Innehållsförteckning för 1226 från MoneyWeek

When it comes to the continental welfare state, “from the cradle to the grave” is meant literally. The city of Vienna offers grieving families extraordinarily comprehensive administrative help. Your adviser will help you find a spot in the cemetery and choose a coffin (or an urn) and a wreath; they will even arrange professional musicians for your loved one’s ceremony (well, it is the city of music). You can also ask the city to erase the departed’s digital footprint. It is all very efficient and helpful, and it is not free. But it does give us a glimpse of the extent to which the Viennese expect the state to do things for them, and what the state feels it appropriate to provide. “An instinctive hostility to business can be the…

“The tech sell-off has disguised a healthier market than the drop in the headline index level might suggest. Nearly three-quarters of US shares are in an uptrend. Pessimism sounds clever. But it only rarely makes sense for investors. So why do we listen to the doomsters? First, we have evolved to pay more attention to danger. Better safe than sorry. But what kept us alive on the savannah also encourages us to be overcautious as investors. Second, when something bad happens in the financial world it affects us all. Fewer than 3% of Americans owned shares in 1929, but the market crash triggered the Great Depression. Finally, because positive change is often slow and imperceptible, while bad things happen in a rush. There was a 70% drop in deaths from…

Shares in Apple fell on Monday after warnings that demand for the firm’s new iPhone 16 Pro model has been unexpectedly tepid, say Matt Turner and Subrat Patnaik on Bloomberg. Last week’s launch event was deemed “underwhelming” and one analyst has noted that pre-order sales since then are down 13% from last year’s iPhone 15 launch. This would be a major disappointment for shareholders: Apple’s shares have perked up since May “as investors bet that Apple’s artificial intelligence (AI) features will boost sales of its latest line of iPhones”. The idea is that those buying the latest iPhone will be able to access AI-based features that will be rolled out from next month, says the Economist. But producing compelling features “will not be easy”. AI relies on large language models…

Every third chicken nugget in the world is made with equipment from Germany’s Gea, says WirtschaftsWoche. It is one of the world’s top providers of advanced systems designed to produce food, drinks and pharmaceuticals. As these are defensive sectors, business is usually stable, although an unwise acquisition and the pandemic did cause a rare loss and declines in sales in 2019 and 2020. The company has found its feet again, however, and has just raised its earnings estimates for the year. Falling costs and a growing emphasis on services such as maintenance and consulting mean that the bottom line could increase by a tenth to €430m this year. The stock also yields 2.6%.…

Like something out of a James Bond film, the pagers of hundreds of Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon simultaneously exploded on Tuesday, flooding Beirut hospitals with more than 2,800 casualties, including the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, says David Ignatius in The Washington Post. Israel hasn’t admitted responsibility, but it’s clear that an attack of this “sophistication and daring”, probably involving the insertion of small amounts of explosives into the phones before they were distributed, “could not have been staged by any other nation”. It “signals the beginning of a new and very dangerous era in cyberwarfare” and could end any chance of a ceasefire deal for Gaza and the release of Israeli hostages. The attack could not have come at a less auspicious time for the US, especially if it ends…

Last Saturday was the St Leger Stakes – the final classic of the British flat-racing season – so if you trust in investment cliches, this week should be an auspicious one to get back into the market. “Sell in May and go away, come back on St Leger day,” runs the old saying, alluding to the long-standing belief that stocks tend to perform best in the winter months and less well in the summer. Supposedly, this pattern arose because market participants used to retire to the country for leisure as spring and summer arrived, so activity dried up. Whether this was really the case isn’t clear; in any case, there’s no reason why the trading habits of Victorian gentlemen should have any bearing on modern markets. Yet the idea that…

