At the Master Investor Show in London on 25 March, which many of my readers will have attended, one question came up again and again to the various luminaries gathered to dispense their insights and knowledge. Where do you foresee Sterling going? Overall, most of the assembled experts, including my friend Evil Knievel, were Sterling…
Following Tim Price’s article on the slow death of the stockbroker, written from the perspective of a fund manager, here is that of an analyst insider whose City career spanned pre-big bang, when the species hardly existed, to today – when Mifid could be about to hammer a final nail into their coffin. Or maybe not.…
At the latest Master Investor Show, Jim Mellon, one of the UK’s most successful investors and entrepreneurs, revealed his current passion and new investment focus: longevity science. Jim truly believes that longevity is the next “money fountain” and that in 30 years’ time, life expectancy will easily reach 110 years due to cutting edge technologies…
In a previous article on these pages, I examined the outlook for the Brazilian Stock Exchange – the Bovespa – and asked the question if it could sustain 2016’s rally, which made it one of the best equity performers last year with an 80% year on year uptick in dollar terms (+39% in local currency…
The constitutional historian Professor David Starkey has compared the invocation of Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty on 29 March with King Henry VIII’s break with Rome in the 1530s[i]. As Professor Starkey describes in his numerous books, that event had momentous historical consequences for Britain. Politics in those days moved more slowly – and were…
Back in 1998, the author Michael Lewis, then a columnist for Bloomberg, wrote as follows: “When historians of everyday life look back on 20th-century American capitalism they will be astonished by the role played by our stockbrokers. Certainly, it will be hard for them to explain to their readers the willingness of a prosperous American…
Financial markets have been on an impressive run since Donald Trump was elected in November. The S&P 500 is up 10.7%, the Dow is up 13.1% and the MSCI World (which is a proxy for developed markets) is up 9.9%. Trump’s promises in terms of tax cuts, infrastructure spending, protectionism for US industries, repeal of…
Ready. Aim. Fire! The notorious Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon (2007) was “triggered” by the United Kingdom last night when Prime Minister May signed off a historic letter to Donald Tusk, President of the European Council. This was delivered by hand by Sir Tim Barrow, our man in Brussels, at 12:20 BST this afternoon.…
Another Master Investor done! A huge crowd, impressive companies, great speakers and an engaged audience. Well done Swen and team! I must say I always feel wrung out afterwards, as it takes weeks to prepare my speech and develop my theme. Luckily, this year, I think we are onto a new money fountain centred on…
While Europe is recovering from the financial and sovereign crises at a very moderate pace, Iceland seems to have completely reversed one of the worst banking crises ever seen, where three banks with assets in excess of 10x the country’s GDP suddenly collapsed. Almost 10 years after the peak of the crisis, when the central…
