MoneyWeek

The popularity of Shiba Inu coin, a cryptocurrency which was launched as a joke version of Dogecoin – itself a joke cryptocurrency, or “memecoin” – is now encouraging crypto owners to buy the Japanese hunting dog breed (pictured) the coin is named af

A Californian resident has paid off his student loan with the money saved from eating exclusively at a local amusement park for seven years, says The Times. The man paid $150 a year for an annual entrance pass to Six Flags Magic Mountain (pictured),

PC Matthew Littlefair has been jailed for 27 months and must repay £149,764 after fraudulently claiming injury expenses and sick pay, says The Guardian. The police officer was involved in a minor car crash and pretended to suffer chronic pain afterwa

“The oil majors’ capital investment as a percentage of sales... looks set to come in at its lowest level since 2005... spending at BP, Chevron... ENI, ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell and TotalEnergies is expected... to represent just 6.3% of sales this

Gold prices have climbed to a two-month high of $1,825/oz. Despite the recent uptick gold is still 10% below its all-time high of summer 2020. As Myra Saefong notes in Barron’s, 2021 is set to be the metal’s first losing year since 2018. Its recent “

British households ran up a collective £180bn (£6,474 per household) in “excess savings” – the amount saved above normal levels – during the pandemic, says Jill Treanor in The Sunday Times. That cash pile was supposed to “power” a consumer boom. Yet

Foresight Sustainable Forestry Company will be key to the government’s plan to plant trees across 75,000 acres a year to help absorb carbon dioxide, while providing investors with annual returns of at least 5% above inflation. The group will float on

Moscow’s latest lockdown will be more good news for Russian e-commerce group Ozon Holdings, says Der Aktionär. It is growing rapidly thanks to investment in its network of distribution centres and its platform, where it is encouraging third-party sel

Swiss skincare specialist Galderma is mulling a $22bn initial public offering (IPO) in the first half of 2022, says Sam Jones in the Financial Times. CEO Flemming Ornskov says the company has brought forward its plan to list following two years of st

• Last year the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) ordered JD Sports to sell off Footasylum on competition grounds, says Lex in the FT. No wonder, then, that reports of a covert “car-park chat” between the bosses of the two firms has“[raised] ey

Tesla’s shares have “slipped into reverse” after Elon Musk (pictured) said he would heed a Twitter poll in favour of his selling 10% of his stake in the electric carmaker, says Dominic Walsh in The Times. The stake is worth $20bn. Musk, the “world’s

Last week Pfizer’s shares jumped by 10% when it announced more good news in the battle against Covid-19, says Jared Hopkins in The Wall Street Journal. Its “experimental pill” is “highly effective” at preventing those at high risk of severe Covid-19

The reported comments from the head of NHS England, Amanda Pritchard, that Covid-19 hospital admissions were 14 times higher than this time in 2020, are so “patently absurd” that they should “never have been allowed to stand”, says Christopher Snowdo

For most of its two weeks, the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow was dominated by celebrity speeches from world leaders and activists, says Leslie Hook in the Financial Times. But as the meeting approached its planned conclusion on Friday (negotiations

The Polish government and Brussels are both accusing Belarus of “intentionally trying to create a new migrant crisis in Europe”, says The New York Times. Western officials claim that Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko is luring asylum seekers f

With the 2022 mid-term elections in the United States now less than a year away, an increasing number of markets are on offer. Traditional bookmakers such as Ladbrokes have markets on who will win control of the House of Representatives, of the Senat

• Amazon founder Jeff Bezos (pictured) sold stock in the online retail and web services giant worth $1.3bn last Friday, says Bloomberg. The trade came on top of sales worth around $2bn from earlier in the week, under aprearranged plan to sell a total

Jes Staley, who has resigned as CEO of Barclays in the wake of an investigation into his links with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, is in line for bonus payouts worth up to £22.5m from the bank, says Matt Oliver in The Daily Telegraph. The bank

On 9 November 2020, Pfizer and BioNTech announced that their vaccine for Covid-19 was more effective than almost anybody had hoped, with more than 90% protection against the virus. The news sparked a strong rally in global stockmarkets. Many sectors

Indices such as the FTSE 100 play a huge role in investment. They are used for monitoring the performance of amarket, for providing a benchmark for a tracker fund to replicate and as a reference when analysing a fund manager’s returns. The rapid grow

The rebound in growth stocks that began in June “was certainly a disappointment to those of us positioned to benefit from a resurgence in cheaper stocks”, says Ben Inker (pictured) of value-focused asset manager GMO. But it wasn’t much of a surprise.