The miners’ strike all over again Liam Halligan The Telegraph Scotland’s Grangemouth oil refinery is to close, with the loss of 400 jobs, says Liam Halligan. This comes on the back of the closure of Britain’s last two blast furnaces at Port Talbot steelworks, with the loss of 2,500 jobs. The closures are a result of Labour’s push to reach net zero by 2050 and ban new petrol and diesel cars from 2035, policies which they’re pursuing “more doggedly than the Tories”. This could lead to a “substantial, long-term conflict” with the trade unions and exposes the “chasm” between Labour’s wealthy, often urban-based green voters and its traditional base. Union leaders are warning about the “hollowing out of working-class communities” and evoking the miners’ strike of the 1980s. They oppose…

backofmind.substack.com A few years ago, I decided to take betting on the horses seriously, keeping records and applying a “cybernetic” system, says Dan Davies. The idea is that you “can often use the recent history of a system as a proxy for an unobservable current state”. For horse racing, this means reading the form book for information about the current fitness of the horse. This gives you an edge, particularly in mid-quality races. The most prestigious races of the season are more of a lottery as they attract the very best horses who will be well trained and close to the peak of their form. Picking a winner there is much harder than in an eight-horse race at an unprestigious course, where you can often eliminate half the field because…

Dr Martens’ shares have slumped by 85% since listing three years ago. Are they now cheap, or could there be more pain ahead for investors? In 2011, after 50 years in control, the owners of Dr Martens, the Griggs family, put the business up for sale. At first, they couldn’t find a buyer willing to pay the price they were asking. But eventually, in 2013, a deal was struck with private-equity firm Permira for £300m. The takeover was for the assets of R Griggs & Co., the firm that manufactured and distributed the shoes, and for the right in perpetuity to use the Dr Martens brand. The actual ownership of the brand was retained by the Griggs family. In the year before the deal, the company generated £22.6m in pre-tax…

■ Global inflows into exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are set to reach new record highs this year, says the Financial Times. In August, investors added $129.7bn to ETFs, slightly lower than July’s record monthly inflow of $198bn but above the 2024 monthly average, according to BlackRock’s data. Total inflows for the first eight months of the year were $969bn, surpassing last year’s $848bn at the same stage. Investors continued to favour defensive sectors and fixed income, thanks to the prospect of interest-rate cuts. Market jitters didn’t lead to mass exits from ETFs because there wasn’t a “terrible global calamity, like Covid or a bigger war”, says Morningstar’s Sly Flood. Despite some outflows earlier in the month, the August inflow of $73bn in the US was more than twice the August average.…

● Did you know your bank almost certainly has a cash deposit limit, restricting the amount of cash you can pay into a business account on a single day? More small businesses report falling foul of these limits, particularly as branch closures force them to travel further afield, meaning they make fewer trips. At some banks, the limit is as low as £2,500, which can cause real problems for firms dealing in cash. Make sure you know the rules at your bank – and, if this is a potential problem for your business, ascertain a new bank’s limits before moving your account there. ● Small business owners are not good at taking time off. One recent survey suggests almost half have taken no more than three or four days of…

Some analysts argue that falling unemployment implies stronger growth, higher profits and, therefore, higher share prices. Others argue that things are not so simple, and that good jobs figures may actually be bearish. This is because a fall in unemployment may be seen as a sign of a tightening labour market, leading to tighter margins and lower profits for firms. Worse, it may be a sign of rising prices and inflation, which could prompt the central bank to raise interest rates (or at least delay cutting them). Higher interest rates are generally bad for shares because they make fixed-income assets more appealing. A 2005 study by the University of Minnesota and Northwestern University found that between 1961 and 1995, the short-run impact of unemployment figures depended on which part of…

Small caps are “cool again”, say Charlie Wells and Suzanne Woolley on Bloomberg. After a long run dominated by the big seven tech stocks, investment advisers are increasingly looking to the “polar opposite”. Smaller companies tend to have floating-rate debts, so falling US interest rates will give them a disproportionate boost. Small caps have lagged America’s corporate giants, says Lori Ioannou in The Wall Street Journal. Over the decade to 1 August this year, the Russell 2000 index of small caps returned an annual 8.91%, dwarfed by the 15% annual returns from the LargeCap S&P 500. Yet the “headwinds” of high debt costs and inflation that have “beset” small firms are finally fading away. On a forward price/earnings ratio of 16.9, the S&P SmallCap 600 also looks a much better…

UK national debt is on course to surge from just under 100% of GDP today to 274% over the next 50 years, according to projections from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). The OBR says that population ageing, climate change and higher defence spending will all drain the public coffers. The costs of rocketing public debt are already evident in annual debt interest payments that are heading towards £100bn a year, far more than the budgets of all but the biggest government departments, says David Smith in The Sunday Times. Sustained higher productivity growth would “work miracles” for the national debt, but as the productivity “stagnation” of the past decade has shown, that is much easier said than done.…

