The Scots are superstitious about "first footing", who first crosses your threshhold in the new year. And yesterday, the first full makret day for 2015 was a right bust.
Today is Twelfth Night, Epiphany, the formal end of the Christmas season, but yesterday already hinted how things will play out. There may be no Santa Claus after all. The wealth of the east, oil, is still losing value and the cartels which have controlled it have lost their way. Nobody wants a partridge in a pear tree or an oilwell. The Three Kings' gifts of frankinsense, myrrh, and above all gold also seem to be beside the point.
Euro-denominated stocks fell on average 2.1% over renewed concern about a Gr(eek)exit. This is something like the Ghost of Christmas Past, a phantom which appears from time to time. There is as yet no good poll of the Hellenic population indicating how the Syrisa rebels against austerity will be viewed. I think the Greeks will vote sensibly rather than rebelliously. I also think there may be some give from the Angela advocates of the make-them-suffer line. The supposed threat of inflation is very hard to find anywhere in the world.
François Hollande, fighting for leftism somewhere around the Elysées Palace in Paris, has stumbled upon the Tobin tax, which he wants to revive and apply not only to stocks and bonds, but also to derivatives. The financial transaction tax in its latest variation is to pay for environmental cleanup.
Ireland has now begun exporting beef to the USA, the first European country to have exited the ban based on mad-cow disease decades ago and foot and mouth fears. Erin go braugh!
And India's stocks fell very sharply today although why this should be is hard to figure, as it gains from lower oil prices as a major importer of fuel.
Today is the last blog from England, as I fly back tomorrow when there will be no blog. So I'll tell you about Britain's charms. I am quoting from a report by brokers Charles Stanley and Reuters when I state that the UK;s appeal is as a generous payer of dividends. In 2014, the average yield of the FTSE 350 (the broad index( was 4.3%. In fact the largest and most global British companies paid out even more, around 5%.
Neither number includes one-off payouts like the Vodafone distribution of the money it got from selling out of its joint venture with Verizon.
In 2015, the brokerage calculated, the dividend payout will be lower. UK companies will distribute £85.3 bn I love that precision, equal to $131 bn at the present exchange rate.( Once again a special payout, in this case the distribution to GlaxoSmithKline shareholders of the proceeds of an asset swap with Novartis, is not included.
The tallies also do not include share buybacks, inconsistent but another way to boost shareholder value.
For US or global shareholders, of course, there are risks. The pound sterling moves against the dollar and right now it is low. It may fall further. The other risk is the oil price. Britain is still an energy exporter although not as tied to selling resources as Canada. The third risk is so far imponderable, the May election which may see a Labour government replacing the current coalition of the center and right. And later if the Tories are still in power, there will be a referendum about another exit from the Common Market, a Ukexit, which can go either way.
But still, for a US investor, there are really powerful arguments for hitting the mother country.
More from Britain (of course), Israel, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Denmark, Jordan, Egypt, Colombia, Portugal, Ireland, Mexico and Canada.
Better Therapy
*Our portfolios gained last year from the payout by Vodafone, and will gain this year from the one by GlaxoSmithKline, VOD and GSK. We also own Novartis, NVS, the Swiss drugmaker which swapped its inoculation arm for GSK's cancer pipeline.
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