James Faulkner interviews Chris Darbyshire, Chief Investment Officer at Seven Investment Management. James Faulkner: Hi Chris. Thanks for taking the time to speak with Master Investor today. Could you kick off by giving our readers a brief summary of 7IM and its offering to clients, as well as an overview of your role at the…
A vertebra in the spinal column of the world economy is causing pain. As I write the price of Brent Crude is at US$59.99. According to the Knoema[i] website, the break-even oil price ranges from US$149.90 in Venezuela to US$60.50 in Qatar. So, on that basis, almost no one is making money in oil right…
While acknowledging the ‘Trump pump’ to the oil industry, I have always been sceptical about the long-term prospects for the industry because I believe prices are capped at a much lower level than they were ten years ago. Any excessive enthusiasm is doomed to revert to an even more extreme pessimism in ever shorter periods,…
The Illuminati are plotting… One of the themes I have returned to again and again over the last eighteen months has been how the priestly caste of the world’s central bankers, disproportionately drawn from the upper echelons of Goldman Sachs – a kind of mysterious, self-perpetuating, secretive elite which I (only half-jokingly) call the “Illuminati”…
While an investor tries to maximise the expected returns of his portfolio, he always faces a formidable enemy – risk. In theory, if leverage has no limits, any level of expected return can be achieved. But risk is also expected to rise with it and make the burden of failure too great for an investor…
Suddenly, the idea that all citizens should be paid a basic income by the state is becoming topical across the world. While we associate this idea with the political left – the French Socialist Party candidate in the forthcoming presidential elections, Benoît Hamon, has made it the cornerstone of his programme – it also has…
2017 has only just begun, but it is already filled with a long queue of risky upcoming events, of which politics takes its fair share. Europe will face big challenges, as France and Germany both prepare for general elections, where they will face the growing strength of the far-right anti-European parties. While Marine Le Pen…
The Year of the Fire Rooster My Chinese friends tell me that the auguries of the Chinese New Year are mixed. In Chinese astrology each zodiac year is associated with an animal plus one of the five elements. 2017 is the Year of the Rooster and its element is fire. This is the first such…
2016 incorporated many themes, but the one I would suggest is most pertinent to private investors could be called ‘the death of narrative’. To put it another way, whenever Groupthink encountered the prospect of a geopolitical sea change, it would turn out to be irretrievably wrong. Brexit couldn’t possibly happen – until it did. Trump…
Amidst the furore over the prospects of a hard Brexit and President Trump’s immigration policies, the dry subject of our national finances has been overlooked. So may I have your attention please? Last year the United Kingdom’s national debt increased by £251 million every day. Sobering news The latest news on UK public finances is…