Boeing’s CEO Kelly Ortberg may have been in the job for only a month, but already he is “having to steer through choppy labour negotiations amid a financial squeeze”, says The Wall Street Journal: 33,000 International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers at Boeing’s plants in Seattle and Portland have voted to strike. While Boeing has offered rises of up to 25%, the workers want larger hikes to compensate for inflation in recent years, along with the restoration of defined-benefit pensions abolished ten years ago. With Boeing already “flying into financial headwinds owing to problems of its own making”, credit ratings agencies say a prolonged strike would result in a debt downgrade, making it harder to refinance maturing borrowings. The machinists, who are “highly skilled and hard to replace”, have…

Shares in the home-loan unit of India’s biggest shadow bank, Bajaj Finance, soared 136% on their market debut on Monday, riding a wave of local enthusiasm for initial public offerings (IPOs), says Bloomberg. The share price rose to Rs165 against an offer price of Rs70 in Mumbai, representing the highest-ever first-day gains for IPOs of over $500m in India. The Rs65.6bn (£592.6m) sale was oversubscribed by more than 60 times and attracted bids on the last day of the sale of around $39bn – more than 1% of GDP. Buoyant demand from local retail and institutional investors have seen IPOs in India raise $8.6bn in 2024 – more than in each of the preceding two years.…

The attempted assassination of Donald Trump seems to have failed to move the betting markets back in his favour. Indeed, with £67.6m matched on Betfair, the odds on Kamala Harris have actually moved further in her favour, narrowing to 1.91 (52.3%), with the odds on Trump winning drifting out to 2.16 (46.2%). I continue to be more confident than the wider markets that Harris will win, although the usual disclaimers about not doubling down if you’ve already placed your bets apply. As well as the presidential election, the whole of the House of Representatives, as well as a third of the Senate, will be up for election. One of the most interesting contests is Montana. At the moment it is held by Democrat Jon Tester, who has represented the state…

We already know that the “horror Budget” that new chancellor Rachel Reeves plans to unveil at the end of next month will include huge tax rises. The incoming government has told us at length about the £22bn “black hole” in the public finances left behind by the last government. It has lectured us all about fiscal responsibility and how it is not going to take any risks by spending money it does not have. And it has made it clear that it wants to spend lots more on increasing pay in the public sector, on hitting its ambitious net-zero targets, on improving infrastructure, on industrial strategy, and a new national wealth fund too. Add it all up, and the chancellor needs to find an extra £20bn-£40bn every year to pay…

Stockmarket returns are often quoted on the basis of price return – the gain or loss in the price of the shares that make up the index. However, investors will also receive dividends from many companies and over the long term this can amount to a much larger element of returns than the capital gains. The total return from an investment takes into account income received from dividends or interest from bonds or other sources. Total returns are usually calculated on the assumption that any income received is invested back into the market. Over a short time frame, the difference between total return and price return will usually be small, unless you are looking at investments with a relatively high yield, such as high-yield bonds. But over several years, the…

“I’m too stingy.” Jacob Rees-Mogg (pictured) on why, unlike some former Conservative colleagues, he isn’t paying more than £2,000 to keep his ministerial red box, quoted in the Financial Times “Peace, easy taxes and a tolerable administration of justice.” The key prerequisites for strong economic growth according to Adam Smith, quoted in The Economist “Back in the day, you could get paid £10,000 for an interview and £50,000 for an advertisement. That extra money was life-changing – I was able to upgrade houses and live a very comfortable life, but then the recession and Covid hit and everything was slashed by two-thirds. Those days are long gone.” Coleen Nolan, TV presenter and former member of 1980s girl band The Nolans, quoted in The Telegraph “Not since the days of slavery…

unherd.com Donald Trump’s televised debate with Kamala Harris will be remembered for Trump’s claim that Haitian immigrants in Ohio have been eating the pets of the natives, says Oliver Bateman. They haven’t been. But the claim reveals how quickly wild ideas on the fringes of the internet now go mainstream. In 2024, “the right-wing rumour mill operates at warp speed”. Onceinfluential think tanks, on the other hand, which could once have relied on a hearing and be expected to shape the agenda, have been sidelined. A “bottom-up flow of information” from internet forums to the debate stage has now “supplanted top-down policy dissemination”. The “traditional gatekeepers of right-wing thought – think tanks, policy wonks and establishment figures – have been sidelined” in favour of a more decentralised, internet-driven spread of…

