magazine archive
magazine archive
Editor's View
Markets on fast forward as gold continues to shine
Thursday 24 Apr 2025Is it really less than 100 days since the Trump administration took office? The symbolically significant 100th day actually comes next week on 30 April but such has been the speed at which it has moved that it feels like the whole world has been on fast forward ever since. Nowhere has this been...
What if you had missed the market's worst days?
Thursday 17 Apr 2025It’s probably the least of all our worries and this is written without the expectation of any sympathy but it’s not easy putting a weekly magazine together in the Trump 2.0 era. No sooner had we put last week’s issue to bed then the US administration announced a 90-day delay on most of its...
Why selling in a panic has always proved a mistake
Thursday 10 Apr 2025Since I started writing about markets nearly 20 years ago there have been two really big sell-offs, the first early on in my fledgling career as the global financial crisis hit in 2007 and the second a little over five years ago as the Covid pandemic struck. In between, there have been periods of...
The first-quarter market winners and losers
Thursday 03 Apr 2025We have reached the end of a tumultuous first quarter for global markets, from which the key takeaway has been the extremely weak showing of previously all-conquering US stocks. Martin Gamble looks at the latest developments from across the Atlantic in this issue . As the table shows, there have...
The big story of 2025 isn’t the one you thought it was
Thursday 27 Mar 2025The conventional wisdom was that 2025 was going to be the year of the US market and the dollar as President Trump pushed ahead with his ‘America First’ policy. The promise of tax cuts and deregulation won the support of the business community, while investors bought into the concept of ‘US...
QinetiQ fails to live up to the hype around the defence sector
Thursday 20 Mar 2025As companies on the stock market go, QinetiQ (QQ.) has a particularly engaging backstory. Emerging out of the Ministry of Defence arm believed to be the inspiration for James Bond’s gadget-man Q, these origins even tell you something about the company today given its focus on tech-driven areas of...
The shifting ISA landscape and the case for investing
Thursday 13 Mar 2025This week we extol the virtues of ISAs. For the last quarter of a century or so, these products have allowed savers and investors to shield their cash from HMRC and avoid having to fill out complicated paperwork at the end of the tax year. As of the end of the 2022/23 tax year, Britons had...
The inherent unpredictability of oil prices and European stocks in demand
Thursday 06 Mar 2025Investors are getting conflicting signals when it comes to the future direction of oil prices, and this week’s fall to three-month lows off the back of crude producers’ cartel OPEC+’s decision to boost output is unlikely to be the end of the story. The introduction of tariffs on neighbouring...
Why management change matters and the importance of compounding
Thursday 27 Feb 2025Always quoteworthy, Warren Buffett once said: ‘I try to invest in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will.’ While the maxim has merit, management does make a difference and management changes can have a major impact – for good or bad – on even...
Saba strikes out with trusts push and the energy implications of a Ukraine peace deal
Thursday 20 Feb 2025All the meetings requisitioned by Saba at UK investment trusts are now done and dusted and the scorecard makes sobering reading for the US activist hedge fund – trusts seven, Saba nil. That doesn’t mean there is room for complacency on the part of the investment trust industry, as Saba has shone a...