magazine archive
magazine archive
Feature
Will a lack of skilled and willing workers derail the UK economic recovery?
Thursday 05 Aug 2021Sunday 1 August saw the last taper of the Government’s job retention scheme. For the final two months of furlough employers will have to stump up 20% of a worker’s salary as well as paying pension and national insurance contributions. We’ve been here before and the last go-around forced the hand of...
DIY Boom: Why there’s more to come and the stocks to buy now
Thursday 29 Jul 2021One of the very few positive effects of last year’s pandemic was an increase in consumers spending on the repair, maintenance and improvement of their flats and houses. Having been confined indoors for months at a time, it didn’t take long for people to set about redecorating and adding more indoor...
Same-day delivery: the next battleground in the grocery war
Thursday 29 Jul 2021As Winston Churchill famously observed while he was working to form the United Nations after the Second World War, ‘Never let a good crisis go to waste’. In a similar vein, UK tech entrepreneurs have made full use of the Covid pandemic and the radical shift in peoples’ shopping habits to launch a...
Discover how Xaar is overcoming its troubled past
Thursday 29 Jul 2021Get ready for inkjet print head designer Xaar ( XAR ) to deliver a sharp recovery in earnings. The appointment of a new management team with deep industry experience is successfully reinvigorating the group’s business model. The group is benefiting from a strong product pipeline, coupled with a...
Emerging markets: Views from the experts
Thursday 29 Jul 20211. Inflation concerns in the United States have reemerged as a stimulus-fueled global economy springs back from the depths of the pandemic. The recent shift in the US Federal Reserve’s (Fed’s) tone on inflation reflects the solid demand backdrop that we have observed. Our view is that inflationary...
How Taiwan Semiconductor became the most valuable emerging markets company
Thursday 29 Jul 2021The importance of emerging markets to the global technology sector has been brought home by the current chip shortages affecting the manufacture of everything from smartphones to white goods and road vehicles. Semiconductor foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing or TSMC for short is one of the...
Why you would invest in a fund which aims not to lose cash
Thursday 22 Jul 2021Why would you invest in a product which has the limited ambition of not losing you any money? For the uninitiated that question might be prompted by the existence of capital preservation investment trusts and funds whose principal aim is, as their name suggests, to preserve your cash. However,...
Can Dignity ever reclaim its defensive qualities?
Thursday 22 Jul 2021Pull up a one year chart of funeral services provider Dignity ( DTY ) and you’ll be kicking yourself if you didn’t invest 12 months ago to generate a spectacular 200% gain. But draw a long-run chart and you’ll see the shares remain more than 70% below 2016’s £28-a-share peak, as the funeral...
UK stocks: Cheap and finally on investors' radar
Thursday 22 Jul 2021UK stocks represent a ‘once in a generation’ opportunity for investors, say fund managers. After years dogged by political and economic uncertainty, and soggy stock market performance, this is a welcome change of mood music. ‘UK equities are on a 30 year low versus peers, and we see this as a once...
Why US-listed China tech shares are taking a beating
Thursday 15 Jul 2021China’s technology giants have seen more than $800 billion combined wiped from their market value since February thanks to Beijing’s expanding crackdown on the sector. The recent crackdown by China’s authorities on ride hailing firm Didi Global and other US-listed Chinese tech stocks has sent...