The Lloyd’s market is the fifth-largest provider of reinsurance in the world, based on 2023 gross written premium numbers compiled by rating agency AM Best. The largest provider is Swiss Re, followed by Munich Re, Berkshire Hathaway and Hanover Re. Swiss Re is coming out of a tough few years, a result of poor reserving and underwriting. It has taken some time for the market to come round to the company’s recovery story, but its recent results showed progress on all fronts. Reserves have been bolstered and profit has recovered thanks to the reinsurance hard market. Berenberg says that, despite its history, the firm’s current valuation is “not very demanding” considering its “underlying earnings power”. Berkshire Hathaway, the investment company run by Warren Buffett, is the most diversified of the…

The rise in the gold price ought to be very good news for gold miners. In theory, every dollar on the gold price goes straight to profits as mining costs are fixed. Gold-mining shares used to be regarded as a leveraged play on the gold price, amplifying the rise in the metal. In practice, it hasn’t worked out like that. The gold price has risen over 20% this year and 32% over one year to around $2,500 an ounce. The price is 40% higher than the peak reached 12 years ago. Yet the FTSE Gold Mining index stands nearly 30% below the level reached in late 2011. A sea of troubles This doesn’t necessarily mean that gold-mining shares are a bargain. Miners are beset by rising costs, falling ore grades…

Should small business owners be worried about the Labour government’s plans to beef up workers’ rights? Not according to ministers, who have launched a charm offensive to soothe entrepreneurs’ fears. Last week saw deputy prime minister Angela Rayner and business secretary Jonathan Reynolds meet small business groups to discuss potential changes to the law. We won’t know exactly what Labour is planning until it publishes detailed proposals on how to “make work pay”, as it branded the reforms in the election campaign. An employment rights bill is expected in October. In the meantime, some likely changes are worrying employers more than others. For example, prior to the election Labour said it wanted to give employees the right to claim for unfair dismissal from their first day of employment – currently,…

The Darzi Report has exposed the dire state of the NHS. Ara Darzi, a former Labour minister and surgeon with more than 30 years’ experience in the NHS, found the health service has suffered from decades of underinvestment in people and buildings. The lack of investment is not only leading to higher waiting lists, but also thousands of premature deaths. Labour has promised to address the problems, but has ruled out further cash infusions until the system reforms itself. Reform will almost certainly include greater involvement from the private sector, something both prime minister Keir Starmer and his health minister, Wes Streeting, have made clear. A growth market NHS spending on the private sector has risen steadily over the past few years. According to the Nuffield Trust, NHS trusts spent…

The past fortnight has been a mixed bag for my ten long tips, with five rising and five falling. High-street clothing retailer Next went up from 10,090p to 10,390p, engineering group Rolls-Royce advanced from 464p to 499p and cruise-ship operator Royal Caribbean advanced from $164 to $170. Housebuilder Vistry also went up, from 1,359p to 1,374p, while Marks & Spencer rose from 339p to 362p. Investment and share-trading platform IG fell from 962p to 961p and payment systems firm PayPal declined from $72 to $71. Foreign-exchange broker Alpha decreased from 2,480p to 2,220p. Carmaker General Motors slipped from $49.78, falling below the $45 at which I suggested that you close your position. Similarly, bowling alley business Hollywood Bowl slipped from 328p to 310p, triggering the stop-loss. Overall, counting the two…

At the age of 12, Gary Stevenson was selling sweets at school to make a bit of pocket money, says Natalia Junquera for El País. At 16, he had been expelled for selling cannabis. By the age of 23, he was a City trader, and Citigroup had paid him his first bonus of £13,000. By the age of 26, he was a millionaire. “The importance of money, and the knowledge that my parents didn’t have much of it, was something I’d always felt deeply,” writes Stevenson, now 37, in The Telegraph. “I wanted to be a millionaire. A career in the City seemed the quickest route to achieving that… I turned up on my first day in a tracksuit. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t fit in.” That feeling of alienation never went…

