MoneyWeek 1095

“There are two kinds of risk in investing – one is not being able to sell when you want to” There are plenty of ways to lose money right now. You might be down 30% on fintech stocks (see page 28). You may own the Nasdaq Golden Dragon China index (up a lot this week, but still down more than 60% in a year – see page 5). Or you may just have had rather too much of the one-time high-flying Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust in your portfolio – and be down 30% in the last six months (see page 48). But for all the miseries of this kind of disaster, they do have an upside: you can sell and take what cash you have left any time you like (whether…

European authorities have seized at least five superyachts belonging to Russian oligarchs, with a total value of nearly €1.4bn, says The Wall Street Journal. In the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, sanctions have been imposed on several Russian businessmen who are accused of having links to Vladimir Putin, leading to the seizure of assets across the EU. The French and Italian authorities have been especially active, nabbing fertiliser billionaire Andrey Melnichenko’s €530m vessel SY A (pictured); Rosneft’s chief executive Igor Sechin’s €108m True Love; and steel tycoon Alexey Alexandrovich Mordashov’s €65m Lady M. Other assets frozen include several villas. Cover illustration: Adam Stower. Photos: Alamy; Getty Images ©Alamy…

Pop star Katy Perry (pictured) has saved $2.8m after winning a copyright dispute, says BBC News. Rapper Marcus Gray sued Perry in 2014 for plagiarising part of his work on her hit Dark Horse. A jury awarded Gray the payout, but a judge overturned the verdict, saying that the melody was not “particularly unique or rare”. That decision was upheld by the appeals court this week. Burkina Faso-born architect Francis Kéré has won the $100,000 Pritzker Prize, architecture’s highest honour, reports the Financial Times. Kéré was born in Gando in 1965. As the oldest son of the village chief he was the first to attend school in the local city, and “vowed to build better schools when he grew up”. He went on to study in Berlin and designed a primary…

An emergency landing in a borrowed aircraft has seen ex-US president Donald Trump email his supporters with an urgent request for contributions of up to $2,500 a month to fund a new “Trump Force One” private jet, says The Times. The original – a Boeing 757 Trump bought in 2011 and refitted with a master bedroom and bath with gold fittings – is said to have fallen “into disrepair” while Trump was president. Camelot has lost its licence to run the UK National Lottery after 28 years, says The Guardian. Its successor, Allwyn – Europe’s largest lottery operator – pledged to donate £38bn to good causes in the next decade, against the £45bn raised by Camelot since 1994.…

The world is heading for “the biggest commodity shock since 1973, and one of the worst disruptions to wheat supplies since World War I”, says The Economist. “Savage” rises across “energy, metals and food markets” have taken commodity-price indexes up by more than a quarter since the start of the year. “A world facing a physical shortage of raw materials dug up from the ground seems like a throwback to an earlier age. Yet that is exactly the predicament that lies ahead.” “Recession is here, or will be soon,” says John Mauldin of Mauldin Economics. Most recessions are deflationary – they are driven by a slump in economic demand – but they can also be inflationary when caused by higher prices, as during the 1970s Middle East oil embargo. “Then you…

Nickel trading on the London Metal Exchange (LME) was suspended for more than a week after the metal briefly soared to $100,000 a tonne. Nickel, which is used to make stainless steel and electric-vehicle batteries, has recently traded for between $10,000 and $20,000 a tonne, but on 7-8 March, the price rose by 250%, prompting the LME to halt trading until 16 March. Miners and manufacturers use the LME market to hedge their exposure to price volatility, says Bloomberg. Some – notably Chinese tycoon Xiang Guangda (see page 32) – had made big bets that nickel would fall because of rising production in Indonesia. Yet sanctions on Russia, the world’s third-largest producer, instead gave the price a boost. That forced bears to buy back futures to cover their positions, driving the…