Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
This year for gold bugs has gone something like this: Heads, I win. Tails, I also win. The yellow metal, as hackneyed journalese demands we call it on second mention, has had quite a run. The price is up by more than a quarter over the course of 2024, hovering now at a little above $2,600 a troy ounce.
This has worked out beautifully for investors, even if often for unintended reasons. Fahad Kamal, chief investment officer at Coutts, told me this week that around a year ago, he loaded up on gold really just as a hedge. He correctly predicted that risky assets would have a good year, and took on extra gold because of its famed tendency to push higher in price when the bad stuff hits the fan and riskier assets decline — a clear danger in this geopolitical environment. This is gold’s common role as a backstop just in case something goes wrong with positive bets on riskier assets such as low-rated corporate bonds or US stocks.
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Well, nothing went wrong with those positive bets on risky assets — they have had a great run, in fact — and yet even despite that, gold has put in a sparkling performance. So much so, that Kamal has closed his bet on gold to lock in his gains. “We chose to take profits, and seek diversification elsewhere,” he said.
The urge to take your winnings at this point and run is understandable, not least because the 26 per cent rally in gold this year in some ways masks what an incredible ride this asset has been on. The benchmark price was under $2,000 as recently as February. From that low point to the high struck in late September, the rally clocks in at a cool 35 per cent.
The perennial problem with gold, though, is articulating why this has happened. It is just not like other commodities, which respond more neatly to industrial demand and supply, or to instruments that pay out interest or dividends like stocks and bonds. At least in theory, their price movements are driven by shifts in creditworthiness and future earnings or at the very least, the economy.
Some investors like it as a hedge against inflation, which sort of works, except that gold has cranked higher this year while inflation has fallen, and it did nothing to protect portfolios in 2022, when inflation slammed into bonds and stocks. Other gold fans insist the time to buy is not, in fact, when inflation is rising, but when interest rates are falling — it is less painful to own gold, which pays out no interest, when bond yields are lower. Fine, but despite the drama, 10-year US government bond yields have gone the best part of nowhere this year.
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The classic bull case for gold is as a place to hide when geopolitics deteriorate. Again, fine, but it’s odd that gold did not strike new highs after the latest intensification of violence between Israel and Iran. The proper diehard believers will tell you it’s a hedge against the imminent demise of debased fiat currencies and protection from a shadowy cabal of overreaching central bankers and governments, but I rarely find it worth the oxygen engaging in that crypto-adjacent debate. The point here is that gold just does what gold does.
“It would be much simpler if we could point to a single source of gold’s strength this year,” wrote Joni Teves, a gold analyst at UBS in Singapore. “But the reality is that the rally has been driven by a combination of factors — broad-based buying across the different parts of the market combined with a lack of sellers.”
This analysis will raise a wry smile among old-school traders, for whom “more buyers than sellers” roughly translates as “I have no idea”. In this case, however, it fits perfectly.
Teves reckons a number of forces will keep wafting gold higher from here, including US interest rate cuts and a weakening dollar. Central banks and other “official institutions” are likely to keep bulking up on gold, she added — a nod to the rising enthusiasm for gold among governments spooked by the US’s ability to freeze Russia’s dollar assets and keen to preserve wealth elsewhere. She has bumped up her forecast for gold prices to about $2,800 by the end of this year — $200 above the bank’s previous forecast, and to $3,000 by the end of next year — also a substantial rise.
Dutch investment house Robeco suggests it is time for gold sceptics to show it more respect. “People who are bullish on gold are sometimes pejoratively described as ‘gold bugs’,” said Arnout van Rijn, a portfolio manager in Robeco’s multi-asset team. (I admit to being guilty as charged on this.) “They are said to be stuck in the past, having failed to realise that financial markets have evolved since the end of the Gold Standard in 1971. We would definitely not describe ourselves at Robeco as gold bugs — yet the multi-asset team has started a tactical allocation to gold, next to our broad allocation to commodities.”
