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John Stepek Welcome back to your weekend edition of Money Morning.

This is where we highlight some of the best bits from our free emails, newsletters, blog and MoneyWeek magazine that we’ve published in the past week.

● The markets have had a good week this week. Greece is becoming a distant memory, the Eurocrats are threatening to exterminate speculators, and investors even took a surge in Chinese inflation in their stride.

Sterling is still being battered of course. And as my colleague David Stevenson pointed out this week, our ever-expanding trade deficit shows it’s still not doing us any good.

Despite the weak pound, “the country's exporters – the ones who are meant to save us from perpetual stagnation – aren't benefiting. Although their goods are now much cheaper for global customers to buy, they're selling fewer of them. January export goods volumes dropped by 8%. Excluding some data distortions three years ago, that was the worst monthly drop since 2002.”

● That puts the whole debate about “rebalancing” the British economy into perspective. We’ve relied too much on financial services, and unfortunately, we’ve thrown away what little money we had left on bailing out the banks. The good news is, the world’s more entrepreneurial scientists aren’t waiting for governments to get behind them.

“Craig Venter said he was going to change medicine – everyone thought he was a maniac,” points out Dr Mike Tubbs in his Research Investments newsletter.

“But seven years ago the former Vietnam veteran beat an army of government scientists to the biggest medical advance in decades – decoding the human genome.

“The state sponsored Human Genome Project had been busy sequencing the three billion biochemical blocks in our DNA for years... and running up a $3bn bill in the process.

“But Dr Venter beat them to it. And in an instant, a colossal new medical sector came of age. By deconstructing the human body cell by cell, scientists believe they will uncover the genetic roots of the most complex diseases – from cancer to Alzheimer’s.

“That heralds a new age of personalised medicine – allowing doctors to gauge our risk for conditions like cancer and diabetes and taking pre-emptive action.

“And so today a vast industry has sprung up – using the techniques developed by the likes of Craig Venter in a race to decode these diseases and use this knowledge to find new treatments. The market for personalised medicine will reach $42bn by 2015, according to PriceWaterhouseCoopers.”

Mike’s Research Investments newsletter is based around buying companies that put serious investment into research and development in areas like these. And he’s not the only one who believes that scientific developments provide a ripe hunting ground for investors.

● “Last month I met a man who has been in the business of making money from science for the last 25 years. Phil Atkin has watched successive governments downplay the efforts of his kind while applauding the relentless rise of the financial sector,” says Tom Bulford in his Penny Sleuth free email.

“Finally we have woken up to the realisation that the latter does not produce any real wealth at all. And this means Atkin’s time may finally have come – especially after a special announcement made last week…”

Atkins heads up Scientific Digital Imaging (SDI). As with most science companies, explaining what it does is complicated, so you can read Tom’s piece if you want to know the details. But basically it makes various measurement and imaging devices for laboratories.

“SDI is certainly one to keep an eye on,” says Tom. “Chairman Harry Tee was the driving force behind Roxboro, which made plenty of money for investors in the 1990s. He is also chairman of another fast growing company, Dialight (DIA).

“Better than our politicians he understands what is required to build a science-based business. This one is definitely on the Red Hot Penny Shares radar screen.”



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● Last week’s debate on ethical investing attracted quite a few thoughtful responses. Most agreed with our view that we should be presenting readers with money-making opportunities and leaving the ethical decisions to them.

But I just had to share this reader’s take on the ethics of investing in tobacco firms… “Until a couple of years ago, I too avoided owning any tobacco company shares, figuring that it would be unethical to profit from a company that depends for its continued growth on getting more people addicted to a substance known to directly cause several serious health issues.

“However, I changed my mind when we returned from a family holiday in France. Sitting at a table on the ferry (in an open area) two people sat down at the same table with us and, without asking if it would be ok and ignoring the fact that we had our young son sitting with us, proceeded to light up and blow smoke around. The problem was that the wind blew it straight to us on the other side of the table.

“This inconsiderate behaviour so incensed me that I vowed as soon as we got home that I would buy some BAT shares, so that I felt I could at least get my own back in some way by part funding my retirement thanks to the behaviour of people that ignore all the warnings and inflict their brand of poison on those around them as well.

“If you can’t beat them, profit from them!”

