MoneyWeek 1079

“It’s not just those leaving work who want to do less – those in work want to do less too” In 1963, anew fund was launched – the Invest in Leisure Unit Trust. Life, its managers reckoned, was on the edge of getting a whole lot better: working hours were getting shorter and “society more affluent”. The result would be fast-rising spending on leisure goods and activities and “correspondingly higher profits” for companies offering them. Lovely. I have no idea what happened to the fund (on this rare occasion Google has nothing to say), but I suspect it was a bit early. Sixty years on and the lives of leisure its backers envisioned seem to be here. In the last few years, says the Financial Times, “millions of people on…

Citadel founder Ken Griffin (pictured) has bought a 1787 print of the US Constitution for $43.2m after outbidding crowdfunded cryptogroup ConstitutionDAO, says Bloomberg. The print, one of only 13 copies, had a pre-sale estimated value of $20m. ConstitutionDAO’s plan was to buy the historical document on the behalf of donors who would then each “own” a share in the constitution. More than 17,000 online donors contributed a total of around $40m using cryptocurrency ether. Unfortunately, the group made its money-raising efforts public, thus making its maximum bid obvious to other bidders. Worse still, now that it has to return the money, the high transaction costs involved in receiving and refunding the ether could eat up as much as halff of the average donation of $200. Griffin intends to give the…

The owner of a painting thought to be a replica of a John Constable work could multiply their investment ahundredfold after it was verified as an original, reports The Sunday Times. The oil painting, titled The Glebe Farm, was produced in 1828 as a study for a larger work, and is expected to fetch a price of £3m to £5m at auction at Sotheby’s next month. It was bought for $53,750 (£40,000) in Ohio last year. A mum from Chester has saved up to £2,000 on Christmas gifts and food this year by entering more than 15,000 competitions, says The Mirror. Geri Gregg scoured social media, magazines and books for Christmas prizes, preferably hampers, to save her from buying a single gift. Her most expensive wins include a £200 Tesco’s…

Wendy Wein, 52, from Michigan was facing at least nine years in jail after admitting to attempting to hire a hitman for $5,000 to murder her ex-husband, using the fake website RentAHitman.com, says The Washington Post. The website was founded in 2005 asan internet security business, but when owner Bob Innes began receiving emails from people looking for hired killers, he started to report potential offenders to local law enforcement. Australian TV host Matt Doran cost his network $1m after he botched an interview with singer Adele (pictured), says News AU. Channel 7’s Doran flew from Sydney to London for the interview. But after he admitted that he hadn’t yet listened to the album (having missed an email with a preview copy), Sony Music denied the network permission to air…

Turkey is heading for “a vicious cycle of inflation and depreciation”, Timothy Ash of BlueBay Asset Management tells Tommy Stubbington in the Financial Times. With inflation running at 19.89% and the Turkish lira plummeting, there is talk of a new currency crisis. The lira has lost 40% of its value so far this year. As of Tuesday it had recorded 11 successive record lows against the dollar in as many days, say Daren Butler and Nevzat Devranoglu on Reuters. Back to 2018 The latest sell-off came after the central bank cut interest rates to 15%, the third cut since September. Interest-rate cuts reduce the attractiveness of lira-denominated assets, causing investors to sell them in favour of other currencies. At the new interest rate, savings in a Turkish bank account would…

Global dividends are very nearly back to pre-pandemic levels. Underlying payouts jumped by 22% year-on-year to hit $403.5bn in the third quarter, according to the latest Janus Henderson Global Dividend index. The dividend index is now just 2% below where it was before Covid-19 struck. Janus Henderson projects that global payouts will hit a new record of $1.46trn for 2021 as a whole. The rebound has been driven by mining giants, which paid an “extraordinary $54.1bn of dividends” thanks to strong commodity prices. The return of bank dividends should continue to provide a tailwind. “For 2021 as a whole, the market expects dividends per share in the FTSE All Share index to be 35% higher than in 2020 but 15% lower than in 2019,” Richard Marwood of Royal London Asset…