Investment
Britain needs a Rearmament Isa
The City’s self-styled ‘cheerleader in chief’, Lord Mayor Alastair King, on a recent visit to Beijing and Shanghai found leading…
My COP26 message: pay more dividends to save the planet
Climate emergency demands action, not rhetoric. So, on the eve of COP26, which UK news item promises to deliver the…
The new breed of retail investors look like ducks ready for stuffing
‘Feed the ducks when they’re quacking’ sounds like advice from a foie gras farmer — but let’s leave gastronomy till…
Comedy gold
The economics of internet irony
Enterprise and teamwork, not greed, delivered the vaccines
‘The reason we have the vaccine success is because of capitalism — because of greed, my friends.’ So Boris Johnson…
Taking office
Is now the time to invest in commercial property?
Suddenly, it’s fast-forward to an electric future for the car industry
Back in November, when Downing Street’s pandemic responses looked daily more incompetent, the announcement of a ban on sales of…
Up Crash
The economy is tanking but stock markets are soaring. Why?
Taking stock
Inside the online army waging war on Wall Street
Reddit’s righteous uprising must end in a bloodbath
The Reddit story — in which a ragtag army of small investors have executed a spectacular short squeeze against hedge-fund…
Abolish stamp duty? Not if the next step is a wealth tax
On the Wednesday in early July when Rishi Sunak announced a temporary increase from £125,000 to £500,000 in the stamp…
Covid has ended the rail franchise fiasco at last
Good riddance to the passenger rail franchise system which has finally been killed off by Covid, though a majority of…
At last, boardroom pay starts to swing away from blatant excess
At a low moment in late March, I suggested that all large companies should consider temporary cuts in executive salaries…
Is it too late to jump on the gold bandwagon?
The price of gold has been rising since the earliest virus reports from China in December. Adherents regard it as…
Neil Woodford could do the washing-up at my fantasy Christmas lunch
It’s the season for kindness and conviviality. In that spirit — and recognising that business, like personal life, rarely follows…
Are Boris’s hedge-fund pals conspiring to ‘short the UK’? I doubt it
Minding my own business at 67 Pall Mall — the private members’ club favoured by oenophile West End hedge-fund managers…
How BlackRock became a sanctuary for clean-cut bankers and dormant politicians
A few months ago, an aggressive US pressure group called the Campaign for Accountability declared that it had a new…
Warning: top-performing funds are highly likely to contain tobacco
Axa will no longer invest in the tobacco industry: the French insurance giant will sell €184 million of shares and…
Investment: This dragon won’t bite
The western stock-market panic over China is excessive and irrational … so buy now
Investment: Buy to lose
If you pick up a buy-to-let property now, you’ll be fighting the full might of the Chancellor and the Bank of England
Mr Bear is back: sit tight because he may be with us for a while
Like Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant, we’ve just been savaged by a bear but we’ll probably survive. Leading UK-listed stocks…
Another banking review is pointless: just carry on naming, shaming and jailing
Was the Financial Conduct Authority leaned on by the Chancellor to scrap its ‘review of banking culture’? Or did it…
Sorry, but I can’t join in the China panic
MS Queen Victoria, 38°N 19°E I’ll do my best, but I’ve got to be honest: being surrounded by shining Ionian…
Barometer
Bank job Should we buy shares in companies which print banknotes in expectation of one getting to print millions of…
Contagion of a different kind as Greece wriggles off the hook
The clear winner in the Greek crisis is the author of The Little Book of Negotiating Clichés, whose royalties must…
