MoneyWeek

Wilbert Napoleon, an Amazon Prime customer in California, renewed his annual subscription last June for $139. Amazon afterwards announced customers would have to pay an extra $2.99 a month to watch its Prime Video service free of advertisements. In r

“Astonishingly high cocoa prices” look set to persist, says Warren Patterson of ING. The chocolate ingredient was the best-performing commodity of 2023, with a 70% gain amid tight supply from producers in west Africa, which accounts for more than 70%

“Economists [choose] data which [tells] a politician his preferred policy is correct… the profession’s forecasting skills are getting worse… in 2020, it was… reasonable [but wrong for economists] to think… pandemic disruptions were causing transient

It has been a tricky decade for miners, says The Economist. Booming demand for raw materials in the 2000s saw the industry overexpand, leading to a painful crunch that lasted for much of the 2010s. Mining shares have only climbed by 10% since the sta

NatWest’s shares jumped by more than 5% last week when it announced its biggest yearly profit since the financial crisis, says Kalyeena Makortoff in The Guardian. The £6.2bn earned in 2023, up 20% from the year before, will set a high benchmark for P

“It has taken an energy crisis for Centrica to get back on its feet,” says Emma Powell in The Times. Last year’s profits for the owner of British Gas totalled almost £2.8bn, the second-highest on record. British Gas has been the “prime beneficiary of

The prospect of a bidding war for Currys has prompted a 36% jump in the stock after Chinese e-commerce group JD.com “emerged as a potential suitor” for the electricals chain, says Isabella Fish in The Times. News of JD.com’s interest comes after Curr

Investors’ ChronicleFourth-quarter performance at this pharmaceutical giant disappointed, with core operating profit undershooting forecasts by 14%. That reflects falling sales from Covid treatments and rising spending on research and development (R&

China’s eHI, a car rental and chauffeur-services outfit, is reportedly considering a return to the US market, says Bloomberg. The group, founded in 2006 and with a presence in more than 500 Chinese cities, raised $120m in an initial public offering i

In theory, by-elections aren’t that important, says The Economist. Turnout isn’t high, they are not always a “reliable guide” to the country’s mood, and when it comes to passing bills, the Tory government still has a “respectable majority”. Neverthel

The death of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, which was announced last Friday, has silenced a “man who was arguably the most influential remaining critic” of Vladimir Putin and the Russian leader’s authoritarian state, say Ann Simmons and Matthew Lu

What was already a “bad legal week” for Donald Trump – featuring setbacks in a classified documents case and his criminal trial over alleged hush money – ended with a “staggering defeat in his civil fraud case”, says Hugo Lowell in The Guardian. The

On 2 March, voters in the Australian constituency of Dunkley will be going to the polls to find a candidate to replace Peta Murphy, who died in December. At the moment, with £912 matched on Betfair, punters are expecting a comfortable ALP victory, wi

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate has been a huge shareholder in Apple for many years, holding more than $170bn worth of shares. The company ticks all of Buffett’s key investment criteria, such as generous margins and a market position

● “Barclays has been agonising about its outsized investment bank for ages,” says Aimee Donnellan on Breakingviews. Now, to boost the bank’s return on tangible equity from 9% to 12% by 2026, CEO C.S. Venkatakrishnan (pictured) wants to reduce the siz

Shares in JetBlue Airways soared by 19% after renowned activist investor Carl Icahn revealed that he had bought a 9.9% stake in the struggling US budget carrier, says Forbes. Icahn believes JetBlue’s stock is undervalued and is therefore an attractiv

■ Warren Buffett’s investment vehicle, Berkshire Hathaway, sold ten million shares, about 1.1% of its stake in Apple, in the final quarter of 2023, says The Wall Street Journal. It leaves the conglomerate with a 5.9% holding in the technology giant,

