MoneyWeek

In 1947, Labour chancellor Hugh Dalton resigned after some important, market-sensitive details of his Budget speech that he had let slip to a journalist appeared in print shortly before he stood up in the Commons. Perhaps the writer for the Star, an

“The global fight against inflation has turned a corner,” say Tom Fairless and Paul Hannon in The Wall Street Journal. Annual inflation fell to 3.2% in the US in October, and 2.9% in the eurozone. Price pressures remain more persistent in Britain, bu

Signs of cooling inflation have fuelled the market’s bets of easier money next year, sparking a revival in stockmarkets. America’s S&P 500 index has leapt by 10% since a recent bottom on 27 October, with the FTSE 100 rising by 2.5% since then. The S&

The fall of Sam Bankman-Fried “serves as a cautionary tale for all those who believe that they are immune to the laws of financial gravity”, says Maximilian Marenbach on crypto.news. Bankman-Fried has been convicted of fraud by a New York court and f

On Wednesday, Israel and Hamas reached a four-day ceasefire deal, brokered by Qatar with US support, which allows for the release of 50 Israeli hostages, all women and children, say Dan Sabbagh and Julian Borger in The Guardian. In return, Israel wil

Hunt curries favour: Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has delivered an Autumn Statement “designed to curry favour [with voters] ahead of an election late in 2024”, says Paul Dales of Capital Economics. The net giveaway of £14.3bn in 2024-2025 (worth 0.5% of GD

There were ructions this week at OpenAI, the San Francisco-based company behind ChatGPT, as the board, senior management, staff and investors all warred publicly over the company’s future (see page 6). Meanwhile, well away from the day-to-day drama o

edconway.substack.com Businesses are starting to realise that getting to net zero might be considerably harder than they first thought, says Ed Conway. Take Lego. The Danish company uses acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) in most of its toy brick

Copper is an essential raw material in our modern economy. It is used in every electrical device and across the global electric grid. The average home contains 180kg of copper, while the average car has roughly 30kg of the red metal – electric vehicl

Mining is notoriously cyclical. But if ever there was an industry that blows desert hot and arctic cold, it is the subsector of small-cap and early-stage companies known as junior miners. And boy has it been blowing cold. Many of the old hands are sa

As a general election approaches, with the defeat of the current government looking inevitable, the consequent impact, if any, on financial markets is highly topical. The natural assumption is that a leftist or centre-left government would be worse f

The FTSE 100 isn’t usually a hunting ground for private traders. It certainly isn’t my usual area. These stocks are often so large that it’s hard for private investors to gain an edge over the smart money who have bigger bankrolls, bigger teams and b

Last week’s unexpected fall in inflation means interest rates may have peaked. Savers need to act quickly to find accounts before they disappear. If you were hoping to secure a rate of 6% or more, you are too late. Accounts offering these rates have

After a lifetime of work, many people have several different types of pensions by the time they are closing in on retirement age. They may have a defined-benefit (DB) plan, guaranteeing a certain amount of income in retirement, related to their salar

For more than 70 years, the McMahon family was the rising – and then dominant – force in professional wrestling: inextricably linked with their all-conquering World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) empire, says Sportbible. “Few ever expected WWE to be s

Great Tangley Manor, Wonersh Common, Guildford. This 11th-century Grade 1-listed-manor with a bridge over a moat has served as a BBC film location. It has carved oak-panelled walls and magnificent open fireplaces. 8 beds, 7 baths, hall, 2 receps, 2 s

West led his singleton Queen of Hearts v Six Diamonds and declarer won the Ace. The basic plan was clear: play the Ace-King of Trumps, then, assuming both follow but no Queen has appeared, begin Clubs. All of dummy’s Hearts can be discarded on the Ac

Our capital allocation model told us to sell out of US stocks nearly 30 years ago. The model is “dumb”, in the sense that it tells us nothing about the state of the world, the future of interest rates, or anything else. It simply lets us know when st