Forbes: UBS Doubles Down On Gold — Ups Its Forecast Again!

By SIMON CONSTABLE 

The usually-conservative Swiss bank UBS has upped its forecast for the price of gold for the second time in less than two months.

Now it says the price for the yellow metal could reach as high as $1,730 a troy ounce next year, up $50 from an August forecast, a recent UBS report states. The note last month pointed to the possibility of $1,680 over the same timeframe. Read more here.

Forbes: Goldman Sachs Warning -- One-Share One-Vote Or Else The Stock Will Suffer

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Wall Street is getting serious on shareholder rights. 

Iconic Wall Street bank Goldman Sachs just issued a warning to companies that go public with a skewed "multi-vote" share structure. Such arrangements often allow the founders to keep the majority of votes even if they own a minority of the shares. Read more here.

Forbes: 5 Surprising Lessons From Medieval Warrior-Knights That Every Leader Should Learn

By SIMON CONSTABLE

America’s obsession with the new and funky means that sometimes our leaders forget the lessons of the past.

That’s why a quick flick through Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands, is not only grounding but instructive as well. Publication is scheduled for October 1. Read more here.

Forbes: Coming Soon To America: The​ Incredible Shrinking Savings Account

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Savers are having a hard time in most places but it’s far worse in Denmark. 

In the Scandinavian country, some savers must pay the bank to look after their money not vice versa. Worse still, such a weird phenomenon will likely come to the U.S. sooner or later.

Here’s what you need to know. Read more here.

Korn Ferry: The Thomas Cook Nosedive

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Britain just suffered a vacation nightmare. 

Thomas Cook Group, the iconic British travel company that all-but-invented the package holiday in the early 1800s has gone bust after almost two centuries doing business. It leaves 21,000 people without jobs, hundreds of thousands of holiday makers stranded and lots of questions about what exactly went wrong. Read more here.

Korn Ferry: Is Brexit Really One Month Away?

By SIMON CONSTABLE

With just weeks to go before the country's scheduled Brexit 'leave date' of October 31, even the British government has the jitters about the potential for economic chaos.

Cabinet ministers recently revealed part of the disaster plan if the UK exits the EU without a trade deal. The report, named Yellowhammer, warns about supply disruptions in medicine and food, as well as long border delays for commercial trucks. There's also the potential for civil unrest. Read more here.

Forbes: Trump's Tweets Shows How The Fed Lost Its Credibility With Investors

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Observers have long suspected that President Donald Trump's jawboning of the Federal Reserve may hurt the central bank's credibility with investors.

Now they have proof in the form of a recent study from the National Bureau of Economic Research. Read more here.

Forbes: The Eurozone Economy Slips Even Further Into Malaise

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Europe's single currency area is sinking further into economic malaise and the authorities will likely need to act further to help. Read more here.

TheStreet: Why Europe Will Feel More Pain From the Oil Market Than the U.S.

TheStreet: 3 Reasons Investors Should Avoid European Stocks as Oil Prices Rise

By SIMON CONSTABLE

This week's jump in oil prices is likely to be far more damaging to Europe than it will be to the U.S.

For that reason, savvy investors would do well to avoid stocks dependent on activity in Europe and instead look elsewhere for investments. Read more here.

John Batchelor Show: More Brexit News

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Photo by James Giddins on Unsplash

Korn Ferry: UK Pay: It's Back to 2007

By SIMON CONSTABLE 

It only took twelve years.

Inflation-adjusted wages in the United Kingdom are finally back to the level they were just before the financial crisis of 2007-2009. Raises are even exceeding the rising cost of living, with average pay increasing at a 3.9% annual clip versus the 2.1% inflation rate. "It's about time, too," says Ben Frost, Korn Ferry's global manager for pay. Read more here.

WSJ: What Is Machine-Read Analyst Sentiment?

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Wall Street firms increasingly are using artificial intelligence to get a read on how analysts feel about certain stocks. That has given birth to a term that investors may start hearing and reading about more often: “machine-read analyst sentiment,” or MRAS. Read more here.

Photo by Mike Hindle on Unsplash

Barron's: A British Construction Stock Offers a Solid Foundation

By SIMON CONSTABLE

London-based infrastructure company Balfour Beatty could provide a solid foundation for investors looking to diversify internationally.

The stock (ticker: BBY.UK or BAFYY), which has a market cap of £1.5 billion ($1.8 billion), is exceptionally cheap, and management has done an impressive job of improving profitability over the past few years. Read more here.

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Forbes: Venezuela's Capital Caracas Now The Worst Big City The Western Hemisphere

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Is Venezuela's socialist leader Nicolas Maduro trying to act like an advert for how not to run a country? It sure looks like that.

Caracas, the country's capital, now ranks as the least liveable large city in the western hemisphere, according to new research from the Economist Intelligence Unit. Read more here.

Caracas, Venezuela

Photo by Wilfredor, 

CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Featured in the American Institute for Economic Research

All the survivors of the great newspaper wars of the last several decades, WaPo, NYT, WSJ, LA Times, and so forth, diversify their pageview portfolios by publishing articles along that spectrum. Some great economic journalists, like Jason Zweig and Simon Constable, are thereby able to continue to ply their craft, but readers rightfully remain wary of misleading reporting.

Read full post here.

Korn Ferry: New German Angst?

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Contractions in the German economy are as rare as they come. Only now, the latest slowing has stirred concern it won’t be a fluke for this EU stalwart.

In the second quarter, the country’s gross national product dropped 0.1%, only the third quarterly contraction in the last five years. Coming off a year of economic uneasiness on the continent and beyond, the results were enough to raise some serious recession fears. Indeed, one analyst is now declaring that Germany’s “golden decade” is over. Read more here.