Table of contents for Issue 1264 in MoneyWeek

“A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money,” US senator Everett Dirksen noted in the 1960s. Today real money is measured in trillions. It is hard to fathom such figures, so think of it this way. A trillion minutes ago was 1.9 million years ago; we were living in caves. Britain is £2.8trn in debt. And the growth of the debt pile is accelerating. In March 2024, the Office for Budget Responsibility estimated that £323bn would be borrowed over the next five financial years. In March 2025, that figure was £524bn. We are already spending £105bn on servicing our borrowings. That puts the public-sector investment budget – £113bn for the rest of this parliament– announced by chancellor Rachel Reeves on Wednesday (see page 10) into…

“Investors prefer a simple story – and today’s is that US exceptionalism is dead... That might be an overreaction... Investors... have a tendency to extrapolate and overweight near-term negatives... I wouldn’t count on the president undermining the... advantages from which America continues to benefit. First, demographics. Unlike most big economies in the world, the US has a growing workforce... between now and 2050, the US labour market is... expected to grow at 0.2% a year. That compares with a fall of 0.6% a year in Europe and 1% in China... Second, corporate profitability... margins have doubled in the US since the financial crisis. Third, energy security. America... was a net energy exporter by 2019 thanks to shale. Fourth, the size of [the] domestic market... US exceptionalism was built over decades;…

Shares in Alphawave, a heavily shorted, London-listed Canadian chip designer, shot up by 22% on Monday when it emerged that US semiconductor group Qualcomm had agreed to buy it for $2.4bn, say Tim Bradshaw and Jonathan Wheatley in the Financial Times. Qualcomm wants to expand its intellectual-property portfolio in data centres and 5G networking. Big Tech is spending hundreds of billions on AI infrastructure. The move comes a few weeks after Alphawave, valued at £3.1bn when it floated in May 2021, said that it was unable to provide guidance for the year owing to uncertainty over US tariffs. The valuation seems “punchy”, says Karen Kwok for Breakingviews. The implied multiple is more than 50 times Alphawave’s expected EBITDA this year compared with peers’ average of 35. Still, the price may…

The last few years have seen continual natural disasters and an unusually volatile global economy, says Wirtschaftswoche. But Germany’s insurance giant Allianz sails serenely on. It is on track to achieve record net income of €10.5bn this year from €180bn of total business volume. The group’s core business, property and casualty insurance, comprising 50% of operating profits, looks solid, while new business is growing rapidly in the life and health insurance arm. The company’s solvency ratio is 208%: it has twice the amount of money it needs to cover the risks it is exposed to. The dividend yield has been between 4% and 6% ever since 2008. The current yield is 4.7%.…

Rachel Reeves “completed the longest U-turn in British politics” on Monday, says James Heale in The Spectator. Last July, she removed the winter fuel allowance from ten million pensioners; this week she restored it to nine million. The U-turn “whittles” down Treasury savings to £450m from £1.25bn. “Implausibly,” Reeves attributes her change of heart to “economic circumstance, not political necessity.” Keir Starmer echoed the Reeves’ line, telling the BBC’s Jeremy Vine that the cut was reversed due to “better-than-expected growth figures, falling interest rates and trade deals with the US, India and the EU”. On the contrary, the UK’s fiscal outlook is “worsening”, says The Times, and Reeves has now created a new “black hole”, which raises fears that she will raise taxes yet again in her autumn Budget.…

What’s happened? The world’s largest charitable organisation, the Gates Foundation – which has already spent $100bn fighting disease and poverty worldwide – announced last month that it will spend another $200bn in the next 20 years, before shutting up shop and dissolving itself. Bill Gates is part of a mini-trend of mega-wealthy donors setting deadlines to give away all their money – speeding up the spending and prioritising immediate action over an ongoing legacy. Billionaire Chuck Feeney used his charitable vehicle Atlantic Philanthropies to give away everything (about $8bn) before he died in 2023. Laurene Powell Jobs, the founder of Emerson Collective, started her climate-focused non-profit Waverley Street Foundation with $3.5bn and a deadline of a decade to give it all away. What exactly is a “foundation”? For more than…