● Riccardo Marzi, the ex-City trader behind the Events Trader newsletter, knows how to draw a reader’s attention. Here’s the headline from his latest issue: “How you could profit from a deadly virus outbreak in Chile”.

I winced as I thought of the complaints that would flood in. Then I read the piece. The “deadly virus” in question is killing off salmon, not people. Phew. Still, it’s a pretty miserable experience for Chile’s salmon farmers. The country is the world’s second-largest producer of the fish. And with its annual production down about 70% year-on-year, salmon prices are going up.

And you can guess what that means for the rest of the world’s salmon farmers. A profit bonanza. “Norway is the world’s biggest exporter of salmon. It will take at least 18 months for the Chilean salmon industry to raise fish to maturity – if they manage to get the disease under control. In that time Norwegian salmon groups will enjoy a major boost to their earnings,” says Riccardo.

● We’re sceptical on China’s growth ‘miracle’. But that’s no reason to write off the whole of Asia. Cris Sholto Heaton, the man behind the MoneyWeek Asia free email (if you don’t already get it, I advise you to sign up for it right now) is currently testing out a newsletter in which he tips individual stocks. The second edition came out earlier this week. If you’d like to be kept informed of when it goes live, just give us your email here.

In Cris’s latest piece, he looks at one vital piece of infrastructure that many parts of Asia are entirely lacking right now, and will need a lot of in the future. It’s not roads, or sewage systems, or railways - it’s software. I’ll let Cris explain.

“In the West, banks have used computers for processing data and transactions since the sixties. But these were huge, complex and costly systems dedicated to specific functions. Picture a huge humming room of densely packed computers running a bank's data – the kind you would see in Cold War movies. If you had two different systems working on a similar task, they couldn’t talk to each other and share data.

“But over that last decade or so, things have become much more sophisticated. State-of-the-art banking systems are tightly integrated, with all the key software running in the same framework and sharing information. And as a result of this, they’ve become much more powerful and useful.

“Computers no longer simply store data, but can monitor accounts for fraud, improve risk management by credit-scoring potential borrowers, and on top of that, they run schemes such as airmiles and loyalty cards to gather information about customers and increase usage.

“Systems like this are standard in Europe and North America. But in the emerging world, it’s obviously much more variable. Some countries and banks are pretty advanced. Others make what a British bank was using twenty years ago seem sophisticated.

“So most emerging market banks are going to have to invest billions in better IT over the next couple of decades. Not only do many have a long way to go to bring their existing systems up to modern standards, but they’re also going to need to expand to cope with hundreds of millions of new potential customers. And this means that emerging markets should offer very good growth prospects for the firms that develop and maintain these highly specialised systems.”

● Last week I wrote a piece about what people could learn from the plight of the king and queen of buy-to-let. Fergus and Judith Wilson are two ex-maths teachers who built a portfolio of hundreds of houses in Kent during the boom times. They ran into some difficulties in the crunch, but when the Bank of England slashed interest rates, it had the knock-on effect of cutting their costs.

The piece drew a lot of comment – as most of our property pieces do, which is as strong an indicator as any that we’re still in bubble territory. But I also got an email from Fergus himself. He described the piece as a “very fair article”, so I gave him a call to get his take on the market.

The way Fergus sees it, the real problem is with flats, rather than the houses that he predominately lets out. “These blocks of flats in northern cities have been a complete disaster. I have 30 flats which I regret having. They’ve fallen in value, whereas the houses have seen a reasonable increase in the last two years.”

Now, on the one hand, I’d agree that the epicentre of the housing market collapse was always going to be in the market for dodgy flats. And with the bank rate as low as it is, at 0.5%, Fergus is in a sweet spot – he reckons the typical £180,000 house, with a £140,000 mortgage, is costing him about £300 a month on the mortgage. If it’s let for £700 a month, with £100 going to the letting agent, then he clears £300.

But with the market stagnant, it can’t be easy to offload all those properties to first-time buyers – they can’t afford it. And what happens if interest rates rise?

Fergus, who’s nearly 62, reckons we’ll be lucky to see a 2.5% bank rate again in his lifetime. “The government won’t be that stupid. Every time rates go up, more people will become homeless.”

