MoneyWeek

Better too late than never. Other major stockmarkets have raced to new record peaks in recent years while our blue chips have lagged. This week the FTSE 100 crept past its all-time high set in February 2023. But the longer-term picture is hardly enco

Never mind talk of “hard or soft landings”, the “US economy is picking up altitude again”, says John Authers on Bloomberg. From the labour market to manufacturing, recent data coming out of the world’s biggest economy has been “relentlessly strong”.

Disgraced cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried has been sentenced to 25 years in prison by a court in New York. His FTX exchange collapsed in November 2022 with an $8bn hole in its balance sheet, the result of customer funds that had been stolen to

Rising global instability has pushed oil prices to a five-month high. Brent crude hit $89 a barrel on Tuesday, a day after a suspected Israeli airstrike on Iran’s embassy in Syria, says Anna Cooban on CNN. The attack “raises the spectre that the war

“This is the beginning of the end for Thames Water in its current form,” says Lex in the Financial Times. Shareholders in Britain’s biggest water company have baulked at injecting new equity into the heavily-indebted utility. This week, the group hir

HSBC sells Canadian arm: HSBC, Europe’s largest lender, has sold its Canadian banking business to the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) for $10.1bn, says Ben Martin in The Times. The deal will boost HSBC’s first-quarter results by $4.9bn on 30 April and fun

Rapidly falling birth rates mean the world’s population will peak, and then start to decline rapidly within decades, according to a new study led by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. If so, this w

lawliberty.org “A spectre is haunting capitalism,” says Paul Mueller – “the spectre of ‘higher things’.” An increasing number of thinkers on the right say that free enterprise and free trade have failed to deliver “cultural and spiritual goods” to l

Data from the Office for National Statistics shows that just 210,320 dwellings were completed in 2023, compared with 252,500 in 2022. That was the highest figure since the early 1980s, but was distorted by post-Covid completions. A little over 40,000

Charlie Munger made a fortune on his own account before joining Warren Buffett as partner and vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett’s $900bn investment vehicle. Buffett once noted that “Charlie thinks about business, economics and investment m

This stock is a highly speculative opportunity in the hydrogen sector. This may seem a waste of time. After all, hydrogen is still in its infancy and remains far more expensive than fossil fuels. And that’s the angle from which I have approached this

It’s the beginning of a new financial year, which will mean several changes to your finances. Let’s start with your taxes. National Insurance is being cut from 10% to 8% from 6 April. This will save £450 a year for an employee on the average salary o

How would your business respond if it suffered a cyber attack? Chances are that you don’t know. New research suggests that just one in five small firms have a clear plan in place for dealing with an attack, even though more than 40% of businesses suf

One of the biggest ways in which the world wide web is changing our lives is the Internet of Things (IoT). It’s about connecting all manner of devices, or “things” – such as sensors, gauges, household appliances and cameras – across the internet to o

Having spent the past three decades building up a vast network of interests in the European telecoms sector, French billionaire Xavier Niel is in pole position to exploit the industry’s ongoing consolidation. “For me, it’s like playing Monopoly,” he

Approaching the elegant Art Deco facade of the Carlyon Bay Hotel, built in 1925, “immediately evokes images of old-fashioned summer holidays on the Cornish Riviera”, says Tom Mulvihill in The Telegraph. The hotel occupies an “excellent” position on t

An intriguing 1/20th scale model appeared at the Japan International Boat Show in Yokohama a fortnight ago. It could only have been one thing, judging by the “sleek styling, inspired by Lexus’s L-finesse design philosophy” – the upmarket Japanese car

Gwern Y Genau, Bala, Gwynedd, Wales. A six-bedroom house in Snowdonia National Park with a three-bedroom house and a large bunk house overlooking Llyn Celyny lake. 6 beds, 6 baths, 3 receps, breakfast kitchen; 4-bed bunk house with open-plan kitchen/

Surrealism turns 100 this year. French writer André Breton laid the foundations for the artistic movement in October 1924, when he published his Surrealist Manifesto. In it, Breton calls for a revolution in thinking “dictated by the absence of all co

Our contention has long been that the Fed-Wall Street complex has gained control of the nation’s money, and uses interest rates and money printing to enrich itself. It makes hay when the sun shines. Then, when clouds roll over, it puts the inevitable

My old partner Tony Forrester played a blinder to make this thin Six Hearts. He won West’s King of Diamonds lead with dummy’s Ace and found the good shot of advancing the Queen of Trumps. East declined to cover (best), and West’s Knave was pinned. A