MoneyWeek

Last week a friend whom I had always considered fairly sensible told me he needed a side hustle, and had decided to start day trading as it looked easy. After expelling half a double espresso through my nose, I asked where he had got that impression from. He explained that he had seen several videos explaining the process on Instagram and YouTube, and there was clearly nothing to it. Two days later, he told me that he had been on a dating website and exchanged phone numbers with someone. The person soon tried to persuade him to sign up to a trading platform, and suggested that cryptocurrencies were looking especially promising. The bitcoin has now finally dropped, and he promised me he would be more careful in future. But his experiences are an…

”America’s last washboard factory isn’t ready to throw in the towel,” says The Wall Street Journal. Columbus Washboard was founded 128 years ago and sold more than one million boards per year in its heyday in the 1940s. Then electric washing machines revolutionised laundry and led to a collapse in the number of people using the wood- and steel boards to scrub clothing and linens by hand. The firm almost failed in 1999, before a group of four new owners invested to save it and upgraded the materials and production process to make it more efficient. Today, annual production is around 11,000 boards, made by four employees in a former discount store in Ohio, with a typical model selling for $27.49. Sales jumped 57% in 2020 “goosed by pandemic fears…

Chinese equities look poised to “hop ahead in the year of the rabbit”, says Dale Nicholls of Fidelity China Special Situations. The rapid reversal of zero-Covid policies and “attractive” valuations mean 2023 is shaping up to be a good year for the country’s stocks. China’s CSI 300 index has gained 18% since the end of October amid investors’ enthusiasm about the reopening of the world’s second-biggest economy. The easing of pandemic-era restrictions is part of a broader effort to stoke growth, says The Economist. Beijing has rolled back a two-year long campaign to reduce leverage in the property sector, suspending limits on the amount some developers can borrow and ordering banks to bail out incomplete housing projects. The results are already apparent: “Sales of existing homes rose by more than 20%…

South Korea has unveiled a raft of measures designed to attract more foreign investors to its stockmarket. The country has been excluded from the MSCI World Index, the leading benchmark of developed markets, since 2014, says Al Jazeera. MSCI cites a “lack of English-language information” and “complicated” restrictions on market participation by foreign investors. Korea’s classification as an emerging market rankles in a country with a GDP per capita close to that of Italy. Last month the finance ministry unveiled plans to extend trading hours on the foreign-exchange market, says Jihoon Lee on Reuters. The government will also draw up reforms to encourage higher dividend payouts by local firms. Separately, financial regulators have said they will scrap a rule requiring foreign investors to register with authorities – a burdensome process – before being…

“There are few assets as likely to make a mug of investors… as oil,” says Russ Mould of AJ Bell. The price of the fuel “swings all over the place, thanks to the complex dynamics of supply, geopolitics and also the influence of Opec”, the cartel that controls one-third of global production. In recent months the bulls have been left looking foolish, with Brent crude tumbling by more than 25% since the start of June last year. At $85 a barrel this week, prices have been treading water since 1 January. Oil prices soared in after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but then fell “as Russian supply held up and an economic slowdown crimped demand”, says Tom Wilson in the Financial Times. Yet 2023 may set the bulls running again. The International…

“Commodities have the strongest outlook of any asset class in 2023,” says Grant Smith on Bloomberg. At least, that is what Jeff Currie of Goldman Sachs thinks. “You cannot come up with a more bullish concoction for commodities,” Currie says. “Lack of supply is apparent in every single market you look at”. He compares the outlook with “the record run-up in commodities prices from 2007 to 2008”. Prices have rallied strongly on China’s reopening and bets of an impending pivot towards easier monetary policy globally. Bellwether metal copper has gained 22% since the end of September, with aluminium up by 19% over the same period. Iron ore prices rose by almost 50% in the last two months of 2022, says Megha Mandavia in The Wall Street Journal. The commodities backdrop is “confusing”,…