Soumaya KeynesFinancial Times On average, women are paid less than men and “they don’t like it”, says Soumaya Keynes. Is transparency the answer? In the EU, a major reform means that by 2026 “employees will have the right to hear ‘objective’ criteria

capx.co The UK never wanted “net neutrality rules” – which prevent internet service providers (ISPs) from discriminating in the delivery of web traffic – but was forced to accept them as part of EU membership, says Matthew Lesh. Post-Brexit Britain

telegraph.co.uk Most people in senior roles will have experienced “imposter syndrome”, says Helena Morrissey – the fear that you have been promoted beyond your abilities. Research suggests it affects men and women almost equally, and at least 70% of

bloomberg.com If you had to buy your own state pension, how much do you think it would cost? asks John Stepek. The UK state pension is rising to around £11,500 annually for the 2024-2025 tax year. A single 68-year-old man in good health wanting to b

Investment in research and development (R&D) generates the new products, processes and services that can give a company an edge over its competitors. New products and processes that are patentable also provide a “moat” – an enduring competitive advan

● “Drivers were hit with an estimated £1.1bn-worth of fines by private parking companies last year, up by about 29%,” says Lucy Alderson in The Times. These companies are increasingly difficult to avoid. In 2012 there were 10,400 private car parks, a

Could fitting a black box in your car cut your insurance premiums? Some firms use black-box, or telematics, technology to cut premiums for people who pay top rates for car insurance, such as young or new drivers. The black box monitors your car to se

● Entrepreneurs in the UK launched more businesses during 2023 than in any previous single year. Research conducted by NatWest Bank and the private company data platform Beauhurst reveals that more than 900,000 companies were founded over the course

Can your business afford to pay the “real living wage”, calculated by the Living Wage Foundation to be £12 an hour, or £13.15 in London? Unlike with the statutory “national living wage”, set by the government at £10.42 an hour, there is no legal comp

For the last few decades General Motors (NYSE: GM) has served as a symbol of how a previously dominant company can be laid low by a combination of economic trends, technology and poor decision-making. Perhaps the group’s worst choice was to discontin

Taylor Swift may have been celebrating as the Kansas City Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers in the Super Bowl, but traders hoping for a rally in the S&P 500 won’t be as happy. The “Super Bowl Indicator” suggests that the US stockmarket tends to per

My seven long tips have done well in the last four weeks, with six out of the seven rising. Computerservices firm Computacenter increased from 2,830p to 2,922p. Moonpig, which sells greeting cards and gifts online, rose from 161p to 187p, while kitch

The heartfelt reaction to the death last week of radio DJ Steve Wright, aged 69, is proof of the continuing hold radio has on our lives, says Gillian Reynolds in The Guardian. Like Kenny Everett and Alistair Cooke before him, some voices become such

As my cable-car gondola ascended into the fog, leaving me with just the occasional glow of a distant light, I wondered what would happen. Would I disappear, never to be seen again, or would I arrive at the station only to be greeted by Oddjob? Let’s

2020 Château Bellefont-Belcier, Grand Cru Classé Saint-Émilion, Bordeaux, France It is somewhat haphazard writing about “fine wine” in this column, because this class of wine is more transient than traditional retail listings. Please search online if

Going… A stash of silver coins discovered in 2019 by two detectorists near Braintree, Essex, was heading for auction with Noonans Mayfair in London this week, says BBC News. It is thought that the hoard of 144 coins was hidden by its owner in 1066, t

Christie’s in London got the year off to a rocking start with the £8.8m sale of around 100 guitars and ten amplifiers belonging to Dire Straits’ guitarist and singer Mark Knopfler at the end of January. Not an instrument went unsold, with a quarter o

Editor: Andrew Van Sickle Markets editor: Alexander Rankine Comment editor: Stuart Watkins Politics editor: Emily Hohler Wealth editor: Chris Carter Shares editor: Matthew Partridge Senior digital editor: Kalpana Fitzpatrick Contributors: Bill Bonner