Money

What a strange non-event was the stockmarket reaction to the announcement of the latest national lockdown. Retailers, leisure companies, travel firms – all was calm. Marks and Spencer was down half a per cent on the morning, while Next was up five per cent on the back of good online results before Christmas. EasyJet was down two percent but International Airlines Group (IAG) was up 0.4 per cent. Cruise operator Carnival was down 0.7 percent but travel group Tui was up two per cent. It was just like any other day, as if nothing had happened on the Covid front. But then maybe that is because nothing much had happened.

Not so long ago Monzo could do no wrong. Its hot coral debit card made it a must have accessory for urban millennials and it quickly attracted millions of customers. But the golden child of UK Financial Technology (FinTech) has had a bruising year. Is it experiencing the kind of growing pains we should expect after such a meteoric rise? Or has this banking unicorn transformed into a lame donkey? Having never turned a profit, Monzo now faces questions about its future direction; its annual report released in July really set alarm bells ringing. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, its primary source of revenue – a 0.2 per cent interchange fee

It’s often said that classic cars are one of the best investments around, with some models outstripping the profits to be had in property, art and even gold. The problem is, it’s not really true. Yes, if you were smart enough to buy, for example, a McLaren F1 for £2m a decade ago then you could cash it in today for a tidy profit of at least £8m, and if you happened to snap-up a Ferrari 250GTO in the late 1990s for what might then seemed like an astronomical $7m, it could now be worth something approaching seven times as much.Other blue chip collectable classics have also performed exceptionally well,

The gold price, we keep being told, because investors are seeking a ‘safe haven’. The first part of that sentence is true – from £1100 per ounce at the beginning of this year, gold has surged to £1500 per ounce this week. But are those buying it really doing so because it is ‘safe’ investment? Come off it. It is easy to get on the wrong side of a stock market or property boom, but gold has proved are a far more insidious destroyer of wealth over the decades. Had you fallen for the lustre of gold in 1980, when it was selling for £280 an ounce it would have

With flexible working set to increase after the coronavirus, more Londoners will be in the market for a commuter bolthole. While the likes of Guildford have been drawing in commuters for decades, experts predict that we’ll see new hotspots emerge in coming years. ‘With the adoption of new working practices, people are realising how easy it is to work from home,’ says Philip Harvey, a senior partner with the consultancy Property Vision. ‘As a result the “golden hour” – the name given to the old commute – has been pushed to 90 minutes, or even two hours,’ he says, predicting that the Surrey, Sussex and Hampshire borders will be increasingly

In Lockdown we’ve read townies want to be country bumpkins and you could be just as productive in West Dorset as you could in West London. For most this is a binary choice so what’s it going to be? Bucolic imagery is no substitute for real life and despite repeated promises from Whitehall, BTopenworld and a mobile industry criminally unable to deal with roaming, the reality for a significant minority, if not majority, of rural dwellers is that countryside communications are woeful. Last time I checked you got a mobile signal and fibre in W6. For several decades the demographic shift has been very much to live in conurbations. Particularly

Will Britain turn into Zimbabwe or Japan? In other words, will the fallout from the economic crisis precipitated by Covid 19 lead to hyper-inflation or to deflation? Are we going back to the 1970s – or to a strange world of which no living Briton has any recollection? Or, more graphically, will it be savers and bond-holders who get ripped off to pay to bills of the crisis – or do borrowers face being buried by their debts? In May, the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) fell to an annualised 0.5 per cent. A fall was expected thanks to plunging oil prices. But many people fear it will only be temporary

As we emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic, you can find statistics to prove pretty much any movement in the housing market. Up. Down. Sideways. At the beginning of the month, the Nationwide reported that house prices fell 1.7 per cent in May. The largest fall in 11 years. The latest data from Zoopla revealed that demand for housing is 54 per cent higher than at the start of March. And Savills reported a significant rise in activity across their offices in England with deals agreed, new instructions and exchanges all sharply up on previous weeks. Meanwhile the RICS says surveyors are recording falling house prices but increased activity. So, what

With nights out and trips to favourite restaurants currently off the menu, many people are turning to companies that deliver food boxes and meal kits straight to their door. Food boxes can be convenient at a time when many of us are juggling childcare, home schooling and work. With social distancing in place at supermarkets and online delivery slots almost impossible to find, having fresh ingredients and step-by-step recipes dropped off on your doorstep is one less thing to worry about. Plus, it can feel a little more special than simply cooking the usual meals at home. But do food boxes and meal kits offer value-for-money? With the average weekly