About 20 years ago, I was descending a Monro (mountain) in Scotland – Beinn Bheigeir on Islay, to be precise – leading two beautiful young people back to the sea. (My niece and nephew: the girl is now an academic in Switzerland and the boy is in private equity.) And, as it can do there,…
Investing in the UK Pre and Post Brexit At 04:39 on Friday, 24 June David Dimbleby announced that the BBC forecast was that REMAIN could not now win. Cut to a beaming Nigel Farage at a party somewhere talking about the British people getting their country back. As the enormity of the news sunk in,…
Gosh. Have I missed something? I hate it when Swen prods me like that when I’m fast asleep in my favourite comfy chair. Did you say we’ve voted out? Told you so. It was when I was having lunch with Evil about a month ago that I started getting vibes. We discussed the bookies odds…
A missive through the letterbox from Jezza & Co. I had supposed that Mr Corbyn had gone on holiday, so little have I heard from him during the referendum campaign (and at his age, that would have been quite understandable). But no, the Labour Party has been up all night producing killer arguments for –…
You’re feeling peaky, but daren’t leave your work station to go to the doctor as the CEO is over from New York – and is prowling. Your child is off sick at home and has just texted to say she’s feeling nauseous. It’s Saturday night and you’ve conceived weird needle pains in your upper arm…
What is your favourite apocalypse? Global warming precipitating cataclysmic sea-level rise? Thermonuclear war caused by hackers violating the Pentagon? Fundamentalists with dirty bombs? A global pandemic of bird flu? President Donald? Brexit? Or: what about antibiotic resistance? I’ve just listened to a BBC R4 programme[i] on the subject of the increasing immunity of super-bugs. According…
As seen in the latest issue of Master Investor Magazine In the next stage of the Information Age nations which share a cultural affinity will coalesce into closer political and economic partnerships. The principal cultural affinity of the UK is with other English-speaking nations, not Europe (which is heterogeneous, anyway). The forthcoming EU referendum in…
Asian Stars Malaysia’s Hap Seng Consolidated Berhad (KLSE:HAPSENG), a property, plantations and buildings material conglomerate, has managed to quadruple its share price in the last three years and is up 55 percent over the last twelve months – despite a modest decline in the Kuala Lumpur index[i]. It has managed to double after-tax profits despite…
Florence Nightingale’s Deep Mind Life expectancy has doubled in Europe and North America over the last 150 years and is still increasing. I will ask you: What is the single most important factor behind that remarkable fact? And you will probably cite the rise of pharmaceutical medicine, as in the invention of penicillin and the…
Don’t worry, Shirley If you listened to Baroness Shirley Williams you’d buy shares in removers like Pickford’s or Berwin & Berwin (both sadly private companies, mind you). Or you’d buy shares in stolid but boring container truckers like the Swiss firm Kühne und Nagel (VTX:KNIN). Lady Williams tells us[i] that if the British people vote…