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He cites three reasons for that: demand from central banks, growing Asian wealth and “right-wing liberals”. Gold certainly has a particular fan base among those of a more libertarian or rightwing persuasion — a growing demographic. As a way to trade or hedge against their impact on the wider world, it is hard to beat. As long as gold draws in new buyers for whatever reason, it is hard to imagine why it would take a serious hit any time soon. As van Rijn also noted, “buying begets buying”.
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Welcome back. In Tbilisi, which I visited this month, the political mood is ominously tense and polarised. Georgia’s October 26 parliamentary elections are set to be the most consequential for the mountainous south Caucasus country since it emerged in 1991 as an independent state out of the ashes of the Soviet Union.
At first sight, it seems that Georgia faces two possible futures: creeping authoritarianism and alignment with Russia if the ruling Georgian Dream party stays in power, or democracy and a pro-European path if the opposition wins and takes office. However, this black-and-white picture oversimplifies what is an altogether more complicated story. I’m at tony.barber@ft.com.
What is at stake
Since the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Georgia has turned into a battleground with two fronts: between Georgian Dream and its opponents, and between each side’s respective Russian and western backers.
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The levels of political polarisation in Tbilisi are so extreme that, in this election campaign, there hasn’t been a single case of government and opposition representatives debating each other on television, radio or other media. Mutual trust is non-existent.
The opposition has painful memories of the fate of the first independent Georgian state of modern times. This led a precarious existence from 1918 to 1921 before being absorbed into the Soviet Union.
Now the opposition fears that, if Georgian Dream retains power, the nation could fall completely under Russian influence and lose its precious but fragile democracy and civic freedoms.
For the west, such an outcome would be a blow to its interests and credibility. The US and its European allies support Georgia’s independence. The EU has even made the country a candidate for membership, though the process is on hold because of the Georgian Dream government’s democratic backsliding and increasingly pro-Russian sympathies.
Russia’s role in Georgia
For its part, Moscow continues to think of Georgia as part of a rightful sphere of influence in the post-Soviet borderlands that separate Russia from the west. “The Russians have never left Georgia, even mentally,” says one western observer in Tbilisi.
There are no signs of imminent Russian military intervention in Georgia. Still, it is unimaginable that the Kremlin would passively accept an election result that brought a pro-western government to power in Tbilisi.
In this article for the Washington-based Center for a New American Security, Nicholas Lokker and Andrea Kendall-Taylor write:
Georgia now arguably has its most pro-Russian government since its independence in 1991 and, in many cases, [Georgian Dream] is following the Putin playbook in its attempt to weaken Georgia’s democracy. Moscow’s primary goal is to ensure the stability of these pro-Russian forces — in particular, GD founder and de facto leader Bidzina Ivanishvili.
Breakdowns in democracy
However, to portray the election as a straightforward contest between tyranny and freedom, or Russia and the west, is to overlook key features of Georgia’s political trajectory over the past three decades.
In this commentary for the Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies, Markus Greisz hits the nail on the head. He identifies three long-term issues that have plagued Georgia since independence:
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One issue is the deep political and societal polarisation; another is the tendency of all Georgian governments to turn authoritarian.
A third issue is the seemingly paradoxical simultaneous popular support for both the EU and Georgian Dream, which frustrates western leaders and calls into question whether Georgians actually understand what EU membership would entail.
Since 1991, all governments that started out as protectors of national independence and political freedom have lurched into deeply flawed forms of strongman rule, tainted by corruption and abuse of the rule of law.
This was true of Zviad Gamsakhurdia, Georgia’s first postcommunist president; Eduard Shevardnadze, once admired in the west as Mikhail Gorbachev’s far-sighted Soviet foreign minister; Mikheil Saakashvili, a reformer turned autocrat; and now Ivanishvili.
Weaknesses of the opposition
The legacy of the Saakashvili era is a serious problem for Georgia’s four main opposition parties, as set out in this thread on X by Bidzina Lebanidze, a political scientist.
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Both Georgian Dream and the opposition are “detached from the majority of the population, who feel alienated from [the] political process”, Lebanidze writes.