MoneyWeek is not dogmatic about how we invest. Passive funds, active funds, UK stocks, international stocks – all these and more should be on the table. Still, we tend to have a bias towards investment trusts rather than open-ended funds in our funds coverage. This is partly because investment trusts get a lot less attention than open-ended funds, and we can add more value by focusing on them, but also because we feel that there are certain structural benefits to closed-end funds for many types of investing. Some of the supposed advantages of trusts are less compelling for me than other investors think. Yes, it’s great to be able to buy at a temporary discount to net asset value (NAV), but it’s less compelling if discounts are still wide when…

It’s time to rescue the water firms Jeremy WarnerThe Telegraph It is high time the plug was pulled on Thames Water, says Jeremy Warner. Rising bills, deteriorating water standards, sewage spills and retention bonuses in spite of all this have made Thames Water, along with its nine fellow privatised water companies, “the most hated corporate sector in the land”. Its “latest hope of salvation”, £4bn of new equity from private-equity firm KKR, has just failed on the basis of political and regulatory risk. Back in the 1980s, when water standards were even worse, privatisation made sense. Water firms were flogged off mostly debt free, and even with “green dowries” to make them more attractive to investors. Since then, those bought by private equity have been “pillaged to destruction”. To meet…

project-syndicate.org Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” seeks, among other things, to eliminate the Biden administration’s clean-energy tax incentives. That will cement China’s position as the “undisputed leader in clean energy”, says Carolyn Kissane. Globally, China accounts for 65% of manufacturing capacity for wind turbines and more than 80% for solar panels, and dominates the production of energy-storage systems and electric vehicles. It largely controls the mining and refining of the minerals required, too, processing around 90% of the rare-earth elements and 60%-70% of cobalt and lithium. This lead is no accident, but the result of a deliberate strategy to secure its own energy needs and independence from imported fossil fuels. Through state subsidies, regulatory coordination and strategic planning, China “absorbed, replicated and scaled up existing technologies while also innovating and…

Investment trusts have several attributes that make them appealing to investors, but one of the most valuable is their closed-ended nature. Trusts are structured as companies, with a fixed number of shares in issue. Unlike open-ended funds, they don’t need to buy and sell assets due to cash flowing into and out of the fund as demand from investors changes. This means they can take a longer-term view and hold illiquid or difficult-to-sell assets. This advantage has helped the alternatives segment of the market flourish. Alternatives funds offer private investors easy access to a wide range of investments, including private equity, infrastructure, hedge funds and specialist debt. However, over the past five years many of these funds have fallen by the wayside. Complications with cost-disclosure rules, the shift away from…

One tip on this page that proved very successful was to go long on the African mobile-phone company Airtel Africa (LSE: AAF). I highlighted it in October 2021 (issue 1074) and by the time I had sold nearly a year later, in September 2022 (issue 1120) the stock had jumped from 98p to 135p, making a profit of £1,480. For the subsequent two years its performance was indifferent, but it has nearly doubled since November. It is still worth buying. Airtel Africa specialises in telephone, internet and mobile-money services for people in 14 fast-growing African countries, including Kenya and Nigeria, which together have a combined population of 662 million people. The mobile-money aspect of its offerings is particularly interesting as the lack of a banking system in these countries means…

Draft government legislation on pension reform has caused controversy with ministers pledging to force schemes to invest more money in the UK – in small companies and infrastructure, for example. But while this element of the reform has attracted most of the headlines, other measures will also have a big impact. For example, the legislation includes proposals designed to accelerate the adoption of much-delayed pension dashboards, a digital service enabling savers to see all their pension savings on a single screen. It will also introduce a requirement for defined-contribution pension schemes to be worth at least £25bn – forcing some small employers’ schemes to merge – in order to secure economies of scale that keep costs down. Ministers also intend to introduce default investment plans for savers who opt for…

