Innehållsförteckning för Issue 1244 från MoneyWeek

“This may represent the single worst conflict of interest in the history of the modern presidency,” said Norm Eisen, a White House ethics adviser during the Obama administration, in The Washington Post. He was referring to the president’s memecoin (see page 4); Melania has one too, of course. Absurd and crass, but quintessentially Trump: here is someone, after all, whose back catalogue of books includes The Art of the Deal, the Art of the Comeback, Think Big and Kick Ass, Think Like a Champion and, inevitably, How to get Rich. Launching a cryptocurrency to cash in on the presidency is par for the course. The return of the “dealmaker in chief”, as The New York Times puts it, has prompted the usual furore about his purely “transactional” approach to both…

Corporate bonds started the year with a bang, say Harriet Clarfelt and Will Schmitt in the Financial Times. More than $83bn was borrowed in US investment-grade and high-yield categories in the first week of January, the strongest start to a year since 1990. Corporations sold $8trn in bonds globally last year as debt investors seek higher yields amid falling interest rates. Average investment-grade corporate debt yields have climbed from 2.4% in 2021 to 5.4% today. That looks good compared with the 4% implied earnings yield available on US stocks, says The Economist. For most of financial history it was safe and steady bonds – not risky stocks – that ruled financial markets. US bonds outperformed equities for decades in the 19th century. But today the “cult of equity” reigns supreme.…

Energy giant BP says it will cut nearly 8,000 jobs amid declining profits and shareholders’ mounting worries over its green energy policies, says Jonathan Leake in The Telegraph. The plans will involve axing 5% of its global workforce as well as another 3,000 contractors, with its UK workforce particularly affected. The cuts follow BP’s warning of “weak results” for the fourth quarter of 2024 due to a “drop in oil and gas production, reduced refining margins and trading setbacks”. Next month’s final results are expected to show that net profits have fallen below $10bn. A drop in net profits would be yet another blow for BP’s CEO Murray Auchincloss, who is “under pressure”, says Malcolm Moore in the Financial Times. In the five quarters Auchincloss has presided over BP (he…

Hotel room wholesaler HBX Group plans to raise around €725m in an initial public offering (IPO) in Spain, says the Financial Times. The group gives firms such as booking company Expedia and tour operators access to hundreds of thousands of hotel rooms, rental cars, and tickets for theme parks and shows, which are then sold to their customers. This could be the first big European flotation of 2025 after “choppy trading” and macroeconomic turbulence last year hampered the European listings market. HBX, best known for its Hotelbeds brand, is expected to be valued at around €5bn, and the proceeds raised would be used to lower its debt.…

● For the second January in a row, JD Sports “has delivered a new year downer”, says Nils Pratley in The Guardian. The sportswear retailer has again cut its profit guidance, blaming a “challenging and volatile market” and “increased promotional activity”. The similarities with last year “suggests something fundamental has shifted in the once-reliable market for trainers and athleisure”. Likely causes include the reality that big brands have pushed prices as high as they can; the backwash from Nike’s troubles; more competition from newer brands; and the waning of the athleisure trend. There’s nothing obviously wrong with JD’s strategy. It’s not getting caught up in “grubby discounting”. It’s still solidly profitable and under no debt pressure. So there is no crisis. Yet what looked like a “soft patch” last year…

Drinks giant Diageo is “deeply out of favour”, but the shares should perform better once “consumer confidence recovers and bars and clubs fill up”, says Nick Train, the quality- and growth-focused manager who runs Lindsell Train Investment Trust and Finsbury Growth & Income, among other funds. As a result, he is sticking with the stock, in contrast to fellow quality-growth manager Terry Smith, who recently sold Diageo after 14 years. Smith has cited concerns about Diageo’s management team and fears that weight-loss drugs such as Ozempic may also reduce demand for alcohol. However, Train sounds confident that demand for Diageo’s products will endure. “We … think it likely that Johnnie Walker, Guinness, Tanqueray, and other Diageo brands will still be being enjoyed many decades hence,” he says. “Investors sometimes forget…

capx.co In 2015, chancellor George Osborne introduced a new levy on business to fund apprenticeships for the young, says Harry Phibbs. It was implemented in 2017 – and has been a dismal failure ever since. The cost is nearly £4bn a year – firms pay the money out, then seek to reclaim it by spending on “training” that does little towards the intended goal, but “ticks officialdom’s boxes”. Employers’ investment in training has continued to fall, apprenticeship schemes are low quality with high drop-out rates, and the overall number of apprenticeships has fallen. The skills shortage is real, but the state is the “cause not the solution”. The state should end the “cruel scam” of encouraging everyone to go to university to study “Mickey Mouse degrees”, scrap the minimum wage…

