Glencore

Wednesday

Martin Vander Weyer

Japan’s female leader is a bright beacon, but do her sums add up?

My scepticism towards soaring markets with unconvincing fundamentals was nurtured by working in Tokyo in the mid-1980s, when the Nikkei index took off like a rocket. Shamelessly boosted by traders and analysts alike, share prices rose to absurd heights before crashing in the early 1990s and taking with them any notion of Japan as the next great economic power. The Nikkei took 34 years to regain its 1989 peak of 38,916. Since passing that benchmark, the index has roared upwards again – despite Japan’s chronic problems of stagnant growth, ballooning public debt, sclerotic corporate leadership, expensively ageing population and fears of inflation. This week the Nikkei broke through 57,000 in

Thursday

James Ball

Cashing in on Covid: the traders who thrive on a crisis

When we think of those lurching moments last spring when it became clear that much of the world, not just one or two regions, would grind to a halt, for most of us it is anything but a fond memory. But the traders of Glencore probably remember the time differently: they saw it as an unprecedented opportunity to cash in. Anticipating a global slowdown, they bought up all the space they could to store oil, including tankers capable of holding 3.2 million barrels. When the markets caught up with the scale of the pandemic, the price of oil dropped to zero and below, and in they swooped. They took the