“He who saves his country does not violate any law,” Donald Trump posted on social-media platform X in February. It was an interesting choice of words, not least because those words have been attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, the French emperor, who, as The Guardian noted at the time, also “rode roughshod” over his country’s constitution. But it does perhaps help to explain the US president’s, some would say, unhealthy interest in acquiring Greenland from Denmark for the United States. And as for Canada, it was only last weekend Trump was reminding Canadians they would pay “zero dollars” to be covered by his proposed “Golden Dome” missile defence shield if only they would “become our cherished 51st state”. Otherwise, their share of the bill would come to $61bn, according to the…

Even Lionel Messi (pictured) can’t draw in the punters for Fifa’s newest tournament, the Club World Cup, says Martyn Ziegler in The Times. The revamped 32-team competition, which is being held across 11 cities in the US, has struggled to spark the interest the world football governing body had hoped for, forcing Fifa to slash ticket prices to fill thousands of seats. The cheapest tickets for the opening match between Messi’s Inter Miami and Egypt’s Al Ahly tomorrow have been cut from $349 in December to $55.75. Dynamic pricing changes ticket prices based on demand, and the low prices indicate the lack of interest from fans. Meanwhile, revenue for the Women’s Super League clubs surged 34% year on year for the 2023-2024 season to £65m, as all 12 clubs generated…

Gold’s 26% rally has made it a star turn this year, but now it’s being upstaged. Silver has leapt 10% since the start of June, while platinum (up nearly a third in 2025) hit a four-year high this week above $1,220 an ounce. Gold prices have made 24 record highs this year, so the search is on for more affordable stores of value, says Karishma Vanjani in Barron’s. Demand for platinum jewellery surged 50% year-on-year in China in the first quarter. Platinum has often traded at a premium to gold, but since 2014 the yellow metal has been “king”, says Andrew Bary in the same publication. Platinum still trades at a big discount to gold’s $3,325/oz, but years of underperformance could be coming to an end. About 40% of demand…

Defence companies are a rare bright spot in the FTSE 100 as European governments raise defence spending. Shares in Babcock International have more than doubled to an eight-year high in 2025 after Keir Starmer unveiled plans to build up to 12 new attack submarines. German armaments makers have done even better, with shares in Rheinmetall surging 185% as Friedrich Merz’s new government prepares a major boost to military spending. The war in Ukraine has forced Europe to invest in deterrence and highlighted an urgent need for new artillery and drone production, says Nicolas Owens on Morningstar. Over the next decade, “we see $200bn in increased funding for research and development and military procurement” across Nato.…

Mark Read, CEO of advertising agency WPP, is to step down at the end of the year, say Lauren Almeida and Mark Sweney in The Guardian. The firm and the wider industry is struggling with the rise of AI. Read revamped the group during his tenure, merging agencies and selling some companies. However, WPP’s shares, which now languish near five-year lows, have lost more than a quarter of their value in the past year alone as technology giants such as Google, Meta Platforms and Amazon have become “dominant advertising names in their own right”. Last year, WPP also “lost its crown” as the biggest advertising agency in the world by revenue. The irony is that Read has long been a champion of using AI in advertising, with WPP spending £300m…

Circle Internet Group’s shares soared 168% on their debut in New York after the issuer of the second-largest stablecoin (a type of cryptocurrency) on the market raised nearly $1.1bn at its initial public offering (IPO), says CNBC. Circle achieved a valuation of $6.8bn. Circle joins a small group of pure-play crypto companies listed in the US as the industry gains political support from the Trump administration. Circle was founded in 2013 and created the USDC stablecoin in collaboration with Coinbase, aiming to set a standard for fiat money online. Stablecoins, pegged to the US dollar, are gaining favour from banks and payment firms for their efficiency and low cost.…

B&M used to be one of the stars of the London stockmarket. The discount chain was founded in Lancashire in the 1970s and expanded rapidly throughout the UK with its cheap and cheerful mix of bargains for the home and the kitchen. The shares hit more than 650p back in 2021, more than doubling over the previous five years as the brand became better known. Over the last year, however, the share price has slumped by more than 40%. Last week, it reported annual profits were down by 13% and while it managed to increase overall sales slightly, that was only by opening 70 new stores; its like-for-like sales were down by 3% over the last 12 months. The shares fell another 10% on the news. Its rival Poundland is…

