The UK’s largest wealth managers have suffered a sharp reversal of portfolio performance this year as the economic environment punished growth-focused strategies and revived the fortunes of value stocks. Many portfolios that were riding high at the end of last year are now in the bottom quartile of performance and have been replaced at the
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Lenin, the Russian revolutionary leader, is said to have remarked that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. The Bank of England currently forecasts that inflation in the UK will soon top 10 per cent. This falls short of outright currency debasement. Yet we live in an economy where
The three Baltic states have hailed Sweden and Finland’s expected accession to Nato as dramatically improving their own security and ability to repel any attack from Russia. The foreign ministers of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania told the Financial Times they would seek to ratify any membership application from Finland and Sweden as quickly as possible.
Only a fortnight ago, Russian forces were shelling Kharkiv from their positions on the outskirts of Ukraine’s second-biggest city. Those same troops have now been pushed up to 30km back towards the Russian border following a successful Ukrainian counter-attack that has emboldened Kyiv to raise its military ambitions and its hopes of driving the invaders
On any normal weekday, Dubai’s food delivery riders would be up and out early, but in recent days, banks of motorbikes have been parked outside their budget dormitories. “They are all sleeping,” said one doorman in Bur Dubai, the central district where many cram into apartments. Food delivery riders for Talabat, a unit of Germany’s
A small but potent piece of history is up for sale in Zurich this month, when Numismatica Ars Classica offers one of only three known examples of the “Eid Mar” aureus, celebrating the “liberation” of Rome after the bloody assassination of the dictator Julius Caesar on the Ides of March in 44BC. “This is among the most
The writer is an FT contributing editor The force lay in the symbolism. The parliament buildings at Stormont stood as the citadel of Protestant unionism. This month’s elections have left republican Sinn Féin holding sway in Northern Ireland’s assembly. The discomfort reaches well beyond unionism. The rise of the party that served as the political
There can be few collectors in the world whose tastes range from Kangxi porcelain to NFTs and are still only in their thirties. But Los Angeles-based Jason Li, who left mainland China to study in the US, then founded and ran a China-focused sports agency, got the contemporary art bug and now has 1,000 non-fungible
It was just after Christmas when we finally snapped. My partner and I decided we had to tell the world about our second child, who had been born four months earlier. It couldn’t wait any longer. Some friends already knew. But we’re millennials, so only a social media post could mint it with the currency
Venture capitalists are ploughing millions into digital art, virtual land and online collectibles, the new frontier for investors seeking big returns in crypto. Digital items known as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) burst into mainstream culture last year, quickly becoming a multibillion-dollar market ranging from computer-generated art pieces to cartoon characters costing thousands of dollars. Andreessen Horowitz
The Queen’s Speech this week paved the way for dozens of forthcoming parliamentary bills — but there was precious little to address the problem of soaring household bills. The absence of legislation for a windfall tax or any new measures to address the worsening cost of living crisis has left the government looking like it
Although he has lived in Taos, New Mexico, since 1973, Larry Bell is still chiefly associated with the Light and Space movement that emerged in southern California in the 1960s. His early works epitomised the group: semi-mirrored glass cubes that, through their fleeting reflectivity, reacted to — as advertised — the light and space around
If you have colleagues, what do you think of them? Are they smart? Competent? Motivated? Open to new ideas? Good communicators? Do they work well as a team? The answer may not depend on what you think. And that fact suggests a reason why the modern world now seems so poisonously polarised. In the 1970s,
Soaring inflation and supply chain bottlenecks have begun to crack the $1.5tn US junk bond market, as the lowest-quality borrowers show signs of stress. Unlike the falling stock market, junk bonds had largely escaped worries over the US economy as surging prices add costs for companies. Many bond issuers were flush with cash because they
Invesco has added two onshore Chinese equity exchange traded funds to its line-up, both of which will use swaps to offer a synthetic replication model. The Invesco S&P China A 300 Swap and Invesco S&P China A MidCap 500 Swap Ucits ETFs have been launched on exchanges in the UK, Germany, Italy and Switzerland. The
Tatiana Luboviski-Acosta has learned to perfect the art of the hustle. Born in Mexico and raised in Los Angeles, the San Francisco-based poet and visual artist has been working since the age of 14 to support their family. (They use the pronouns they/them.) They’re still the main provider for their mother and sister, working at
It seems as though everywhere one looks in New York City, Latinx artists are making their mark. In April, El Museo del Barrio in East Harlem, established in 1969 as a neighbourhood museum by and for the Puerto Rican community, opened a major retrospective devoted to the work of its founder, Raphael Montañez Ortiz. Venture
In 2003, Sophie Mörner, a Swedish native fresh out of a photography degree at New York University, started Capricious Magazine, devoted to the work of emerging photographers who were often also women and/or queer. The magazine, which soon expanded into a publishing initiative supporting feminist and queer journals, also spawned a project space in Williamsburg
It’s art fair season again, but not quite as we knew it. Frieze New York, which opens in Manhattan’s The Shed on May 18, encapsulates the new normal better than most. In 2019, nearly 200 galleries participated in the fair’s trademark temporary tent on far-flung Randall’s Island, where it had been since its 2012 launch.
EU high representative for foreign policy Josep Borrell is to be commended for his disarmingly frank comments (“EU weighs giving Hungary time and cash to agree oil sanctions”, Report, May 7) on the constraints facing Hungary as well as Slovakia and the Czech Republic endorsing the EU’s proposed embargo on Russian oil imports. Borrell rightly