■ Shares in Digital 9 Infrastructure slumped more than 30% after the trust announced the sale of Aqua Comms, its subsea fibre business, for what its own board called an “extremely disappointing” price of $48m after transaction costs. That amounts to a 36% discount to the business’s most recent valuation of $75m, which had already been written down by a huge $208m in June to reflect Digital 9’s inability to fund its global strategy, says Quoted Data. The fund, which is undergoing a managed wind-down, will use the cash to pay down debt. ■ Tritax Big Box has bought a 74-acre site near Heathrow as a location for the UK’s largest data centre. Phase one of the project, with 107MW of power, is expected to be ready in the second…

New rules have come into force that prevent mobile, broadband and TV providers from introducing surprise price rises in the middle of your contract. It sounds like great news but, as ever, the devil is in the detail. Firms won’t be able to impose shock price rises but, as long as they spell it out in your contract, your bills will still go up. They will have to tell you exactly how much the price you pay will increase annually – but they can still increase your payments every year. “Costs will still rise by whatever price the companies set out. These blanket flat-rate annual price rises will be even higher than the inflation-linked approach for the average customer,” warns Ernest Doku from Uswitch in The Sunday Times. Firms including…

Government pensions ministers come and go. Nine people from three different parties have held the position in the past ten years, which may be one reason why pensions policy in the UK often feels so disjointed. However, pension experts believe Torsten Bell, the latest appointment to the office, could prove to be a significant figure. Unlike most of his predecessors in the role, the Labour MP knows the pensions sector well. Prior to last year’s general election, he served as chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, the economic and social policy think tank that has often focused on the pensions issue. How might that work inform Bell’s approach to his new brief? Well, one clue might be found in a Resolution Foundation paper published in 2020, which criticised the triple-lock…

Mitchell Halliday is “the ultimate product of the digital age”, says Harriet Walker in The Times. A “northern lad” born in 1998 who grew up on a council estate and started out singing in the working men’s clubs of Bolton and Blackpool, Mitchell made his first bid for stardom on The X Factor ’s 13th season in 2016. He was devastated when rejected. But in the end it wasn’t music that made Halliday (pictured), now 26, rich – it was make-up. Aged just 18, Halliday started to make a name for himself as a “go-to for a glow-up” among friends preparing for a night-out in Liverpool. From there he started offering one-on-one tutorials for both men and women – two hours for £300, making £1,500 a day. He began to…

2018 Mas La Plana, Cabernet Sauvignon, Torres, Penedès, Spain £57.99, reduced to £49.99 in a Mix Six, majestic.co.uk; £51.99, waitrosecellar.com These days, it is rare to find super-elite red wines around the £50 mark. Legions of greedy brands try to cash in with wines that don’t stack up on a world stage, while genuine superstars often get lost in the noise. Consumers are sometimes a little suspicious when legendary wines can be bought for a lower price than a bog-standard, big-brand Champagne. Well, you need not be wary here. Torres enjoys a mythical status in Spain, and every single one of this mighty winery’s wines represents great value for money. Torres believes that wines are made to be drunk and enjoyed, as opposed to locked away. So when I say…

Here at MoneyWeek, we have long been big fans of investment trusts – companies set up to make investments in stocks and so on and that are themselves listed on the stockmarket. Their structure gives managers more flexibility to invest in long-term or illiquid assets than so-called open-ended investment companies (Oeics) do. And the fact that many of them trade at a discount to the underlying value of their shares makes them a potential bargain. However, the large number on offer makes choosing the best one, or a small portfolio of the best ones, difficult. The good news is that for the past few years publisher Harriman House has issued The Investment Trusts Handbook, which is packed with information to make navigating the world of these funds a little easier.…