Alternative investments – often just referred to as alternatives – is a broad term for anything that does not fall into one of the conventional asset classes of listed stocks, bonds and cash. Real estate is the most widely held of these. Listed real estate investment trusts (Reits) are classed as conventional investments, but direct investment in real estate is not, because this represents an interest in a specific property that can’t be bought or sold quickly. Assets such as timberland or other natural resources are treated in a similar way: a timber Reit or shares in an oil firm are a conventional investment, owning the underlying assets is an alternative investment. Other common alternatives include funds invested in assets that are not publicly traded. This includes private-equity funds that…

“Living an [expensive] lifestyle means you can’t hang out with people who don’t live that lifestyle. It alienates you… Some of my best, most hilarious times have been in the least luxurious places.” Actress Keira Knightley (pictured) on paying herself an annual salary of just £30,000, quoted in the Daily Mail “Can’t you just ask your father for money?” Former chancellor George Osborne to Michael Gove’s wife Sarah Vine when the couple complained of financial hardship in 2009, quoted in The Times “The roulette table pays nobody except him that keeps it. Nevertheless, a passion for gaming is common, though a passion for keeping roulette tables is unknown.” Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, quoted in The Guardian “A country is no different from a person. Country overspends, country goes bankrupt,…

dailysceptic.org Conservatives often lament the disappearance of the England of yore, and the homogenising effects of social and economic progress. Yet that “deep England” of the conservative imagination does still exist, says Joanna Gray. It can be visited and now is the season to do so. It is to be found in the village fetes currently being put on up and down the country. That is “where England and the English are best viewed in their modest, decent, summer apparel”. Most villages in England hold a fete and each has its own character. You might find races in fancy dress, or games of skittles played for prizes. Coconut shies are pretty much guaranteed, as are tea urns, scones and cakes. At all events you will find “decent people raising small…

A US activist investor is calling for a strategy overhaul at one of Japan’s largest insurance groups, says the Financial Times. Farallon Capital Management argues that T&D Holdings should reduce its investment risk, concentrate on its core investment business and try to tackle its conglomerate discount. The activist, which has taken a 5% stake in T&D, also believes that the insurer should capitalise on strong demand from private equity firms to buy up blocks of insurance policies that insurers find costly to maintain due to capital requirements. However, T&D has pushed back against Farallon’s proposals and says it is opposing two candidates the fund has nominated for election to the board at the firm’s annual meeting this month.…

East Japan Railway Company (Tokyo: 9020) is one of the world’s largest passenger rail operators, managing 11,800 trains over more than 7,400km of track, including many of Japan’s bullet trains. It aims to become fully automated within a decade. The company also owns hotels (offering more than 10,000 rooms) and shopping centres, and provides operational services for railways in India, Indonesia and Thailand. Revenue is projected to grow by about 5% annually, and the shares trade at around 15 times 2026 earnings. The dividend yield is 2%. Union Pacific (NYSE: UNP) is the largest listed freight railroad in America and the second largest overall, operating 32,200 miles of track across the central and western United States. Its robust operational performance contributes to substantial operating margins of around 40% and a…

The contest to elect a new mayor of New York is due this year. While the final vote will take place in November, the Democratic primary, seen as the key contest given that Kamala Harris got 68% of the vote last year, is taking place between 10 June and 24 June. Incumbent mayor Eric Adams, who is deeply unpopular, has decided not to seek the Democratic nomination, and will instead be running as an independent. While there are a large number of candidates, only two are thought likely to have a chance of winning, Andrew Cuomo and state assembly member Zohran Mamdani. With £1,291 matched on Smarkets, Cuomo is the favourite at 1.38 (74.1%), with Mandami out at 3.35 (29.8%). At first glance, this seems sensible: Cuomo is the former…

