It’s Not an Easy Time to Throw, Attend, or Belong to a Party...
Before Covid-19, it was entirely normal to feel a bit rough after your work Christmas party. Spare a thought then for the supposed attendees of several festive gatherings in Number 10 Downing Street, who are still nursing a huge political headache a year later. Is this the latest sign that Johnson’s appeal could be fading? Odds on a General Election in 2022? Ask us again this time next year.
Big Names Made Big Gains on BioNTech
As Morningstar data journalist Sunniva Kolostyak explored this week, some fairly famous names managed to time the success of German biotechnology BioNTech. They include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which allocated 33.68% of its assets to the company via around one million shares. Among UK-domiciled funds, Baillie Gifford’s Long Term Global Growth made the biggest bet, with a weighting of 2.64% and half a million shares.
Financial Services Firms Are Sue-per Relieved
Litigiousness occupies a special place in popular culture. From a likeness of Tom Cruise telling South Park’s Stan Marsh that he would “sue him in England”, to Lionel Hutz telling Bart Simpson that “if there’s one thing America needs it’s more lawyers”, there have been ample opportunities over the years to poke fun at the human tendency to litigate. Surprising nobody, financial services firms subject to the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) new Consumer Duty saw the inclusion of a (distinctly Americanised) Private Right of Action (PROA) in the FCA’s working draft for the policy as no laughing matter. Thankfully for them, the regulator this week relented.
Caffeine and Carbon
Our monthly roundup of the best- and worst-performing European exchange-traded funds (ETFs) revealed carbon, coffee, semiconductor and cryptocurrency ETFs were all in the ascendant. Travel and energy funds were hammered by the new coronavirus variant. There’s an ETF for everything these days.
Evergrande is Now an Even Grander Mess
Embattled Chinese property giant Evergrande’s woes worsened this week when it failed to meet another repayment deadline on its debt. According to the BBC, its liabilities currently exceed $300bn, a figure not a million miles away from Amazon’s revenue ($386 billion) for the entire of 2020. Ratings agency Fitch promptly downgraded its assessment of the company, declaring it in default. As you would expect, its shares are in the gutter. Still, the Chinese government seems determined not to let it fail.
Firing People On Zoom Isn't Necessarily Better
If you ever bump into a fund manager, ask them about the extent to which they consider a company’s human resources protocols before investing or expanding their position. That issue was brought into sharp relief this week by a mass firing of staff at digital mortgage lender Better.com. The company was handed an absolute drubbing online by concerned commentators after a video emerged of chief executive Vishal Garg announcing the termination of over 900 employees in the US and India. Garg subsequently accused several of the terminated staff of abusing the company’s payroll system, before then apologising for his actions. At least two executives have since resigned.
House Prices Have Gone Upstairs, Into The Attic, and Out The Skylight
This week, high street bank Halifax pointed out UK house prices grew at their fastest pace in over a decade and a half, and all in just three months. Prices rose 3.4% in the three months to the end of November, the bank said, the sharpest increase since 2006. The average house now costs £272,992, meaning prospective buyers will need nearly £28,000 in deposit cash just to get in on the action.
The Outlook for US Jobs is Still Intact
The US economy may have added far fewer jobs in November than forecasters expected, but it’s likely just a blip, Morningstar data journalist Lauren Solberg wrote this week. The Labor Department announced last week that 210,000 net new jobs were created in November. Unemployment fell by 0.4 percentage points to 4.2%. Morningstar’s chief economist Preston Caldwell still predicts further recovery in the jobs market, so don’t panic just yet.
Could VW Soon Beat Tesla on Sales?
German auto giant Volkswagen could pip Tesla on sales in just four years. That’s the latest assessment of the company’s electric vehicle plans from Morningstar senior equity analyst, automotive Richard Hilgert. “By 2030, VW leads the group with an estimated six million EV units and commands the group’s highest share at 18%. The automaker is one of the world’s largest manufacturers by volume,” he says in a new Morningstar report surveying the EV transition efforts at Daimler, BMW and Nissan, among others. My colleague James Gard has demystified some of the jargon surrounding EVs here.
Apple is a Core Stock of Two Halves
It’s OK to be divided over Apple’s prospects. On the one hand, the company created a revolutionary smart phone that transformed human interaction with every-day technology. On the other, device affordability is now a potential problem for its customers, and, on the research and development side, a lack of investment in artificial intelligence puts it behind other technology companies like Microsoft. Read our neat summary of the issues in this explainer piece.