It Ends With Us, based on Colleen Hoover’s novel, was a summer hit, earning $350m against a $25m budget. “Not that anyone remembers that,” says Adrian Horton in The Guardian. Star Blake Lively (pictured) drew ire online for glossing over the film’s portrayal of domestic violence, hawking her hair care and alcohol lines, and being “gruff” with reporters, while director and co-star Justin Baldoni championed abuse survivors. Things took a turn for the worse when The New York Times wrote about a legal complaint by Lively about a possible smear campaign against her, allegedly orchestrated by Baldoni and his team in response to claims of sexual harassment. Lively sued Baldoni, his co-producer and publicist. Baldoni denied the allegations and countered with a $250m defamation suit against the Times and a…

Shares in Richemont jumped 15% last week after the luxury group reported a strong holiday season, says Laure Guilbault in Vogue Business. Sales grew by 10% year on year in the fourth quarter of 2024. This not only marks a “return to growth” after a 1% decline in the previous quarter, but may also be a “reassuring sign” for the wider luxury market, which has been “sinking deep into a downturn”. Other luxury stocks bounced too, with LVMH’s and Kering’s share prices each up by 7%. While Richemont’s overall global sales grew by 10%, its US sales did even better, expanding by 22%, says Lex in the Financial Times. This suggests that an industry previously centred around handbags and focused on China is now driven instead by bling and America.…

Six to buy IAG The Telegraph IAG’s low valuation and the prospect of a stronger long-term operating environment amid falling interest rates means investors should” anticipate further capital gains and index outperformance”. Consumers’ purchasing power has grown consistently since last April, providing scope for higher discretionary spending. The owner of British Airways is well placed to cope with any economic downturn thanks to its low debt, high liquidity, and multiple brands with different price points. 313p Games Workshop The Times Games Workshop, a recent entrant to the FTSE 100, makes fantasy figurines and video games. It has 500 shops globally, a loyal fan base, and proprietary intellectual property (IP) thanks to its crown jewel, Warhammer, which is set to become an Amazon series. The company made £126.8m in interim pre-tax…

What’s happened? Massive fires driven by fierce winds have raged across parts of the Los Angeles area over the past fortnight, killing at least 27 people. The fires burned up 40,000 acres of land, destroying roughly 12,000 homes and other buildings. The two largest fires – the Palisades and the Eaton – were still not contained as of Wednesday, with the high winds that helped fuel their rapid spread due to return. Some 50,000 people remained under evacuation orders this week. Southern California is well used to wildfires, but these were exceptionally devastating due to a perfect storm of factors. Vegetation flourished in fire-prone areas following two unusually wet winters, then was parched to kindling by a long drought. Once started, the fires were spread with deadly speed by the…

We are only a few days into Donald Trump’s second presidency, but the flurry of executive orders from the White House leaves us no clearer what the next four years will bring. Promises of massive investment in AI and unleashing fossil fuels for cheaper energy could boost growth. Threats of steep tariffs on America’s biggest trading partners and mass deportations of undocumented workers despite their importance in sectors such as agriculture and construction could send inflation soaring. Which way that balance will tip seems impossible to say, even before considering the consequences of his more radical ideas for remaking the government at home and tearing up foreign policy abroad. So if you flick through the usual vast pile of forecasts for the coming year, it’s no surprise that most analysts…

Gulf states seek to go high-tech EditorialThe Economist The “towering technological ambitions” of rich Gulf states as they try to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels are about to “collide with geopolitical reality”, says The Economist. The scale of their plans is jaw-dropping. In Saudi, for instance, funds with a “combined firepower” of $240bn are investing in AI, data centres and advanced manufacturing. The focus is on three areas: model-making and applications (eg, large language models), infrastructure (including a 45,000 kilometre sub-sea cable running from Asia to Europe) and chip manufacturing. Data centres are being built by Gulf states in the Middle East, but also in the US. There are early signs that their strategy could work. The total capacity of data centres being built in Saudi and the UAE…

project-syndicate.org A perfect storm of external factors (rising borrowing costs as a result of a surge in US bond yields and a sinking currency) and long-term structural weaknesses (low productivity and investment) have left the British economy exposed and vulnerable, says Mohamed El-Erian. “If anywhere in the world sneezes, the UK is at risk of catching a cold.” The perception, which will be “difficult to dislodge”, is of a country mired in sluggish growth, with deteriorating public services, high deficits and large debts. Keir Starmer’s government has been working to deal with these issues, but markets and analysts remain unconvinced. The government must therefore do a better job of “communicating better what it is already doing” to improve the UK’s economic condition, and it “must do more” too. Policy action…