“During their rule, Saakashvili and [his party] alienated a critical mass of the electorate who refuse to vote for them ever again.”
A similar argument appears in this commentary by Beka Chedia for the Center for European Policy Analysis:
The opposition, in addition to fragmentation, has a problem of identification and identity. Voters find it difficult to be clear which small party is part of which alliance and what their promises to voters are.
In Tbilisi, one non-partisan election-watcher told me: “It’s not sufficient to frame the election as a contest between pro-western and pro-Russian forces. In the regions, outside the capital, voters seem to think it’s a kind of Saakashvili vs Ivanishvili contest.
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“In other words, the image of Georgian politics as an arena for strongmen persists.”
Slim chance of a free election
Public opinion polls for Georgia’s election need to be treated with caution. However, according to one independent expert, Georgian Dream’s private polling indicates it would struggle to win more than 40 per cent of the vote.
The point is, though, that under the system of proportional representation used for this election, Georgian Dream could win just over half the seats in parliament even with 37 to 38 per cent of the vote.
It would help the ruling party if one or more of the opposition parties failed to surpass the 5 per cent threshold required to win seats in the legislature.
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Given Georgian Dream’s influence over the nation’s election commissions, control of the judiciary, vote-buying and intimidation of opposition activists, it is all too easy to see how the party could manipulate the election to secure victory.
Shota Gvineria, a former Georgian ambassador and national security specialist, says:
The regime has systematically used state resources to influence voters by offering benefits such as pardons, early release from prison and amnesty [for fines] in exchange for electoral support …
By placing loyalists in the Central Election Commission and district commissions, manipulating voter lists and tampering with ballots, these tactics have severely undermined the integrity of Georgia’s democratic processes and elections.
Possible outcomes
The list of possible election outcomes ranges from good to nightmarishly bad.
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Least likely is a Polish scenario. A year ago, an illiberal, conservative nationalist government in Warsaw lost elections to an opposition led by former premier Donald Tusk. Despite some difficulties, Tusk and his allies were able to take office peacefully.
At the opposite end of the spectrum is a Belarusian scenario. In 2020, mass protests broke out after Alexander Lukashenko, the dictator in Minsk, claimed victory in what were blatantly fraudulent presidential elections.
Lukashenko’s regime cracked down on the demonstrators, and Belarus today is as deprived of freedom as Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
A third possibility is a Serbian scenario. Elections in Serbia routinely produce victories for President Aleksandar Vučić and his ruling party. They aren’t completely free and fair, but Vučić receives little more than a rap on the knuckles from the west, which perceives some value in maintaining a working relationship with Serbia.
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Risk of instability or violence
If Georgian Dream wins the election fraudulently, or loses but refuses to concede defeat, anti-government street protests are likely. The history of postcommunist Georgia offers some clues to what then might or might not transpire.
By stepping down, Shevardnadze ensured the Rose Revolution, as these events came to be known, was mostly peaceful. Could the same thing happen after October 26? I am doubtful. By temperament and motivation (he is a reclusive billionaire who made his fortune in Russia), Ivanishvili is quite different to Shevardnadze. The Kremlin openly supports him.
Ideally, the US and European governments would step in and play a mediating role in the event of a contested election result and power struggle. They did this during Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan revolution.
But Ukraine’s new government and its western friends paid a heavy price for that change of power — Russia’s annexation of Crimea and fomentation of separatist rebellions in Donbas, followed by the 2022 invasion.
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The future of Georgia is very much in the balance.
More on this topic
Georgia’s Anaklia deep seaport project may open new routes, but at what cost? An analysis by Tymon Pastucha and Wojciech Wojtasiewicz for the Polish Institute of International Affairs
Tony’s picks of the week
Israel’s war in Lebanon may be longer and more grinding than the limited operation that was initially announced, the FT’s James Shotter, Neri Zilber and Andrew England report
In his newly published memoirs, Robert Bourgi, a French-Lebanese wheeler-dealer, has spilled the beans about how he helped leaders of former French colonies in Africa to subsidise presidential election candidates in France, the BBC’s Hugh Schofield reports
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The fund is worth £421million and has been distributed among councils in England.