● “Northern households are increasingly being caught in the government’s inheritance-tax raid,” says Charlotte Gifford in The Telegraph. There has been a 40% jump in the number of families from the northwest who must pay inheritance tax (IHT) since 2015, according to HMRC data obtained by solicitors Irwin Mitchell. “Properties in the north of the country are far cheaper than in the south, yet frozen thresholds coupled with house-price inflation mean smaller estates are being dragged into inheritance tax.” The £325,000 threshold has been frozen since 2009. “Had the government increased the threshold in line with inflation, it would be worth almost £520,000 today.” ● Now Scouts can learn about personal finance, apply their knowledge, and then receive a badge, says Hilary Osborne in The Guardian. The new Money Skills…

● Annuity rates have hit their highest levels for 16 years, but Canada Life warns that many pension savers aren’t shopping around for the best deal when cashing in their savings. While rising gilt yields and rising interest rates have pushed annuity rates to their highest level since 2008, the insurer says one in eight savers are still automatically buying the income on offer from their pension provider – potentially missing out on much higher incomes elsewhere. ● With pension cash set to fall within the inheritance-tax net from 2027, many families are looking to new strategies for reducing their liabilities. Making gifts from surplus income is one option – you can give as much money away as you like in this fashion, reducing the value of your estate. However,…

Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary (pictured) qualified for a bonus worth more than €100m last month, “putting him on track for one of the largest payouts in European corporate history”, says Jasper Jolly in The Guardian. O’Leary will be given shares worth €111m if he stays at the airline until the end of July 2028 because the company’s share price stayed above €21 for 28 days. The payment was described as “excessive”, and “morally questionable” by Luke Hildyard of the High Pay Centre. “Lavishing another €100m on someone who already enjoys billionaire status is a morally questionable and practically inefficient way of sharing the wealth that accrues to large companies.” Actually, this is a “rare example of a corporate bonanza that’s fully deserved”, says Martin Vander Weyer in The Spectator.…

£21, bottleapostle.com Domaine de Boischampt was founded in 1642, and it celebrates the magnificent blue stone soils of Juliénas in Beaujolais. All four wines this week are organically grown, resulting in wines made from soils that telegraph precisely the elemental and extraordinary uniqueness found here. These wines all sit between 12% and 13.5% alcohol, with my featured Beaujolais coming in at the low end. You can drink it chilled with great effect, particularly with sushi and sashimi. It sings on the nose and palate with devastatingly pure fruit notes, with a wild berry edge that surprises and delights the senses. The 2023 Beaujolais-Jullié Blanc Boischampt (£22.99, harrowgatefine winecompany.com; £22.95, vino gusto.co.uk, spywines andspirits.co.uk) is the crystalline chardonnay from this electric estate, and it realigns the senses like an alpine breeze…

Going… A 10.38-carat pink diamond (pictured) once owned by Duchess Marie-Thérèse d’Angoulême, the only surviving child of the ill-fated French queen Marie Antoinette, is heading for auction with Christie’s in New York on Tuesday. Marie Antoinette is said to have entrusted her jewels to her hairdresser before her failed escape from Paris in 1791 and many of these were later passed on to Marie-Thérèse. It’s not known whether the pink diamond was one of these, but it did pass down through the family until it was sold in 1996. The current owner then commissioned the famous American jewellery designer Joel Arthur Rosenthal to design a new setting for the diamond. The jewel is expected to fetch $5m. Gone… The turquoise-and-diamond Cartier tiara that the American-born British MP Nancy Astor wore…

The decline of London’s stockmarket is starting to look “terminal”, says Ben Marlow in The Telegraph. Payments giant Wise has decided to shift its primary listing from London to New York just four years after first floating in the capital. Wise is that rarest of things: a London-listed tech disruptor shaking up the “cosy” banking club that once dominated international currency exchange. Its loss is a “blow” that risks turning the trickle of firms out of London into an “unstoppable stampede”. Wise will maintain a secondary listing in London, but boss Kristo Käärmann argues that “we kind of have to accept the reality of where the world’s capital is concentrated”, reports John-Paul Ford Rojas for This is Money. The bad news just keeps piling up for London, with metal investor…