Saba’s attack on investment trusts has been the talking point of the City of London over the past month. An aggressive activist – an American hedge fund manager, no less – trying to shake up the status quo. It’s a battle the likes of which London hasn’t seen for many year, with some even calling for the FCA and government to get involved. Your views on Saba’s plans to merge up to seven trusts in a shock takeover move ultimately boil down to whether or not you believe in shareholder capitalism. I have no vested interest in the trusts under attack or any of the other trusts in which Saba has accumulated substantial positions. I have investment trusts in my portfolio, but I have steadily reduced the holdings over the…

David McMurtry died on 9 December 2024 at the age of 84. He was an entrepreneur and inventor in the world of precision engineering. Early in his career he contributed to the Concorde project, but he is best known for his inventions in metrology. His legacy stems not only from his innovative creations and entrepreneurial foresight, but also from the values he brought to his businesses. I attended the Goodwood Festival of Speed in 2022. As the afternoon dragged on, I was hot, exhausted and ready to leave, but my good pal Dave insisted we stay a little longer. Dave is an automotive engineer who knew that if we waited, we might witness something special. A little later, a tiny electric car with huge fans stormed up the Goodwood Hill…

Lifetime individual savings accounts (Lisas) were introduced in 2017 as a way to help people save tax efficiently for two specific goals – either your first home or retirement. You can pay in up to £4,000 a year and – as well as growing tax-free – you’ll also receive a 25% bonus from the government. However, Lisas come with strict rules around who can open them and when you can access your money. You must be over 18 but under 40 to open one. You can only contribute until you are 50 and your contributions count towards your £20,000 annual Isa allowance. So, if you pay £4,000 into a Lisa, you can only pay £16,000 into other Isas. Then there are the withdrawal rules. You can only use your Lisa…

For pension savers who have patiently been putting cash aside for decades, turning 55 can feel like a landmark moment. Suddenly, they are entitled to begin withdrawing their money. Nevertheless, just because HM Revenue & Customs’ (HMRC) rules say you can start taking money out of your pension doesn’t mean you should. For many people, holding on is the far more sensible option. In this context, new research from Legal & General (L&G) makes worrying reading. It shows that a fifth of people make withdrawals from their pension savings as soon as they reach the age of 55, often without taking any financial advice. Approximately two-thirds of those withdrawing take out only 25% of their savings, in line with rules that allow you to take a quarter of your pension…

The CT UK Capital & Income Investment Trust assesses investments against the yardsticks of quality, management and valuation. This provides a systematic way of analysing companies and their shares’ appeal. Attributes relating to quality that score well include high and sustainable return on equity, strong market position, good margins and growth. We look to management to be efficient operators, skilled allocators of capital and well-aligned with shareholders. Valuation is not just assessing how “cheap” a share is on an absolute basis or relative to other opportunities, but is also a comparison of our estimate of a company’s worth relative to its share price. Importantly, it is forward-looking and based on tangible drivers of value such as cash flow, dividends and asset value. Here are three stocks that stack up well…

Enjoy the winter wilderness in Montana The northern US state of Montana is “in the zeitgeist these days”, thanks to the television drama Yellowstone, starring Kevin Costner (pictured), says Marcia DeSanctis for Kiplinger. Lone Mountain Ranch, a former homestead built in 1915, just 18 miles from where bison, wolves and grizzly bears prowl the famous national park, today offers guests a choice of 25 renovated cabins. Here, “extreme comfort meets old western (and ultra-tasteful) splendor”. The ranch sits in 148 acres of “spectacular wilderness” and, in winter, this is the place to base yourself to enjoy “the snowy outdoors, thaw your bones beside a blazing fire, and inhale the crisp air while stargazing”. It is also located close to the Big Sky Ski Resort. Most of the guides are “Montana…