Each council gets to decide how to distribute its share of the fund but some are giving households free appliances and devices which could save you money on your energy bills.
You might even be able to get them for free depending on your circumstances.
It’s worth noting though that you are only eligible for help through the Energy Company Obligation if you are on benefits, classed as vulnerable or have a home with a low Energy Performance Certificate.
An Energy Performance Certificate is a document that shows how energy efficient your property is.
Just by turning down the temp by a single degree, you could save as much as £100 a year.
If you cut it by more you will obviously make even bigger savings.
The Energy Saving Trust also says that you don’t need to turn your thermostat up when it is colder outside, the house will still heat up to the set temperature.
Do you have a money problem that needs sorting? Get in touch by emailing money-sm@news.co.uk.
I first tried Apple’s Vision Pro goggles in May. It was a surreal experience at the company’s headquarters in Battersea, where I found myself swiping at 3D dinosaurs and dismantling Ferraris using tiny gestures to look at motor parts. The whole thing was designed to demonstrate the unlimited possibilities of augmented reality – an immersive world of giant cinematic screens where I could click and swipe through texts, apps and emails, looking all the while like a traffic controller with a giant screen strapped to my face.
Rhodri Marsden, a techno first-adopter, has looked at the future of the screen in this week’s design issue, and how its all-pervading influence might change in years from now. I still can’t imagine a day where we routinely wear screens on our faces, but then again who would have known that we’d all be carrying palm-sized computers in our pockets when smartphones first launched 20 years ago?
The trick is not to think about what’s coming, but what seems relevant right now
Venerated by the design world, the late architect Carlo Scarpa’s work synthesised ancient craft techniques with the exigencies of industrial design. His buildings are a striking expression of something unflinchingly modern yet rooted in a familiar history. When business owner and art collector Josef Dalle Nogare purchased Casa Tabarelli, Scarpa’s mountain masterpiece near Bolzano, Italy, he did so on the understanding he was merely its custodian. In the years since, however, he has made his own addition to the property: a two-storey structure with concrete stairs designed by Walter Angonese that yields a partly subterranean 5,000sq ft gallery to house his art next door. The result is a stunning confluence of aesthetics and artistic choices. It takes a brave soul to build something so close to the Scarpa home: we’re very excited to take the first look inside.
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Will you be going to space any time soon? As Jeff Bezos and his cohort get ever closer to their orbital ambitions, we look at the direction of space travel and the possibilities ahead. According to Clive Cookson, the FT’s senior science writer, Virgin Galactic is set to offer 125 flights a year, taking some 750 passengers into sub-orbital space. As with wearing the face screen, I’ve never harboured much desire to be an astronaut. But I’ll happily sit through your phone snaps of the “overview effect” when you get back down to Earth.
Jeep Wrangler, from £61,125
We also welcome here another FT writer, the Weekend Magazine editor Matt Vella, who is making his debut with a new motoring column. Matt has been car-mad since childhood, and so we’ve asked him to do a regular piece about all things four-wheeled. “Squat and snub-nosed, with a vertical front window and four-wheel drive,” he writes of his first subject, the Willys-Overland Jeep, which was conceived as a flat-packed, all-terrain vehicle in 1940. Its subsequent success has been built on the fact it has retained its distinctive looks, its “two-box silhouette” and most importantly its compact size. The form has emerged as the leader in a global market that’s expected to grow to $590bn by 2034. Small is beautiful, goes the argument. Especially when it comes to SUVs.
Finally: do you own a Casio watch? Beatrice Hodgkin, the FT’s House and Home editor, has been wearing her hot-pink Casio F-91W for years now and is passionate about its charms. The brand has become a cult classic, as spotted on Marty McFly, Barack Obama and Sigourney Weaver in Alien. On its 50th anniversary, she writes a tribute to the “future classic” – surely the very hallmark of cool design.
