Monday 17/11/25

Trump backs vote to release Epstein files (Financial Times, James Politi) shows that the president has made a sudden about-turn regarding the release of the Epstein files and has now said that he wants them to be made public. Pressure to do so has been intensifying of late, even from those in his own party so he has decided to relent. * SO WHAT? * I think he needed to do this now because we’re a year out from the midterms so he can just “flood the zone” in the interim period to make sure everyone forgets (or ceases to care) about it. If he’d let it drag on into next year, then it might have become more of an issue. If the resulting blow back is that bad he can just dish out that $2,000 “liberation day” check that he’s been talking about recently to convince voters what a thoroughly nice guy he is.

FAA to Lift Government Shutdown-Related Flight Restrictions (Wall Street Journal, Dean Seal) shows that recent flight restrictions that had been implemented because of the government shutdown would be lifted today. I’m sure that passengers and staff alike will be very relieved at the normalisation!

Meanwhile, Number of new foreign students in US falls by 17% over visa worries (Financial Times, Andrew Jack) highlights the effect that Trump’s visa shenanigans have had on US higher education so far. A survey of 825 higher education institutions reflected a 57% drop in new enrolments by foreign students, with just 29% reporting an increase. * SO WHAT? * Clearly, this is going to have an impact on revenues in the immediate future, but some will argue that this will lead to less innovation and economic growth in the longer term. This fall in enrolment represents the steepest rate of decline since records started in 1948 apart from the pandemic. It stands to reason that students don’t want to take the risk regarding what may happen to their visas – not to mention their future!

Then in Has Trump the ‘crypto president’ delivered for bitcoin investors? (The Times, Louisa Clarence-Smith) we see whether Trump has delivered as a “crypto president”. His administration has certainly delivered on implementing pro-crypto regulation, a more amenable SEC and a pardon for Changpeng Zhao, the infamous founder of Binance. However, the price of bitcoin fell to $96,022 on Friday versus the $102,195 level it was at on Trump’s inauguration on January 20th and it’s also underperformed the S&P 500 since the start of the year (+2.5% versus +15%

respectively). Bitcoin ETF’s saw their second-biggest daily outflow of funds since their debut. * SO WHAT? * At the end of the day, bitcoin has risen strongly over the past few years, give or take some periods of weakness. Profit taking was bound to happen when it broke through the $120,000s but the fact remains that it gets closer to the mainstream day by day and its one of those assets that everyone knows has shot up enormously in their recent lifetimes – and they don’t want to miss out. Trump has created a supportive regulatory environment both in terms of growth in crypto and its broader appeal. I think that other jurisdictions around the world will take America’s lead and Trump, his family and his friends’ involvement in it will underpin its longer term performance.

In Spain’s deficit to fall below Germany’s for the first time in two decades (Financial Times, Olaf Storbeck, Barney Jopson and Ian Smith) we see that, somewhat incredibly, Spain is on track to run a smaller budget deficit than Germany for the first time in almost twenty years according to forecasts from the Bank of Spain and the German Council of Economic Experts, an independent group of government advisers. It wasn’t so long ago that the “crisis” countries once termed PIIGS by some analysts (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain) were the basket cases of Europe. Well now it looks like the countries that stabilised the bloc in the aftermath of the Eurozone debt crisis – Germany and France – are now the basket cases! Germany’s debt is rising and France can’t even agree a budget on how to tackle its deficit. It’s funny to see how what goes around comes around!

Then in Berlin and Paris discuss scrapping planned joint fighter and focusing on air ‘combat cloud’ (Financial Times, Laura Pitel, Anne-Sylvaine Chassany, Sarah White and Sylvia Pfeifer) we see that Germany and France are looking to downsize their €100bn flagship air defence project by ditching plans to jointly build a fighter jet (it sounds like there are “creative differences”) and instead focus on a command and control system called the “combat cloud” – a cloud-based interface that will link fighter jets and pilots to sensors, radars and drones in addition to land and sea-based command systems. Airbus and Dassault can’t agree on the next-gen fighter aircraft but there seems to be a willingness to work together to co-ordinate everything on a wider basis. Sounds messy to me…

I thought that there were some very interesting investment moves in the papers today! Saudi Arabia’s PIF sells stakes in US groups ahead of Crown Prince’s White House visit (Financial Times, Ahmed Al Omran) shows that Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund has ditched holdings in nine US-listed companies including Visa, Pinterest, Uber and Take-Two. The Public Investment Fund cut its exposure to US-listed stocks by 18% versus Q2. Prince Mohammed bin Salman is due to meet Trump tomorrow at the White House and I’m sure this sell-down will come up in conversation! It will be his first visit there since 2018. * SO WHAT? * The fund is now focusing more on domestic investments and key infrastructure projects. Interestingly, although the PIF’s governor said last year that the fund was going to cut its overseas investments to 18% to 20% of the fund, down from the 30% high in 2020, he also said that the absolute amount invested in foreign assets would actually grow. If that is the case and the PIF’s selling down, this would say to me that it’s either losing belief in the US or it’s clearing the decks for more investment to be announced when he visits Trump. 