The proposed US “billionaires’ tax” is dead, yet the principle behind it may “rear its ugly head again”, perhaps even in Britain, says Lionel Shriver. The idea was to tax “unrealised gains” – shares, in this instance, but it could easily have been ex

“[Without money] you’ve got no self-respect. You’re always on the back foot, so you can’t even have normal relationships. Even friendships, because you can’t afford to meet for a coffee.” Comedian Daisy May Cooper (pictured), quoted in The Guardian

capx.co Half the money spent on advertising is wasted – we just don’t know which half. That adage has long defined the world of marketing, says Richard Walker. But the arrival of Big Tech changed all that – now, all-powerful companies such as Goog

theguardian.com Millions of people around the world have quit their jobs or are planing to, says Emma Beddington. That has made staff “retention” a buzzword among bosses and managers. That’s no bad thing. It’s giving some deserving folk a pay rise

aier.org The shift to cleaner energy will create lots of new jobs, it is said. But that is a cost, not a benefit, says James Hanley. This is an easy concept to understand. If you want repairs done on your house, paying for the labour is a cost to

Activist investor Third Point has bought a stake in Richemont, the Swiss luxury group that owns watch and jewellery brands Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels, says Leila Abboud in the Financial Times. It has yet to say what it hopes to achieve. Any activ

■ The Vision Fund belonging to Softbank, the Japanese conglomerate, is the world’s biggest investor in technology. It has reported a record loss owing to the plunging value of holdings including ride-sharing platform firm Didi: Beijing’s recent crack

The NHS is creaking. A record 5.6 million people are on waiting lists for treatment in England, anumber that could hit 14 million in a year, says Kate Hughes in The Independent. Faced with long waiting times, more people are going private. Only 13% o

Online-gambling software group Playtech (LSE: PTEC) saw its shares surge by over 50% two weeks ago – they have gained 105% in a year – after it agreed to a £2.7bn takeover by Australian slot-machine maker Aristocrat Leisure, says Jyoti Mann in the F

In recent years we have become very familiar with climate change and how it affects our lives and investments. Given the existential threat it poses, we tend to focus on the risks and costs: the risk of rising temperatures, the cost of avoiding disas

• Good news for entrepreneurs and would-be small business owners. The Start Up Loans Scheme has won sufficient additional government backing to run until March 2022 – with funding in place for 10,000 loans – and a pledge of further support in next ye

Vast Resources (Aim: VAST), which mines commodities ranging from gold and copper to diamonds and lead, saw its share price drop late last month after the company said it hoped to raise £1.4m through a share placing. It sold 54 million shares at 2.5p,

Joseph Hunton was born around 1770 in Norfolk. He worked as a clothes-seller in Great Yarmouth, marrying Fulliretta Sewell in 1806, who had a fortune of around £30,000. In 1821 he moved to Lea Hall in Leyton, then a village near London, popular with

£18.99, available nationwide in Aldi It is probably bad form to quote one’s own previously published work in this column, but here we go. To set the scene, back in April 2016 I tasted this wine out of barrel in preparation for my annual Bordeaux En

For a car enthusiast, “seeing a $ $4m Pagani Huayra Roadster BC in the wild is akin to laying eyes on the Mona Lisa,” says Tony Quiroga in Car and Driver. The supercar is the pinnacle of motoring artistry, with bodywork that has been sculpted with mo

Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell Mudlark, £20 Few companies have risen – and then fallen – as quickly as WeWork, says Tom Knowles in The Times. Thanks to the “evident charm” of its CEO, Adam Neumann, the property company took advantage of investors’

Even strong supporters of law and order such as myself should accept the value in acknowledging that, as Shakespeare put it, “the quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven”. Whether Lady Eliza Manners is deserving o

£6.6bn The combined amount that Britons spent on items such as gym gear and musical instruments to see them through the pandemic and no longer use, according to insurer Aviva. Almost half of respondents regretted buying video-gaming kit. $4m How much

• I’m surprised Hollyoaks actress Sarah Jayne Dunn (pictured) has been dropped after refusing to remove photos from adult subscription site OnlyFans, says Karren Brady in The Sun on Sunday. Dunn said posting her “sexier, racier” photos was “about emp

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