Five to buy Michelmersh The Telegraph Expected monetary easing and a fall in inflation over the medium term bode well for UK-focused Michelmersh. The brick manufacturer is on track to meet full-year expectations of a 16% rise in earnings, followed by a further 12% next year, as it passes higher costs on to customers. The stock “offers a wide margin of safety” and scope for further capital growth. Michelmersh’s solid financial position, modest valuation and strong profit growth forecasts provide a “favourable risk/reward opportunity”. 113p M&G The Times M&G’s tie-up with Japanese insurance giant Dai-ichi Life is a vote of confidence for the London-listed investment manager’s pro-growth credentials and could bolster its valuation. Dai-ichi is to buy a 15% stake in M&G, take a seat on the board, and send…

● Frasers and Boohoo are headed for another battle over Revolution Beauty, which has put itself up for sale, says Russ Mould of AJ Bell. The two retailers previously clashed when Frasers tried and failed to get founder Mike Ashley and restructuring expert Mike Lennon elected to Boohoo’s board. “Deeppocketed” Frasers “loves to grab a bargain” and Revolution’s recent share-price collapse “means it is going for peanuts.” Yet, Boohoo, which owns 29% of Revolution, is “unlikely to let its arch-rival swoop… without a fight”, even though its investment has been disastrous. Boohoo can either “narrow some of its losses” by letting Frasers buy Revolution at a “chunky premium” to the current market price, or it can buy the business outright and “enact the mother of all turnaround stories to try…

“The global race to build and deploy frontier AI systems is increasingly defined by the strategic rivalry between the United States and China,” says venture-capital (VC) investor Mary Meeker, known for her prescient bets on tech firms such as Meta, Spotify and Airbnb. “Both nations view AI not only as an economic tailwind, but also as a lever of geopolitical influence,” says Meeker in her latest Internet Trends report. “These competing AI ecosystems are amplifying the urgency for sovereignty, security, and speed… The implications of Chinese AI supremacy would be profound.” The costs to train large language models (LLMs) are increasing, and US companies are facing pressure from cheaper and more efficient rivals, such as China’s DeepSeek. “There are new questions about the one-size-fits-all LLM approach, with smaller, cheaper models…

capx.co Elon Musk is stepping away from Donald Trump’s Department for Government Efficiency (Doge), having largely failed to deliver on his “bold” promises to cut the government down to size, says Mani Basharzad. Why did he fail? The answer lies in Ludwig von Mises’ “slim but enduringly relevant book” Bureaucracy (1944). Its “fundamental insight” is that you cannot run government like a business. In business, if you produce inefficiently, the market punishes you – consumers stop buying, competitors overtake you and losses mount. These are the mechanisms by which firms learn, adapt and improve. Government has no such feedback loop. Public agencies don’t win or lose based on consumer choice, as they are funded by compulsory taxation. Bureaucracy is thus the “only rational method” for managing government activities. Even the…

● Warehouse Reit has continued to back a reduced takeover offer of 110.6p per share (including a dividend) from Blackstone, after the US investment giant disputed the value of one of its development assets following due diligence. Blackstone originally put forward a bid of 115p in its fifth and final offer in March. The bid is a significant discount to Warehouse Reit’s latest NAV, which rose 2.9% year on year to 128p at the end of March. In other real-estate news, Custodian Property Income Reit, which specialises in smaller commercial properties, has bought Merlin Properties, a private family-run portfolio of industrial, office and retail assets in the East Midlands, for £22.1m in an all-share deal. The price represents a net initial yield of 8.1%. ● Foresight Environmental Infrastructure has become…

Ed Miliband’s fantasies of climate justice and clean energy are slowly being exposed. The secretary of state for energy security and net zero’s green delusion is going to be abandoned. If an economy is to grow, then it must consume more energy, not less. Wind and solar power are too expensive and too unreliable, to say nothing of the damage they do to the environment and the carbon footprint they leave. The government is already pledging to paint offshore wind farms black because of all the birds they are killing. Offshore wind is not going to replace oil and gas. Fossil fuels remain a better, cheaper, cleaner and more reliable source of energy. For an already heavily taxed country that is living well beyond its means, where growth is the…

