Noticias

TRILLIONS of dollars of consumer spending have, historically, depended on a few steps. A shopper learns about a product, considers whether to buy it, decides to do so, goes to a shop. If he likes it, he may buy it again. Marketers have long obsessed over each step, and consultants have written treatises on how to nudge people along. E-commerce is already changing the process, but now retailing gurus are imagining a future in which shopping becomes fully automatic.

The idea is that a combination of smart gadgets and predictive data analytics could decide exactly what goods are delivered when, to which household. The most advanced version might resemble Spotify, a music-streaming service, but for stuff. This future is inching closer, thanks to initiatives from Amazon, lots of startup firms and also from big consumer companies such as Procter & Gamble (P&G).

Buying experiments so far fall into two categories. The first is exploratory. A service helps a shopper try new things, choosing products on his or her behalf. Birchbox, founded in 2010, sends beauty samples to subscribers for $10 each month. Imitators have proliferated, offering everything from dog…Continue reading

AMERICANS who want a comfortable retirement, and who work in the private sector, have to look after their own interests these days. No longer can most rely on their employer to pay a pension linked to their final salary; such defined-benefit promises are too expensive.

Instead, workers are promised something called a defined-contribution (DC) pension which, truth be told, isn’t a pension at all. It is a savings pot to which employers and employees contribute, with some tax advantages. How big that pot will be, and what kind of income it will provide, is unknown.

Most of those savings will probably be invested in mutual funds. Yet as William Birdthistle, an academic lawyer, writes in an entertaining new book*, small investors need to become better informed about the way mutual funds work.

One might think, for example, that all investors in a fund are treated equally. But Mr Birdthistle cites a set of JPMorgan equity funds which have seven different types of shares, with opaque names such as Class R5. The main difference tends to be the fees that funds charge. Small investors usually pay most, even those in some DC schemes. These fees…Continue reading

JAMES CARVILLE, political adviser to Bill Clinton, the former president, famously said that he wanted to be reincarnated as the bond market so he could “intimidate everybody”. He was frustrated by the administration’s inability to push through an economic stimulus for fear of spooking investors and pushing bond yields higher.

More than 20 years later, the world looks very different. Many developed countries have been running budget deficits ever since the global financial crisis of 2008; their government debt-to-GDP ratios are far higher than they were in the early 1990s. Yet the bond market looks about as intimidating as a chihuahua in a handbag; in general, yields are close to historic lows.

In the 1990s “bond-market vigilantes” sold their holdings when they feared that countries were pursuing irresponsible fiscal or monetary policies. In Britain even fear of a “hard Brexit” is only now being reflected in rising gilt yields—and they are still below the (very low) levels seen before the vote to leave the EU in June. Even developing countries with big budget deficits can borrow easily. This week, for example, Saudi Arabia…Continue reading

AMERICA’S presidential contest offers voters a stark choice. Hillary Clinton represents continuity with the Obama administration—not a bad pitch to voters, given low unemployment, steady job growth and a recent upturn in the rate of increase of real incomes. In the opposite corner is Donald Trump, standing on a radical platform of protectionism, draconian immigration restrictions, massive defence spending and construction of a big, beautiful wall along the Mexican border. Mr Trump’s dangerous economic nationalism demands an explanation. Is he the predictable consequence of years of hardship for many Americans?

Two broad theories vie to explain Mr Trump’s ascent. One camp sees him as an inevitable backlash against economic-policy priorities that have left many Americans behind. As America and the world have grown more economically integrated, growth in household incomes has stagnated and inequality soared. The costs of freer trade were borne most acutely in Southern and Mid-Western manufacturing towns exposed to competition from cheap Chinese imports. A series of recent papers shows that the most affected labour markets have…Continue reading

El Eurobanco, que deja los tipos en el 0%, decidirá en diciembre si amplía el programa más allá de marzo

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María Dolores Dancausa, consejera delegada de Bankinter, se mostró contraria, durante la presentación de resultados del banco, a una fusión entre BMN y Bankia. «Bankia debería centrarse en devolver el dinero que debe al Estado», señaló. «No se pueden cambiar las reglas de juego a mitad del partido», añadió. Leer

La consejera delegada de Bankinter se muestra contraria a la medida, aunque adelanta que apenas impactará al banco. Leer

Hot property

AS HIS chances of making it to the White House have narrowed in recent weeks, another avenue has opened for Donald Trump. The notion that he might start his own media network has been the subject of speculation for months. Now industry executives are discussing the possibility in some detail.

In September the Republican candidate’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, owner of the New York Observer, asked his friend Aryeh Bourkoff, a banker who has been a dealmaker in the media industry, for advice. (A spokeswoman for Mr Bourkoff said he personally had no interest in such a project). Mr Trump himself has denied any intention to start a network. But a look at the numbers suggests that Trump TV could be a success, media folk say—far from a juggernaut like Fox News, which has revenues of more than $2 billion a year, but lucrative nonetheless.

Such a product would have a good shot at going mainstream because Mr Trump could sell it directly to consumers over the internet, as a subscription streaming service. The Trump brand may now be too toxic for a publicly-owned media company to go…Continue reading

La Comisión Europea sancionó con 1.060 millones de euros al fabricante de chips en 2009, la mayor de la historia en un caso de abuso de posición dominante