This article was written by Anthony Lipmann. All views and opinions expressed are strictly his own. If you happen to have seen Chicago the musical perhaps you will remember the character of Mr Cellophane? He is the foil for the intoxicating female lead, Roxie Hart, and a plot based around a glut of homicides committed by women in the Chicago of the 1920s. The character of Mr Cellophane, who gets some good numbers in the show, is her sweet-natured, naive, and ignored husband (

A couple of weeks ago, Anthony wrote here an article (“The Consolations of Metals”) which was broadly speaking about decision-making. He spoke of the relative merits of different academic backgrounds of politicians, and the possible effect that may have on their ability to make decisions effectively. (I should interject here that - unlike him - I do not wish our new PM well; I wish him gone, with his whole cabal, as soon as possible. But that’s a discussion for another day…)

This article was written by Anthony Lipmann. All views and opinions expressed are strictly his own. Extraordinarily, Britain, as of the summer of 2026, acquired a Prime Minister with a degree in English Literature. Also, a runner and a supporter of Everton FC - two further endearing qualities to me, but perhaps not to all. But how, you may ask, does the study of Emma or Wuthering Heights assist a PM to make good judgments about the war in Ukraine or the ‘triple lock’? Som

This article was written by Richard Horswill. All views and opinions expressed are strictly his own. Ongoing wars in Ukraine and Iran are taking their toll on the global economy. The tipping point seems to be in sight particularly as refined oil products are in tight supply due to refinery outages in Russia and in the region of the Strait of Hormuz. Ukraine having attacked Russian oil infrastructure, and Iran keeping the Strait all but shut, whilst the US is attempting to exp

Guy Scott (1944-2026) This article was written by Anthony Lipmann. All views and opinions expressed are strictly his own. In 2012, I narrowly missed meeting Guy Scott in London on a visit to meet investors. He was due to address an All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Zambian and Malawian agriculture and development. My hope was to grab him to talk about the sulphur emissions blighting the lives of Zambians living next to Mopani’s Mufulira Mine and Smelter complex. To

This article was written by Anthony Lipmann. All views and opinions expressed are strictly his own. I have two friends called Peter. Peter no.1 grew up in the same town as me (Walton-on-Thames), then went to the same public school and the same university. Peter no. 2 went to the local school in Walton-on-Thames called Rydens. Peter no.1 did English with me at university where a young Richard Curtis was in his tutorial group and went from there directly into merchant banking.

This article was written by Anthony Lipmann. All views and opinions expressed are strictly his own. Every now and then Britain appears on the brink of recapturing an atom or two of its mining past – and not just in the imaginative realm of Poldark… Such a moment came in 2015 when Wolf Minerals of Australia exhumed Victorian-era geological data about strata in the Southwest near Plymouth, suggesting one of the largest tungsten resources outside China. Investment followed,

The history of the Congo in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries is not a happy one. Between 1885 and 1908 it was a personal fiefdom of Léopold II of Belgium, and then was subsumed as a colony into the Belgian state. That period when it was the Congo Free State, ruled as a separate kingdom from Belgium by the king, Léopold, was particularly brutal. Léopold’s private police force, the Force Publique, was established to maintain order, and initially to try to oust the Za

This article was written by Anthony Lipmann. All views and opinions expressed are strictly his own. It seems obvious we are all in dire straits now – so it made me think of some of the other straits that have been critical to mankind. The straits of Gib, Magellan, Malacca, Bosphorous, Bougainville, Bering, Cabot, Cook, Messina etc; most of them, significant to the world of trade and of course conflict. A geographical pinch point, as Damian Valdez suggested recently in an ar

This article was written by Anthony Lipmann. All views and opinions expressed are strictly his own. Of the 32,000 species of fish (more than birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians combined), there is one called the Flapjack Devilfish (Opisthoteuthis), an octopus found 2000m underwater. It also happens to reside where sea miners want to pillage nodules of minerals on the ocean floor. I first met a group of lawyers from the environmental charity called Client Earth about fifte

This article was written by Richard Horswill. All views and opinions expressed are strictly his own. Another oil and gas crisis driven by war! Sounds familiar. Ultimately this supply shock will drive up consumer prices particularly in non discretionary areas. Heating and eating are a given, however the impact on discretionary spending will be somewhat different. The dilemma seemingly being faced by Central Banks, particularly the BoE, is based upon their inflation expectation

Not long to wait now until everything is hunky-dory. Ed Miliband will no longer be Wallace, and will learn to eat a sandwich, Greta Thunberg will no longer be a doom-goblin and will make a (halfway, let’s not get carried away) intelligent remark, and the world will be bathed in golden light as the evil use of fossil fuels will be banished, to be replaced by the lovely, non-damaging, infinitely renewable electricity. No more pollution, no more planet-killing emissions. Now, do

I’ve just read a book called “the Last Titans: Churchill and de Gaulle”, by Richard Vinen. It’s a dual biography, as the title would suggest, and at the same time a story of the relationship between the two men, probably the most significant leaders of their countries during the twentieth century. The parallel biographies, and the way the two characters were driven together by the second world war, make fascinating reading. The two were not always hugely fond of each other, a

This article was written by Richard Horswill. All views and opinions expressed are strictly his own. Back in January of 2023 I highlighted how the Reddit retail investment community targeted silver as they had done in the case of Game Stop, a video game retail outlet that a hedge fund had shorted. The upshot was the bankruptcy of the hedge fund Melvin Capital. The small investors had taken on the big guns and won! Could silver really have been the next retail target? The real

After Tom Stoppard’s recent death at 88, the former BBC investigative journalist, John Sweeney, quoted the playwright on the subject of journalism:- “People do terrible things to each other, but it's worse in the places where everybody is kept in the dark.” (Night and Day) Neither Stoppard nor Sweeney were referring to the world of commodities but it applies as much here as anywhere else. Zambia is, alas, a resource country in which darkness rules. A country under-repor

Alice walked moodily down the road. She kicked a pebble out of her path; it bounced off into the overgrown grass of the muddy verge. Normally, she loved Christmas, but this year so many things seemed to be going wrong in Wonderland, and she couldn’t see how they would ever get put right. She’s an optimistic little girl, as a rule, and well able to float happily above the vicissitudes and idiocies of the politicians. But what was nagging her now was how stupid they were being,

This article was written by Aaron Jerome. All views and opinions expressed are strictly his own. My postgrad was in International Relations at the University of Oxford, where for unknown reasons I chose to focus my research on the Rare Earth industry. Back then – which wasn’t that long ago - it was a niche issue… My advisor actually asked me if I was sure my topic was political! It would be fair to say that from the day the U.S. President mentioned the two words ‘Rare Earths’

This article was written by Richard Horswill. All views and opinions expressed are strictly his own. Recently, a well known banking CEO made a comment regarding a sizeable bankruptcy in the US. Tricolor Holdings, a sub-prime car/auto lender went bust leading to the commentary “you find one cockroach, and you’ll probably find more” to paraphrase. Almost simultaneously, First Brands Group, an auto parts manufacturer followed them into bankruptcy. Both companies were financed ou

May 1745: the battle of Fontenoy - the War of the Austrian Succession. The Pragmatic Army (British, Hanoverian, Dutch and Austrian,...

It may come as a surprise to some readers of this column, but I have a strange affection for reggae music, and there is a lyric by a man...