There is some madness around in the market place these days. HSBC looks like it might perform a bit better because it may not have any regulatory fines in the next accounting period! It’s a pretty bad show if a company is marvelling in guidance that it won’t be fined by its own regulator during…
Hammerson (HMSO) is an interesting chart. They’re in retail shopping and have a portfolio of shopping centres, retail parks and that sort of thing in Europe. Now that looks very much like a bull flag there. Of course it looks like a bull flag because I’ve drawn one on. Contrary to the belief of many…
I was at Mercers Hall near the Bank of England last night for a lecture delivered by Lord Robertson, the artist formerly known as George Robertson MP, erstwhile Secretary of State for Defence. This was the Peter Nailor Memorial Lecture on Defence. A lecture it seems they thought may have had its day just a…
Perhaps until the ‘80s it was possible to say that governments had some control over their own economic destiny, and particularly that of their principal stock exchange. It’s not true anymore, and broadly the global economy will ultimately influence everything. We can capitalise on this as traders/investors by spotting when markets start to converge or…
Qantas [QAN.AX] has just announced 40 more North American codeshares with American, WestJet and Alaska Airlines. They’ll have 200 codeshares in total. The glowing safety record of Qantas must be a factor in their success. Although it’s rather narcissistic to think that you might be so ‘lucky’ as to be one of a very elite…
Growing up, as I did, in London, I can count the number of times we had a White Christmas on one hand. There have been a few in recent years and apparently Ladbrokes have odds on a White Xmas at 4/1, and have cut the odds of a minimum temp of -16°C. So, given the…
I was running an event last week where a chap turned up and instead of offering three pound coins or similar to pay the entrance fee, he instead produced a rucksack filled with potatoes, which he was fairly confident were King Edwards, and asked if he could pay with them. He was deadly serious. There…
I remember a spate of white label spread betting sites popping up a few years ago. A white label, for those who aren’t familiar, is when someone uses another company’s product but puts their own name on it. The white label which you then write what you will on. They were things like Fred Bloggs…
I was at a seminar a year or so ago and it was about national economic strategy. It pitted what I recall as being a fairly left wing (i.e. out of date and unworkable) approach to the economy by John Mills, with a response by George Tait Edwards championing the work of little-known Japanese economist…
I’m not one of those people who wants everything to be ‘like it was’. We should be heading eagerly into the future and making the most of it. Most people are resistant to change whereas I’ve always been an early adopter. Not everything changes for the best though, which simply means it needs changing again.…