2021 Ivresses, Domaine Canet-Valette, Saint-Chinian, Languedoc, France £27.90 each, sold by the six-pack, robertrolls.com Wine always takes the lead in my life, but I never drink wine without food. And because I have worked in, owned, and consulted for restaurants almost all my working life, food is ever-present. I have known chef Henry Harris since 1990 and have loved every dish he has cooked for me. Henry’s pitch-perfect restaurant, Bouchon Racine in London’s Farringdon, showcases his epic dishes off to a tee. There, I met another man with sublime taste, London’s best-kept secret wine merchant, Robert Rolls. Over the last 45 years, his palate has unearthed some of the most enchanting wines favoured by the Epicurean cognoscenti. He does not shout about his discoveries. You must seek him out, as…

A decade of rock-bottom interest rates transformed the world of collecting from one of enthusiasts trading among themselves to a cutthroat world of speculators seeking returns from alternative assets, says Hugo Cox in the Financial Times. The upshot is that today many “beautiful” items languish in underground vaults, out of sight. Alexander Kraft, the owner of Sotheby’s International Realty in France and Monaco, and a collector of vintage watches, used to know “all the serious collectors in the world”, he tells the paper. If he eventually made money from his purchases, “so much the better”. But that was never the goal. Today, the market has become swamped with dealers and investors, and the bargains – and the fun – are harder to find. London’s Burlington Arcade (pictured) was “once a…

Following the televised debate between presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump last week, the odds of a Harris victory probably increased. But that has no effect on the underlying financial situation. Neither candidate has any intention of squaring off against the big spending, parasite elites. Neither will balance the budget. Neither will challenge the warmongers. Neither will suggest to the Federal Reserve that it leave interest rates alone, rather than encourage more borrowing with a lower Fed funds rate. The idea of avoiding bankruptcy or preventing World War III never even came up in the Great Debate. So, here on the back page we are in “maximum safety mode” (MSM). Not only is the long-term outlook for asset prices negative, the near-term danger too is of a substantial sell-off…

Chinese markets are stuck in “limbo”, say Abhishek Vishnoi and Winnie Hsu on Bloomberg. Fund managers complain the shares lack both “the vigour of an emerging market and the stability of a developed one”. The benchmark CSI 300 index is down more than 6% this year, leaving it on course for a fourth successive annual loss. Since a 2021 peak, roughly “$6.5trn has been wiped out from... Chinese and Hong Kong” shares – the value of Japan’s entire stockmarket. While much of the world struggles with inflation, China has been battling the opposite problem, says Jacky Wong in The Wall Street Journal. On one measure, the GDP deflator (the gap between nominal and real GDP growth), the world’s second-largest economy has “already been in deflation for five straight quarters”. Falling…

Five to buy Mony Group The TimesDespite a cost-of-living crisis prompting consumers to seek better deals, Mony Group, owner of price-comparison platform MoneySuperMarket and personal-finance website MoneySavingExpert, has seen its shares halve in five years, and profits have slipped. Yet its focus on customer loyalty through its membership-based services is “progressing well.” It has trusted brands and a strong underlying business model with high margins and low debt, which should help it weather the likely softening of the insurance market. 200p IHG The TelegraphInterContinental Hotels Group’s (IHG) shares have gained 80% in four years. Half-year earnings per share rose 12%, and revenue per available room increased 3% as the Americas rebounded. Despite a 23% rise in net debt, IHG’s increase in rooms and diverse portfolio bode well. IHG’s “excellent market…

● It’s ironic that “while London is pinning its initial public offering revival hopes on a possible listing of Chinese online fast-fashion retailer Shein,” homegrown Asos and Boohoo “are going nowhere”, says Lex in the Financial Times. Their shares have lost more than 85% in three years. Customers returned to physical shops after the Covid-induced online-sales boom, but “many problems are of their own making”. Boohoo wrote down the value of its US distribution centre, while Asos failed to manage stock levels and spent too much money automating warehouses. A debt refinancing at Asos, along with a deal to sell 75% of the Topshop and Topman brands, have alleviated Asos investors’ concerns for now. But it still has £73.6m of bonds maturing in April 2026 and negative free cash flow.…

