With the Public Investment Fund (PIF) of Saudi Arabia topping up its holdings in US stocks, the market will take note and be of cheer especially as those stocks include Boeing, Citigroup, Bank of America and Facebook. PIF now holds $10 Billion in US stocks versus $2 Billion at the beginning of the year. Saudi Arabia is taking advantage of lower prices to diversify the nation’s wealth from an over dependence on oil. In case you are wondering PIF has total holdings of $300 Billion.
Having announced that they will lay off most of their workers, it does not look good for Air Canada despite Canada’s President Justin Trudeau making noises that he will look at ways to help the beleaguered Canadian aviation industry. The Canadian Dollar has weakened by a net 5% in the past 3 months versus the USD having at one point been as much as 10% worse. Natural resources rich Canada represents good value if one is prepared to be patient and in these times of social distancing has plenty of space with a population density of just 4 people per square kilometer versus 259 in the UK. If you can get there of course!
Portugal-the dustbin of Europe
This would be a grossly unjust description of our old ally and friend and of such an attractive country, but their reputation as such has been created by the industry that they have built in processing other European countries’ waste. The cost of processing a tone of waste in Europe is on average EUR 80 but Portugal charges just EUR 11. Portugal has called a halt to further deliveries and this is causing somewhat of a backlog with 246,000 tonnes being turned away so far this year.
Discussion and Analysis by Humphrey Percy, Chairman and Founder
UK Energy Apart from announcing that there will be no further North Sea drilling licences issued, newly minted Uk Energy Minister Ed Miliband has wasted no time in greenlighting three huge new solar farms in Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk. Sufficient to power 400,000 homes with an output of 1.4 GW the solar farms will cover […]
Germany The German business climate was slated to rise in July but instead it fell in terms of both current and also future expected business conditions as reflected in the IFO Index made up of manufacturing, services, trade and construction sectors as submitted by 9000 firms. Germans wishing doubtlessly that they could be as strongly […]
British Pound GBP is currently in fashion: with a record number of long positions and currently at the top of the G7 currency performance charts and after a period of being deeply unfashionable GBP is wanted-in a good way. The reasons for this are diverse: first off is the Bank of England’s caution on cutting […]