The future of shopping malls and what it means for property investors August 30, 2017 | City Talk The growth of e-commerce is reshaping the retail world. Online sales have been growing globally at an annual rate of close to 25% in recent years. This holds ramifications for the world’s shopping centres and malls as retailers re-evaluate their ‘bricks and mortar’ store strategies. Investors in commercial real estate funds, which often own retail [...]
Electric cars to charge ahead August 29, 2017 | City Talk In late July, the UK government announced plans to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel-only cars in Britain from 2040[1]. It joined the Netherlands, Norway, India, and France to become the fifth country to commit to ending the sale of traditional internal combustion engine cars. However, while it has yet to commit to [...]
‘We believe gold has entered a new bull market. Here are four reasons why’ August 23, 2017 | City Talk Despite significant US dollar weakness, gold price performance has been muted recently. It has been held back by factors such as a rebound in real interest rates and increased stability in the Chinese yuan, which has dampened near-term investment demand for gold in China. But these are short-term factors, which do not change our view [...]
Is it still possible to find value in retail stocks? August 23, 2017 | City Talk With the wider market so clearly out-of-love with the retail sector in general, it should come as no surprise that so many of its members are now flashing up as being of potential interest to value investors. On our Value Perspective blog, we certainly anticipate spending a lot of our time over the coming months [...]
Amazon: Is this the end for ‘old-school’ retailers? August 22, 2017 | City Talk If you are a regular reader of the financial press, you could be forgiven for thinking some kind of corporate serial killer is currently on the loose. On an almost daily basis, fresh obituaries appear for retail businesses and there is a strong consensus on who is to blame – the global phenomenon that is [...]
The number of startups run by older entrepreneurs has surged over the past decade August 21, 2017 Forget the slew of young Silicon Valley entrepreneurs – your Evan Spiegels and Mark Zuckerbergs. For the number of businesses run by the over-55s has surged over the past decade, according to new research from Barclays Business. The number of firms run by the over-55s has risen 63 per cent in the past 10 years, [...]
Stay the course to meet your goals August 15, 2017 | City Talk Market uncertainties often prompt investors to make knee-jerk reactions to events. A longer term attitude is what’s needed, says Netwealth’s Iain Barnes Every generation thinks that they live through unprecedented times. There certainly seem to be enough extraordinary issues to worry about currently, from political gyrations to the longstanding economic worries dating from the start [...]
What Alan Shearer can teach us about QE August 15, 2017 | City Talk What a versatile chap Alan Shearer is turning out to be – record goal scorer in the English Premier league, football pundit for the BBC and now The Value Perspective’s favourite go-to illustration when explaining financial concepts. A couple of weeks back, we learnt what he had to teach us about inflation and now he [...]
What Alan Shearer has to teach us about inflation August 4, 2017 | City Talk So who are the world’s three biggest spenders on defence these days? That’s right – the US, China and … Manchester City. Boom, boom. Yes, we may still be a week away from the start of the 2017/18 English Premier League season but of course it has been generating back-page headlines for weeks now thanks [...]
These six charts caught our attention in July August 2, 2017 | City Talk Safe as houses In the UK, house price growth began to slow noticeably last year when stamp duty on buy-to-let and second homes increased. The slowdown continued after the announcement that the UK would be leaving the EU. Perhaps surprisingly, London has been hit harder than the rest of the UK. UK growth is sluggish [...]
