MoneyWeek

There are many reasons why US stocks have massively outperformed over the last few decades – low interest rates have helped, as has the stunning success of America’s tech giants. But the huge gains have also been about America’s embrace of “optimisat

“The world’s central bankers… are starting to see sense,” says Hamish McRae in The Mail on Sunday. Minutes from the March meeting of America’s Federal Reserve show that policymakers plan to shrink the Fed’s $9trn balance sheet faster than anticipated

Over the past year, global semiconductor shortages have caused supply chain chaos, says Daniel Newman on MarketWatch. Now some analysts fear the chip industry could be heading for the opposite problem – “a massive glut of semiconductors in the next y

Europe could be heading for a “nuclear renaissance”, says Pierre Georges of S&P Global Ratings. With gas and power prices rocketing in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the appeal of atomic energy is only growing. Unlike other “low-carbon alt

Prime minister Boris Johnson unveiled his long-awaited energy security policy last week, which put offshore wind and nuclear power at the centre of a plan to produce 95% of electricity from low-carbon sources by 2030 and reduce reliance on volatile g

It is to be Xi Jinping’s year of triumph. This autumn, the Chinese communist party holds its 20th Party Congress. In normal times, Xi would be expected to shuffle off into retirement, having put in a ten-year stint at the top. Instead, he is expected

SocGen leaves Russia: French bank Société Générale will take a €3.1bn hit, ending its presence in Russia by selling its Russia-based bank Rosbank and its insurance operations to Interros Capital, an investment company founded by Russian billionaire V

Russia is retreating from Kyiv and changing its war plans, and the West seems to be aiming for regime change, even as it realises that sanctions alone will not achieve that so long as Germany resists an oil embargo. The “crucial question” now, says N

Fund managers have always found it harder to outperform in the US than in any other market, which is why so many have chosen to invest via passive funds and exchange-traded funds. The US market accounts for well over half of the MSCI World index, but

When shareholder activists target financial firms, history is not encouraging. In 2005, there was an activist campaign to prevent Deutsche Boerse from buying the London Stock Exchange. Werner Seifert, the chief executive of the German exchange, lost

The construction industry is booming. From houses to motorways, demand has never been higher. But while demand has increased, productivity hasn’t. The productivity of workers in the two decades up until 2017 increased by just 1% per year, compared wi

Soaring energy bills are leading us all to think about how we can reduce our bills. But how far are you willing to go to keep your costs down? This month the energy price cap was raised by £693 to £1,971 (this represents the annual cost per household

Until very recently when we looked at the MoneyWeek investment trust portfolio we felt both very grateful to Scottish Mortgage (its performance has made us look fabulous) and a bit nervous (we felt sure that many of its holdings were grotesquely over

Growing numbers of cash-strapped homeowners are turning to the value locked up in their properties to bolster their finances, new research suggests. Data from debt advice specialist Henry Dannell reveals that homeowners raised £4.8bn via equity relea

Some of China’s richest entrepreneurs have been booted out of their companies in the past two years as the Chinese government’s crackdown on tech barons gathers pace. The latest to join the throng, says Bloomberg, is Richard Liu, founder of JD.com, t

“Norway’s central-west coast, and the Sunnmøre region in particular, is dense with the kind of glaciers and waterfalls, perennial woodland and remote wood-house villages that tend to crop up in the mind’s eye when Middle-earth is invoked,” says Maria

Fox Hill House, Bourton-on-the-Water, Cheltenham. A Cotswold stone house built in 1925 with later additions. It has a double-height drawing room with a minstrels’ gallery and a large inglenook fireplace, stone-mullion windows and an oak staircase. 5

“For true pizza aficionados, an outdoor pizza oven can elevate your pizza-making from good to great,” says Sally FitzGerald in Food and Living Vegan magazine. The Ooni Karu 12 multi-fuel pizza oven is easy to use and (with a bit of practice and a goo

When Donald Trump was banned from Twitter and Facebook in the wake of the Capitol riots last year, he vowed to wreck “vengeance”, say Adam Rawnsley and Asawin Suebsaeng for The Daily Beast. That took the form of launching a social-media network of hi

The Covid-19 story has disappeared from the headlines. Thank God. We were getting tired of it. Now we have a new crisis, a new betê noire – Russia. Once again the influencers have decided who’s on the side of the angels and urge us to do battle again