Berkshire Hathaway reveals $4.3bn stake in Alphabet as it trims Apple holdings (Financial Times, Amelia Pollard and Tim Bradshaw) shows that Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway has built up a chunky stake in Alphabet. This is Berkshire’s tenth-biggest stock holding. * SO WHAT? * People are making a big thing about it because it could be legendary investor Warren Buffet’s last hurrah before a well-deserved retirement. Conversely, he sold down his stake in Apple in Q3, the second consecutive quarter of him doing so – but TBF he’s absolutely raked it in from this investment that he originally made in 2016! It is interesting to note that, of the other top ten holdings, none of them are in Big Tech…

The Big Short trader betting against AI – and all the times he’s been wrong (Daily Telegraph, Chris Price) makes for an interesting read because there was a lot of noise last week about investor Mike Burry – the guy played by Christian Bale in The Big Short – shorting Nvidia and Palantir, whilst also shutting down his hedge fund, Scion Asset Management. * SO WHAT? * This prompted angry reactions, particularly from Palantir but this stuff is just all hot air. As with pretty much every investor out there, Burry’s failed many times. Calls that he has got spectacularly wrong include Tesla (shorted Tesla, saying “Enjoy it while it lasts” in January 2020), the S&P (shorted it, saying the market was “dancing on a knife’s edge”) and bitcoin (which he said presented “more risk than opportunity” when it was at $49,500). As I often say, being right about a stock doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to be “correct” in terms of valuation, strategy etc. The key is spotting the move just before everyone else does. Even if they buy for the wrong reasons, they’re still buying and that pushes prices up. This is much easier said than done, though! Still, my point is that you should always treat news like this (ABC investor sells/buys XYZ stocks) with caution. No-one is right ALL the time. The reason why Warren Buffet is seen as such a legend is that he’s invested for a VERY long time and has outperformed WAY more than he’s underperformed. This is extremely rare.

Who’s funding Silicon Valley’s data-centre dream? It might be you. (Financial Times, Lex) shows that even though you might not know it, we’re all funding the expansion of AI data centres because those investing on our behalf are buying the bonds of hyperscalers such as Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon. We can even be indirectly exposed to private equity groups that fund data centres. So this data centre/AI frenzy is great when everything goes well – it’s just that we’re all going to be exposed to some extent if this bubble burst as well.

Apple intensifies succession planning for CEO Tim Cook (Financial Times, Tim Bradshaw, Stephen Morris, Michael Acton and Daniel Thomas) shows that Apple is redoubling efforts to find a successor for Tim Cook, potentially to take the reins as soon as next year. No final decisions have been made yet and it’s thought unlikely that a successor will be announced before the company’s next earnings report in January. Tim Cook turned 65 this month and has been CEO for the last 14 years. The company’s valuation has gone from about $350bn in 2011 to $4tn now – so you could say that he’s done quite well!

Then in UK cyber ransom ban risks collapse of essential services (Financial Times, Kieran Smith) we see that the UK government has been warned that the Home Office proposal to ban operators of critical infrastructure from paying ransoms to hackers will not stop cyber attacks –

it’ll just put them in an impossible situation (they’ll have to break the law) and/or essential services will collapse. If we did this, we’d be the first country to implement such a ban – and it could leave our hospitals, airports and telecoms groups extremely vulnerable. * SO WHAT? * The proposals came at a time when it feels like some of our biggest companies have been hacked on a seemingly daily basis. Cyber experts argue that criminal groups don’t care what’s legal or not and will just carry on regardless. One of the big dangers is that if they don’t get what they want they could just sell the data they harvest – which could potentially be even more damaging. According to a report by cybersecurity firm Sophos, around 50% of the companies that were hacked in 2024 paid a ransom. Clearly this is a very tricky problem – but the main companies who will do well from it are in cyber security!

In a quick scoot around some of today’s other interesting stories, Tesla Wants Its American Cars to Be Built Without Any Chinese Parts (Wall Street Journal, Raffaele Huang and Yoko Kubota) shows that Tesla is now requiring suppliers to exclude China-made components as it tries to navigate the tariff minefield resulting from current US-China trade tensions. It’s been trying to do this since the pandemic snarled up supply chains involving China, but Trump’s recent behaviour is driving the need even more forcefully.

Then in Goldman Sachs on brink of best M&A performance in 24 years (Financial Times, Joshua Franklin) we see that Goldman Sachs has been a huge beneficiary of the recent rebound in M&A activity as data from LSEG shows that it has advised on 34% of global mergers announced this year by value and there are only 7 weeks left this year! This would beat the investment bank’s previous biggest share of the pie it had in 2015! * SO WHAT? * This huge market share will not mean that it gets anywhere near a third of the fees, but still – it’s impressive! Banks don’t receive the full fees until deals close. There’s usually a delay of between 6 and 12 months between deal announcement and closing. Impressive…

Elsewhere, Wizz Air slashes flights from Gatwick in scramble to cut costs (Daily Telegraph, Christopher Jasper) shows that the budget airline is reducing the number of flights it operates from Gatwick in order to save money. It says that it loses money flying out of there because of its high operating fees and unattractive departure slots. It’ll shift more flights from Gatwick to Luton.

In property news, Asking prices fall as UK housing market hit by budget speculation, Rightmove says (The Guardian, Simon Godley) highlights a cooling down in the market as Rightmove reported a fall in asking prices, no doubt due to people worrying about the impact of the Budget. On the high street, Primark once dominated fast fashion but now it’s in the slow lane (Daily Telegraph, Hannah Boland) highlights the flagging fortunes of the once-mighty budget apparel retailer. The recent reaction to its parent, ABF, floating the idea of separating the business out, was greeted with a muted reaction from investors. Surely to goodness it won’t be long before Primark has to cave in and sell online – a move that it’s resisted for a very long time! It’s going to have to do something to inject a bit of life into its business…

This cake is absolutely incredible. I don’t think we’ll see this on Bake-Off anytime soon!