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Long hours, low pay, not much job security and rude customers — why would anyone work in retail? Spare me the gloom. I was never happier than when I worked in London’s department stores between the ages of 17 and 20.
Warm memories washed over me when I read this week that Ted Decker, CEO of Home Depot, plans to make senior managers work an eight-hour shift in their stores each quarter of the year. The idea is that white-collar employees should “truly understand the challenges and opportunities our store associates face every day”.
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To which I say, well done, Ted. All the same, I’m disturbed by the implication that shop floor work is more drudgery than fun. That was not my experience.
Take Peter Jones, the Chelsea store where I was a temporary worker in Towels, Furnishing Fabrics, and Lightings and Fittings before finding my true home at Boyswear on the third floor. Ah, joy! Friendships made on the shop floor lasted for years outside the store.
True, training for temps was minimal. You were taught how to use the electronic till. That was about it. As a result, when mothers arrived to spend a fortune on school uniforms for their sons, I had, at first, no idea what size shirt, cap, trousers, gym kit and so on they needed.
What’s more, I was squeamish about measuring the neck or inside leg of an 11-year-old. After one of my worst guesses, a mother complained I’d brought a pair of trousers a couple of sizes too big. “They shrink in the wash,” I said hopefully — before fleeing her irascible stare to get a better fit from the stockroom.
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Meanwhile, I would hear a mischievous staffer answer the phone in front of customers: “Good morning, Empire Pool Wembley — I beg your pardon, Peter Jones Boyswear . . . ” That’s right, he never became an executive.
The point was, you learned fast. After a few weeks, I could glance at any boy emerging from the lift with his mother and correctly estimate all his sizes. To this day, I look at politicians or businessmen I’m talking with and my mind calculates: “16 neck, 36 waist . . . ”
This was the 1970s, the decade of soaring oil prices, so there were plenty of high-spending customers from Opec countries. Tips fluttered from their pockets like confetti. A £20 note could keep you in beer for a week at the Royal Court pub across Sloane Square.
And because this was the 1970s, the store closed at lunchtime on Saturdays. Time to put on the safety pins, leather tie and white T-shirt with the crimson word “scurvy” emblazoned on it (not an item sold in Boyswear), and join the punks parading down the King’s Road.
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Sometimes we would head over to the Chelsea Drugstore, but not, as Mick Jagger sang, to get our prescriptions filled.
At Boyswear, we all had punk names. Mine was Mark Acid. Nicky Vamp, recruited from Girls’ Shoes, quit to run a gift shop in the spa city of Bath. Vince Vomit emigrated to Australia and made it big time, becoming a board member of the airline Qantas.
For sure, London retailing had its downside five decades ago. Selfridges was soulless. Worse still was Harrods, recently in the news because of claims of sexual assault against Mohamed Al Fayed, the store’s owner from 1985 to 2010.
I worked at Harrods before Al Fayed’s tenure, but it was a grim place even then. Management barked like prison wardens at me and other temps.
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The only light relief took the form of a lift attendant who used to say to a new employee: “Do you want me to keep an eye on this package for you?” If the employee said yes, the attendant removed his glass eye and put it on the package.
We temps were unanimous that, among London’s grand department stores, Peter Jones was the place to be. I liked it so much I had dreams of running Boyswear one day. Eight hours a quarter on the shop floor? Worth every second.
There’s no wrong way to put your money to work on Wall Street, but some methods produce more reliable gains than others. If you’re looking for a relatively safe and easy way to grow the stream of income you’ll have to work with during your retirement years, buying dividend-paying stocks and holding them for long periods is a terrific option.
During the 50-year period that ended in 2023, dividend-paying stocks in the S&P 500 index returned 9.17% annually on average. That’s more than double the return produced by their non-dividend-paying cousins. During the same period, the average dividend non-payers in the benchmark index returned just 4.27% annually, according to Ned Davis Research and Hartford funds.