Some listed companies quietly compound wealth for investors without ever making mainstream headlines. One such is Spectra Systems (Aim: SPSY), a niche technology firm that has rewarded shareholders handsomely since its listing on the junior market in 2011. While many “boffin-led” companies struggle to commercialise their innovations, Spectra has bucked the trend. Its management team is led by CEO Nabil Lawandy, who has a PhD in chemical physics and was professor of physics at Brown University for 18 years. The company blends technical brilliance with rare business acumen – an unusual and potent combination. With new products in development and management bullish about future opportunities, Spectra’s next chapter could be just as rewarding as its past if these initiatives succeed. Spectra develops security and authentication technology, primarily for banknotes and…

My long tips have fared poorly over the past four weeks, with all six of them falling. Property developer Harworth slipped from 174p, triggering the stop loss at 170p, while Domino’s Pizza Group also triggered a stop-loss at 270p. Foodpackaging specialist Hilton Foods slipped from 866p to 863p while payments firm Corpay retreated from $348 to $342. Drinks company AG Barr, the maker of Irn-Bru, depreciated from 687p to 684p and vending machine firm ME Group declined from 217p to 215p. Overall, counting Harworth and Domino’s Pizza Group, the net losses on my long tips increased from £722 to £880. My short tips didn’t fare very well either, with three moving against me and only two stocks sliding. Online food retailer Ocado went down from 264p to 255p, while telecoms…

We constantly hear warnings that people need to save more for retirement. But how much do you really need to be comfortably off later in life? The good news is that the answer might now be a little lower than in the past. Still, many people remain some distance away from having put by enough cash. Every year, the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA) publishes new data on retirement living standards, setting out how much income it thinks people need for different qualities of life in retirement. Its latest number-crunching says that to enjoy a comfortable retirement, a single person now needs an annual income of £43,900 a year; for a couple, the figure is £60,600. Comfortable, in the PLSA’s terms, means that you have enough money not to…

A stock can be bought today and sold tomorrow. But a stock could also be bought today and never sold. Stocks are unusual investments because they have no maturity date. Bonds mature and loans are repaid. Owning a stock means you own a small piece of a company forever. Yet the average investor only holds a stock for about a year. This mismatch in time horizons is one reason why stocks can be mispriced, and this becomes even more pronounced in times of uncertainty, when fear takes over and attention narrows to the immediate risks instead of long-term fundamentals. At Phoenix, we believe these moments create opportunity. But turning a momentary mispricing into an investment with high long-term returns requires two things: deep expertise, and genuine patience. We manage the…

Sabah, a state in eastern Malaysia, located in the north of the island of Borneo, offers visitors the chance to explore the rainforest and the sea. Here, you will also find the fabulous Shangri-La Rasa Ria in Kota Kinabalu resort. And while the region may be best known for Mount Kinabalu, Malaysia and Borneo’s highest mountain, the resort’s 64-acre nature reserve is a real treasure worth exploring. So, I did – at 7pm, a time I would normally associate with cocktails before dinner. I put my headlamp on, took out my binoculars and ventured out for an evening walk in the jungle. This, the “Reserve After Dark: Glow Experience”, isn’t your typical evening activity. We wandered through the forest, guided by a UV torchlight to spot the glowing mushrooms. Along…

Not to be outdone by Sotheby’s Napoleonic sale (see left), rival Christie’s in London is proudly flying the Union Jack – specifically that which flew from HMS Spartiate at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 (pictured). The “monumental” ensign, which measures 91 inches across, bears the scars of the battle that ended Napoleon’s hopes of invading Britain. A hole in the shape of a half-moon in the top of the flag is thought to have been made by a cannonball, while shards of metal and splinters of wood have been found in the fabric following careful and detailed analysis. “[Admiral Horatio] Nelson was one of the first naval commanders to fly the Union Jack in battle, and to be able to look at one of the very flags flown by…