US president Donald Trump and wife Melania marked their return to the White House by announcing a pair of cryptocurrencies that quickly soared to billion-dollar valuations, says Felix Salmon for Axios. By Sunday morning, Trump was worth as much as $58bn on paper from the crypto project, briefly making him one of the world’s 25 richest people. Bitcoin hits new highs Cryptocurrency bulls celebrated Trump’s inauguration by sending bitcoin to a record $109,225 intraday high on Monday. Bitcoin, the most prominent cryptocurrency, has gained more than 50% since Trump’s election victory in November. The new president has promised to turn America into the “crypto capital of the planet”, suggesting establishing a bitcoin “strategic reserve”, which would see the US government buy up and stockpile digital assets. Opponents such as Gary…

“Looking back on the five years since the pandemic began, there are a few things we can learn. The first is the scale of opportunity that Mr Market periodically offers up to contrarian investors. Anyone who sensed correctly in March 2020 that the market had overreacted to Covid had the chance to more than double their money in less than five years. The second lesson is that time is a great healer. If you had invested in the global stockmarket benchmark five years ago and then slept through the pandemic, you would wake up today with an investment worth 54% more than you started with. Since January 2020 only China and government bonds have lost you money. Finally, the pandemic shows just how difficult it is to pick stockmarket winners.…

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has reported an unexpectedly strong 57% year-on-year rise in net profit in the fourth quarter of 2024, says Bloomberg’s Jane Lanhee Lee. Sales and capital expenditure in the current quarter will also eclipse analysts’ estimates. This has fuelled hopes that spending on AI hardware will remain “resilient” in 2025, as the “frenzied” data centre build-out over the past two years continues. But experts warn that demand for AI may represent a “potential bubble”, while TSMC will have to deal with uncertainties stemming from a US-China tech conflict “that threatens to disrupt supply chains and stem the flow of chips around the world”. TSMC’s outlook on AI may be “as rosy as it gets”, but with more trade and technology wars looming, investors, who have pushed…

Connecticut-based Amphenol is an appealing analogue play in a digital world, says WirtschaftsWoche. It has specialised in products such as cables, plugs and connectors since 1932. These days its fibre-optic transceivers (components that transmit and receive data) and interconnection systems such as coaxial cables help it profit from key secular trends such as cloud computing and AI. The group boasts customers in sectors ranging from telecoms and defence to carmakers and aeroplane manufacturers. The group has plenty of cash for acquisitions, which it has a history of integrating effectively. The stock is not cheap, so investors should consider buying on dips.…

“Donald Trump wasted no time,” says Alice Truong on Bloomberg. On his first day in office, he revoked 78 of Joe Biden’s executive orders and issued a blizzard of up to 100 of his own. He gave TikTok a 75-day reprieve, issued 1,500 unconditional pardons over the 2021 Capitol riots, ordered the withdrawal of the US from the World Health Organisation and the Paris climate agreement (for the second time), and ordered an end to birthright citizenship, which is enshrined in the Constitution. Then there was the deporting of illegal immigrants, the reimposition of the “Muslim ban”, tax breaks for fossil fuels, the scrapping of regulations, the dismantling of gender and racial identity politics, and a plan to enact 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada by 1 February, says David…

It was a decisive start to his presidency. In his inaugural address, Donald Trump promised to “unleash” the oil and gas industry, making the US the largest energy producer in the world, and bringing down prices. He scrapped the quotas on electric vehicles, leaving the car companies free once again to make the cars people actually want at prices they can afford. Diversity targets were scrapped, and federal employees will have to come back to the office, and any who don’t will face the wrath of the president’s sidekick, Elon Musk. There will be more to come over the next few weeks. We can expect to see the tax cuts of his first term restored, and perhaps extended; Wall Street regulations binned; mergers and acquisitions allowed to flourish, and a…

A factor is a characteristic of a share (or other asset) that has been shown to contribute to market outperformance. Research into factors was driven by academics trying to figure out why some stocks generated higher returns than theories about efficient markets would have predicted. For example, widely accepted factors include size (the observations that small companies tend to beat large firms over time); value (cheap companies beat expensive ones); yield (high-yielding stocks do better than low-yielding ones); and momentum (stocks that go up just keep on going up). To be clear, these factors will not always beat the market over any given time period. However, looking at historical data, they have generated superior returns in many different markets across the globe over the long run. “Smart beta” is one…

