Looking at 2011 to show you the money in 2012 December 19, 2011 IN TRADING, as in much of life, there exists a delicate balance between diving headfirst into the future and poring over every historical detail before acting. The former risks ignorance, with your head stuck in the sand, while the latter can result in the repetition of past mistakes and a failure to seize the day. [...]
EQUITY GAINS RELIANT ON EURO-DOLLAR December 19, 2011 WE’RE now into the last trading week before the Christmas break. Traders and investors will be hoping for less volatility following recent market turmoil. After all, they won’t want their long Christmas lunches interrupted by desperate calls from the office. It hasn’t been the best year for long-only equity investors, especially those who have followed [...]
HMV’s last stand has new toys but not much future December 19, 2011 SIX years ago, David Cameron famously taunted Tony Blair in the House of Commons by saying “He was the future once”. And at that point, ahead of Christmas 2005, the HMV Group seemed to have a future. Annual profits were still well over £100m, the age of digital downloading seemed a distant threat and HMV’s [...]
Santa’s red coat hides true Christmas magic December 19, 2011 THIS Christmas, my wife and I plan to watch a DVD of The Polar Express with our baby. It is a well-crafted, charming and magical film that we first saw in 2004. As we came out of the cinema into a cold, snowy Christmas Eve she asked if I’d enjoyed it. “Yes”, I said, “but [...]
For turkey, try out a Nebbiolo December 19, 2011 IF you are roasting a Turkey this Christmas, I direct you to my earlier article on Thanksgiving (still available on the City A.M. website) – for more exotic meats read on. Duck, Goose and Pork are, let’s not mince words, fatty. What they need is a wine with a whack of acidity to cut through [...]
Retailers hit as consumers cut spending December 18, 2011 RETAIL sales are continuing to slump as consumer spending power is hit by inflation, government spending restraint and the Eurozone crisis, according to research published yesterday by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR). Spending is down 1.7 per cent compared with November, the CEBR claims, and down 0.3 per cent on last December [...]
Fears of more losses at HMV December 18, 2011 HMV IS TODAY expected to reveal it has plunged further into the red as the troubled music retailer grapples with intense competition from the internet and waning CD and DVD sales. Analysts have forecast first half losses of almost £40m for the six months to 29 October compared with a hit of £32m a year [...]
Britain’s last-standing music retailer will have to change its tune to keep up December 18, 2011 ALMOST a century after HMV’s dog mascot Nipper first took a look down the gramophone, the record is still playing but the music has long changed its tune. After what has been a torrid year for the group, investors, lenders and suppliers will today want to know whether HMV can play a different record — [...]
SINGING PROFESSOR UPSTAGES THE SOPRANOS AT LORDS OPERA NIGHT December 18, 2011 LESLEY Garrett led an evening of opera at the House of Lords last Thursday, as part of an evening sponsored by Fordham Business School in aid of dementia charity Lost Chord. “There is so much music can do for dementia sufferers,” said the soprano, a patron of Lost Chord whose aunt Joan suffered from the [...]
No chance of a Christmas rest as markets stay under pressure December 18, 2011 AFTER failing to break above resistance at 5,600 (the 61.8 per cent Fibonacci Retracement of this year’s May-to-August sell-off) last week, the FTSE100 pulled back sharply. Sentiment turned negative following another botched EU summit. While the UK has been labelled the villain for vetoing treaty changes, the fact is that EU policymakers remain unwilling to [...]