Tuesday, September 10, 2019

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.

Monday, September 9, 2019

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

Saturday, September 7, 2019

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

Wednesday, September 4, 2019

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.

Tuesday, September 3, 2019

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.