“I’ve been in this business making films now for over two decades… with two Oscar nominations and… many blockbuster films, and yet I’m still struggling financially to make a living. I’m definitely underpaid… That’s a sign for you that systemic racism is not something you can deal with lightly.” Gladiator and Blood Diamond actor Djimon Hounsou (pictured), quoted in Variety “There is nothing like economic stagnation to teach a country that anything you might rate above money – the preservation of nature, universal access to art, leisure time for relationships – itself depends on surplus income. GDP, while not everything, is almost everything.” Columnist Janan Ganesh in the Financial Times “At 15 I worked at an ice-cream parlour for $1 an hour. It was near the high school. To impress…

collabfund.com/blog The culture today is so divided that it’s hard to imagine how enemies could come together – as political adversaries did in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US, for example, says Morgan Housel. But they would – “people get serious when sh*t gets real”. Part of the reason today’s world seems so petty and angry is precisely because life is “currently pretty good for a lot of people”. There are no domestic wars. Unemployment is low. Household wealth is at an all-time high. Innovation is astounding. Things are far from perfect, of course. But as the world improves, our “threshold for complaining drops”. In the absence of big worries, we shift our atttention to smaller ones, even petty or imaginary ones. Relieved of the trauma…

US activist Engine Capital is calling for Smiths – the British engineering conglomerate that makes products ranging from airport scanners to flexible hoses – to break itself up. Until Friday, Smiths’ shares had gained just 3% in five years and the sale of its medical unit in 2022 has not erased a persistent conglomerate discount, says Breakingviews. The group is worth £8.9bn on a sum of the parts basis, reckons Goldman Sachs, yet has a market capitalisation of £6.3bn. Still, a break-up “may be easier said than done”. The John Crane arm, which makes mechanical seals, might be worth £4.7bn if listed in the US. However, its other three divisions may be too small to list and “too niche to be sold in one go”, so any restructuring would take…

● “January is the best month to book a summer holiday – and this year there is a surprise budget option: Tuscany,” says Rachel Dixon in The Guardian. Research by consumers’ group Which has found that the Italian region is among the cheapest package holiday destinations for 2025: a week in Tuscany in August costs an average £1,034 per person, including flights. It is cheaper than the Costa de la Luz in Spain and Kalymnos in Greece. The top three cheapest destinations were Dalaman, Turkey; Agadir, Morocco; and Bourgas, Bulgaria. ● “Those still clearing their Christmas spending off their credit cards may wish to consider setting up a dedicated savings account for this year’s festivities,” says Jessica Sharkey in The Sunday Times. Yorkshire Building Society has launched a Christmas Regular…

● While upheaval in the gilt markets in recent weeks has caused political problems for the government and increased the UK’s borrowing costs, pension savers have reason to be thankful. Annuity rates – the amount of guaranteed income that a pension fund buys – tend to move in line with gilt yields. With yields now up to around 4.75%, compared with just 3.8% three months ago, annuity rates have continued to inch upwards in recent weeks. ● Experts continue to warn savers to check whether their money is held in lifestyle funds, a once popular but now increasingly discredited way to build up pension assets. Lifestyle funds automatically move people’s savings out of more risky investments into areas such as bonds as they get closer to retirement – on the…

Book of the week Return to Growth How to Fix the Economy Jon Moynihan Biteback Publishing (volume one of two, £25 per volume) One of the few things those on the left and on the right of political opinion can usually agree on is that something needs to be done to improve Britain’s dismal economic growth rates. Indeed, as Jon Moynihan points out, if the UK economy had grown at the same rate since 2000 as it had between 1960 and 2000, GDP would be nearly a third higher, and UK citizens would be £12,430 richer. In this two-volume work, Moynihan puts forward his ideas about how things can be put back on track. Moynihan says that the main problem is that the government taxes and spends too much. In…

One of the most puzzling features of the 21st century is the almost total failure of its new technology, along with astonishing prices for the companies that produce it. Since 2012, the so-called Magnificent Seven technology stocks have grown 13.5 times larger and are now worth nearly $16trn, says the Visual Capitalist. Nvidia has seen the highest relative growth, with its market capitalisation jumping 360 times in the period. The Ford Motor Company was valuable from the beginning – there were thousands of trucks and cars to prove it. The firm rose in value as its output raised the nation’s real wealth. But what about those Magnificent Seven stocks? They are now worth $13trn more than in 2012. But where’s the beef? The industrial age made us all much better…