You don’t need to be rich to put your money to work for you. At the moment, shares of AT&T(NYSE: T), Hercules Capital(NYSE: HTGC), and Pfizer(NYSE: PFE) offer dividend yields of 5% or better, and you can buy a share of all three with less than $100. Adding them to a portfolio now gives you a good chance to outperform the market while they beef up your passive-income stream.
1. AT&T
AT&T lowered its dividend payout in 2022 to adjust for the sale of its unpredictable media assets. Now that it’s strictly a telecommunications business, the cash flows it uses to make dividend payments should be extra reliable. At recent prices, the stock offers a 5.2% dividend yield.
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Traditional-wireline subscriptions are still shrinking, but this headwind is easily overcome by demand for services that run on its 5G network and a growing web of fiber-optic cables. In the second quarter, mobility-service revenue rose 3.4% year over year, and this isn’t the only operation driving growth.
The three-month period ended June 30 was the 18th consecutive quarter in which AT&T added over 200,000 new fiber-internet subscribers. Late last year, the company also launched a fixed-wireless service for folks who aren’t located next to fiber optic cables. As a result, Q2 consumer-broadband sales rose 7% year over year.
At $2.7 billion in Q2, consumer broadband is responsible for less than 10% of total revenue. AT&T is one of just three telecom companies with a nationwide 5G network, so investors can reasonably rely on its consumer-broadband business to drive growth for many years to come.
2. Hercules Capital
Hercules Capital is a business development company (BDC), which means it can avoid income taxes by giving nearly all of its earnings to shareholders as a dividend payment. At recent prices, the stock’s regular distribution offers a big 8% yield.
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Hercules also offers a supplemental dividend that it set at $0.32 per share this year. If next year’s supplemental dividend remains unchanged, investors who buy this stock at recent prices will receive a 9.7% yield.
Most BDCs originate relatively high-interest loans to established mid-sized businesses that already earn money. Hercules Capital takes a riskier approach to financing by engaging start-ups in the life science and technology industries before they have any recurring revenues to report.
In isolation, the bets Hercules makes are extremely risky. The potential payoffs are so large, though, that the company can report strong-earnings growth if just a fraction of its investments succeed.
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Hercules has raised or maintained its regular distribution since 2010, and continued movement in the right direction seems likely. In the first half of 2024, the BDC reported $1.07 billion in total-gross funding, which was 28% more than the previous-year period.
3. Pfizer
Sales of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine and antiviral treatment broke records regarding its rate of growth and decline. Sales of Comirnaty and Paxlovid shot up to a combined $56.7 billion in 2022. Less than a year and a half later, sales of the same two drugs collapsed to an annualized $1.8 billion.
Don’t let its recent ups and downs confuse you. Pfizer is a reliable dividend payer that has raised its payout every year since 2009. At recent prices, it offers a 5.7% yield that will be easier to predict now that sinking sales of its COVID-19 products are responsible for less than 3% of total revenue.
Pfizer’s dividend payout is supported by one of the largest catalogs of drugs with patent-protected market exclusivity. In the first half of 2024, a dozen of its products grew sales by a double-digit percentage compared to the previous year period.
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One of the investments Pfizer made with its pandemic-related earnings haul was the $43 billion acquisition of cancer drug developer Seagen. The purchase gave Pfizer access to four commercial-stage treatments, including Padcev. In late 2023, Padcev became a chemotherapy-free option for newly diagnosed bladder cancer patients. As such, sales are expected to reach $8 billion annually by 2030.
Padcev is one of several blockbuster drugs that could help Pfizer continue its dividend-raising streak. Adding some shares to a diverse portfolio now seems like the right move.
Don’t miss this second chance at a potentially lucrative opportunity
Ever feel like you missed the boat in buying the most successful stocks? Then you’ll want to hear this.
On rare occasions, our expert team of analysts issues a “Double Down” stock recommendation for companies that they think are about to pop. If you’re worried you’ve already missed your chance to invest, now is the best time to buy before it’s too late. And the numbers speak for themselves:
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Right now, we’re issuing “Double Down” alerts for three incredible companies, and there may not be another chance like this anytime soon.
Cory Renauer has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Pfizer. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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