gondola ascended into the fog, leaving me with just the occasional glow of a distant light, I wondered what would happen. Would I disappear, never to be seen again, or would I arrive at the station only to be greeted by Oddjob? Let’s take a deep breath and start at the beginning. Val d’Isère is one of the most famous resorts in the French Alps. Unlike most other skiing areas, it wasn’t created from scratch a few decades ago. Instead, it was first inhabited in Roman times. Even today, its oldest building dates from the 12th century, while the local church, dedicated to Saint Bernard of the Alps, was built in 1664. The resort is described as “family-plus”, which means that it has a range of facilities…

Christie’s in London got the year off to a rocking start with the £8.8m sale of around 100 guitars and ten amplifiers belonging to Dire Straits’ guitarist and singer Mark Knopfler at the end of January. Not an instrument went unsold, with a quarter of the total hammer price (ie, before fees) going to support four charities. In addition, all of the proceeds from the sale’s final lot – a Gibson Les Paul “Gold Top”, signed by Knopfler, Eric Clapton and Pete Townshend, among many others – were donated to the Teenage Cancer Trust. It sold for £403,200. But that wasn’t the most expensive guitar of the day. That accolade went to a 1959 Vintage Gibson Les Paul Standard with a faded cherry-red sunburst finish that Knopfler played on the…