MoneyWeek

“There’s always someone worse off than you”, parents tell their children to stop them moaning. In investment, too, that is often a comforting thought. We are wired to fear losses more than we enjoy gains; by the same token, it is a great relief to av

“The bond market is in freefall”, says David Brenchley in The Sunday Times. The market for bonds (essentially government and corporate “IOUs”) underpins everything from mortgage and annuity rates to the value of pension funds. Bond prices move invers

If you could have known at the start of 2021 that inflation was going to rocket thanks to “rampant money-printing by central banks”, followed in 2022 by spiking commodity prices caused by a major European war, you would have piled into gold, says The

Heightened tensions in the Middle East (see page 10) have caused a spike in oil prices. Prices had been sliding in recent weeks, but they jumped by more than 4% on Monday morning on fears that Hamas’s attack on Israel may suck in other regional actor

The death toll in the Israel-Hamas war has continued to climb since the Palestinian militant group launched a “massive, highly-coordinated terror attack” on Israel from the Gaza strip on Saturday, says Emily Czachor on CBS. The “brutal attack” killed

Pepsi loses its fizz: Fizzy drinks and snacks giant PepsiCo has “delivered decent quarterly results and a cautiously optimistic outlook”, says Aaron Back in The Wall Street Journal. Organic sales, which exclude the effects of currency movements and m

Not if Rishi Sunak gets his way. The prime minister wants to stub out smoking once and for all, announcing plans to raise the smoking age by one year every year in England starting in 2027. The plan is that those currently aged 14 and under will neve

noahpinion.blog This year’s Nobel prize for medicine went to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman, who invented the mRNA vaccines that saved millions of lives from Covid. The rapid development of these vaccines was an “incredible triumph” for humanity,

Last month I attended the Quality Growth Conference in London, the smaller sibling of the London Value Investor Conference held earlier in the year. The first speaker of the day was Scott Nisbett from Baillie Gifford, who was there to talk about the

It’s only when you walk past the suddenly empty windows – maybe already boarded up – that it fully sinks in. This shop was one of your regular haunts. Now it’s gone. Stores on Britain’s high streets have experienced years of tough trading. More and m

Private education in the UK is widely disparaged as providing schooling for “only 6%” of the population. But its overall impact is much wider. According to the Sutton Trust, more than a quarter of pupils in England and Wales have received private tut

The Bank of England’s aggressive hiking cycle has reignited competition in the UK savings market. Digital banks such as Starling, Monzo and a new player, Kroo, are becoming increasingly vocal and offering highly competitive savings rates compared wit

People’s pay has risen at an average rate of 8.5% over the past year, according to official statistics. Many need that extra income to combat the effects of high inflation. But if you’re in a position to do so, shovelling the extra cash into your pen

The “most commercially successful black film-maker in America” flies under the radar in Hollywood, says Bloomberg Businessweek. Better known for his friendship with Harry and Meghan – to whom he lent his Beverley Hills estate – Tyler Perry’s work has

The Ibiza Gran Hotel is a resort in the Balearics that is rated five stars, “but it could actually be six”, says Hannah Chubb in Cosmopolitan. The staff were welcoming and “the lobby looked like it could have been an art museum”. Around 400 “incredib

Little Edstone, Great Edstone, York, North Yorkshire. A farmhouse in Ryedale that has been upgraded by the current owners and split into a main house with a separate west wing surrounded by landscaped gardens that include a kitchen garden and orchard

You’re not likely to see the Lexus LM people carrier at the school gates, says Tom Wiltshire in Car magazine. You’re more likely to see it “picking up VIPs from the private terminal, or parked as an executive shuttle outside a five-star hotel”. The L

South was almost left in One Heart on this week’s deal. But East made a standard protective re-opener, and the stakes were soon higher. West led the King of Spades, East allowing it to hold the trick, and continued with the Queen. Declarer ruffed, dr

There has been no joy on Wall Street in recent weeks. Little by little, day by day, it is becoming clearer: trading is not about to get any easier. “Buying the dip” is not a good idea. Fighting the US Federal Reserve is a losing proposition. And the