Watson’s Weekly 05-10-2018

This is an amalgamation of the “best bits” of the daily weekday newsletter/blog woven together to form a concise and coherent view on the things that matter in the commercial and economic news of the week. 

The day in brackets refers to the edition where the story appeared. Clicking on the day will take you to the appropriate edition of Watson’s Daily.

SO TRUMP MADE SOME PROGRESS AND COMMODITIES PRICES GOT TOPPY THIS WEEK...

  • Trump managed to settle his neighbourly squabble to announce the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (Tuesdayaka “Nafta 2.0” and move forward with trade negotiations. It looks like Trump will use this agreement as a template for negotiations with other countries (Friday).
  • Things got a bit tricky in Europe as Macron suffered from yet another senior resignation (Thursday) which will make pushing through his reform agenda slightly more difficult. Clearly he needs to stem this flow as things could go sour for the Eurozone’s second biggest economy.
  • In commodities, continued oil price strength has been making life difficult for emerging markets (Friday) and it seems that demand from the Chinese “Belt and Road” initiative is going to push copper prices up for the foreseeable (Thursday)

SOME MUCH-HYPED IPOs DISAPPOINTED ON THEIR MARKET DEBUT...

  • Aston Martin’s IPO backfired on debut (Thursday) as investors balked at what turned out to be a rather ambitious valuation. IPOs are meant to get fired up at least on their first day, but the maker of James Bond’s car of choice left everyone shaken, not stirred (sorry, but I just couldn’t resist that).
  • Funding Circle’s IPO also disappointed (Thursday), which is a pain for the London Stock Exchange as it doesn’t want to nurture a reputation for being a “loser” exchange. It was rather hoping for a stellar performance to attract other fintech companies to the party, but this has put a spanner in the works for the moment.

RETAILER NEWS WAS MIXED AGAIN THIS WEEK...

  • Amazon caused a bit of a stir this week by increasing wages (Wednesday). Chief exec Bezos spun it in a way to make the company look good but in reality I think it’s just responding to recent criticism and – more importantly – it’s probably conscious that labour markets are very tight in the UK and US at the moment and wants to hang on to/attract employees. The other great thing for Amazon is that it happens to put pressure on other employers to increase their wages as well!
  • In supermarkets, Aldi reported solid results (Tuesday) in contrast to Tesco, which was hit by poor performance overseas (Thursday)
  • Ted Baker had a rare hiccup (Friday) as it joined the high street throng complaining that sales were affected by the extreme weather we’ve had so far this year but online sales were still very strong

...AND THAT ELON MUSK BLOKE STIRRED THINGS UP. AGAIN...

  • This was a bit of a white-knuckle week for Tesla as Elon Musk got his wrists slapped by the SEC (Mondayfor sending that Tweet about him having the finance in place to take Tesla private when he didn’t. As part of the deal, he didn’t have to admit responsibility but the SEC is now forcing him to split his currently dual role of Chairman and CEO. The shares recovered (Tuesday) but appointing a new chairman who can rein in the increasingly erratic Elon Musk is imperative given that Elon Musk took yet again to Twitter in order to vent (Friday).

BANTER

I would say that this week’s banter got better as the week progressed but I liked Mum reveals her unique way of cooking a full English breakfast – and it’s blowing people’s minds (The Mirror, Caitlin O’Sullivan and Courtney Pochin https://tinyurl.com/ycvoz2pb) and First ever Pringles instant cup ramen noodles are coming to Japan (SoraNews24, Oona McGee https://tinyurl.com/ybln78ba) on the food side of things.

On the other hand, I though that Manchester Students’ Union bans clapping and says jazz hands should be used instead (Metro, Richard Hartley-Parkinson https://tinyurl.com/y7s68n3g) and Putin’s 2019 calendar has him hugging a puppy and the obligatory shirtless shot (Metro, Martine Berg Olsen https://tinyurl.com/y8djr978) were pretty impressive on the weirdness front!

Have a great weekend!