Markets have become less efficient over the past three decades, says hedge-fund manager Cliff Asness, one of the pioneers of quantitative trading (using mathematical models and statistics to identify opportunities). Trends that have driven this shift include the rise of index investing and more than a decade of ultra-low interest rates, but technologies such as social media are probably the biggest culprit. “Instantaneous, gamified, 24-hour trading… on your smartphone” can turn “a wise independent crowd into a coordinated clueless, even dangerous, mob,” writes Asness in the Journal of Portfolio Management. Distortions and bubbles can occur more often, become larger and last longer. This has implications for factor-investing strategies used by investors such as Asness (which involve using historical data to identify the characteristics of securities that can explain differences in…

marginalrevolution.com The UK’s “Orwellian” Equality Act demands equal pay for work of equal value, says Alex Tabarrok. Work is deemed to be of equal value if it is similar, or makes similar demands upon the worker. In short, “supply and demand have been replaced by judges and labour boards” with the authority to deem which jobs are “equal” and hence should be paid the same. Clothing retailer Next, for example, lost a case brought against it claiming that its retail and warehouse workers were “equal” and hence should have been paid the same. The retail workers were mostly women, the warehouse workers mostly men. The warehouse workers tended to earn more. But there was no claim of gender discrimination, or that men and women in the firm generally were paid…

Activist shareholder Engine Capital Management has lambasted Dye & Durham for pursuing more acquisitions and urged directors to “stop the shenanigans”, says Bloomberg. Engine is irritated by the Canadian software company’s plans to buy Lexis Affinity, a provider of software for law firms, and “another small tuck-in acquisition” for a combined C$69.3m (£39m). The move contradicts its pledge to reduce debt, which swelled to C$1.55bn in the fourth quarter from C$200m the previous year. Dye defended its strategy, saying this was Engine’s “latest tactic in their campaign to seize control of Dye”. Engine, which holds a 7.1% stake in Dye, has also highlighted “frivolous litigation” against shareholders.…

Has your small business seen a drop-off in internet traffic in recent months? If so, changes made by search giant Google may be the cause. Since the latest tweaks to the algorithm that it uses to generate search results, introduced earlier this year, some small companies have seen a huge fall in visitors to their websites. For firms that depend on search to send them potential customers – particularly in e-commerce – that’s potentially disastrous. Google insists all changes it makes to its algorithm are designed for the benefit of consumers, and that it often needs to counter companies’ efforts to game the system. But for companies, the constantly changing algorithm can be immensely frustrating; legitimate outfits seeking to attract customers constantly have to adjust their online content to remain…

Bitcoin has been an extremely lucrative asset for those who invested when it first took off. Even if you had bought as late as four years ago, and simply held on, you would be looking at a very good return. However, since early 2021, bitcoin has been a lot more volatile, prone to large rises and falls. Owing to this volatility, many people have turned to bitcoin mining – the process of using brute computer power – to unlock more bitcoins. However, even this is starting to become unprofitable, which is bad news for bitcoin miners such as Riot Platforms (Nasdaq: RIOT). There are several big problems with bitcoin mining. In order to protect the value of bitcoin, the designers set a limit to the total number of bitcoins that…

Majedie Investments appointed Marylebone Partners as its manager in January 2023 to invest in compelling long-term opportunities across highly differentiated, liquid-return sources. These comprise external managers, global equities and special investments regularly marked to market. Marylebone seeks returns exceeding inflation by at least 4% in the medium term. Now that 13 years of ultra-low interest rates and quantitative easing are a distant memory, the manager believes that many previously successful investment strategies may struggle to deliver attractive real returns. Following the recent narrow focus on artificial intelligence (AI)-related mega-cap stocks, Marylebone sees some attractive valuations for quality compounders and companies undergoing change that are unappreciated by markets. These form a major part of the portfolio. Many technology-related sectors have been overshadowed by the performance of mega-caps and now provide attractive…

Going…Sotheby’s has teamed up with online sports platform Fanatics to hold an auction of more than 40 of the “rarest and most coveted” sports trading cards at a former church in New York on 24 September. The highlights among the “holy grails” include an Exquisite Collection dual “logoman” trading card, featuring the autographs of basketball legends Michael Jordan and Julius Erving and produced for the 2005/2006 season. Logoman cards include the NBA logo badge, cut from the featured player’s game-worn jersey, making each one unique. It is expected to fetch more than $1m. And a trading card (pictured) from the same season, bearing the signature of LeBron James and a game-worn patch, is also in the sale, with a valuation of at least $350,000. Gone…On 1 October 1932 at Wrigley…