I can’t say I’m convinced. The Bank of England needs to take far more into account when it sets the bank rate than just its impact on the property market. The only way that interest rates can remain that low for that long, is if Britain goes the way of Japan. And in Japan, house prices are still 60% lower than they were at the start of the bust.

I certainly don’t wish the Wilsons any ill. But our chat just confirmed in my mind that the current rebound is a temporary blip before the market starts heading down again.

● And it’s not just the property market that’s set for harder times ahead. Tim Price of PFP Wealth Management tells readers of The Price Report newsletter to watch out. “Last week I was invited to present at the Private Wealth Management Conference in Smithfield. There I listened to a lot of people I’ve known and respected for most of my career. And there were two very clear concerns coming through.

“First, how do I avoid getting burned by stocks again? After the gyrations in the market over the last two years, there was a lot of talk of not placing too much faith in equities – because it’s unwarranted. The question everyone wanted to ask was – how long could this bear market in stocks go on for?

“The second real concern among private wealth managers is inflation. I’m not the only one worried about governments printing their way out of this crisis, as it turns out. If there is a dangerous bout of inflation on the way, how do we protect our wealth?”

I’m running out of space to go into the details here, but suffice to say, Tim reckons that there’s another down-leg to come in the bear market. As for inflation, he doesn’t see it taking off just yet, but there are some assets you should be holding for when it does. To find out more about The Price Report newsletter, click here.

● Useful links. Want to find out more about any of the newsletters and contributors I've quoted today? Just click on these links:

Tom Bulford's newsletter Red Hot Penny Shares
Riccardo Marzi’s newsletter Events Trader
Tim Price’s newsletter, The Price Report
Dr Mike Tubbs' Research Investments newsletter - enquiries for this exclusive service are by phone only, call 020 7633 3600

If you have any other comments, please feel free to email me at editor@moneyweek.com.

Until next week,

John Stepek

Editor, MoneyWeek
New Business Editor of the Year, BSME Awards 2009


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In September a new video was uploaded to Google Video in Italy. It showed an autistic schoolboy in Turin being abused, physically and verbally, by his classmates.

On Wednesday, three executives from Google who had never worked in Italy, or had any idea of the video's existence before it was deleted two months later , were found guilty (in absentia) of invading the teenager's privacy, and given six-month suspended sentences by an Italian court, after charges were brought by a local Down's syndrome charity.

David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer, and one of those convicted, claimed the ruling "poses a grave danger to the continued freedom and operation of the many internet services that users around the world, including many Italians have come to rely on".

 

The prosecutors argued that Google had a duty to ensure that such videos complied with privacy law before they were made public, that comments beneath the video suggesting that it was inappropriate were ignored, and that it should have been spotted when it made the "most viewed" list on the site.

 

Google countered that it took the video down within three hours of being alerted by the authorities, that European (and Italian) law states that responsibility for such videos lies with those who post them, and that taking a random set of executives from its hierarchy to court was hardly the way to resolve the issue.

 

This ruling implies that Google, or indeed who operates a website is responsible for every offensive video, photo or comment that appears there.  So why does this cause a problem and why it can't material just be blocked before it is uploaded, as the Italian court wants?

 

There are two objections, one philosophical and one practical. The first is whether it is desirable for Internet companies to have the power to decide what is tasteful or ethical.

 

The practical implications are also critical. YouTube, the video service bought by Google in 2006, receives 20 hours of video every single minute, so much information that no human being could reasonably pre-screen.

 

Bill Eggers, the global director of Deloitte Research, points out that it took the Library of Congress more than 200 years to amass a collection of 29 million books and periodicals, 2.4 million audio recordings, 12 million photographs, 4.8 million maps and 57 million manuscripts. The same amount of data is now being added to the Internet every five minutes.

 

Spam Comes to Twitter

The Social Media world was attacked twice last week by spammers. Twitter users were warned not to click links in some tweets, after the microblogging service fell victim to its second phishing attack in a week.

 

Users have received Direct Messages with links that when clicked, direct users to a malicious website, which looks just like the Twitter home page, where they are prompted to enter their login details.

 

As soon as they hit enter, the malicious message is sent to everyone on their Twitter friends list, helping the scam to spread across the internet. Security experts fear that cyber criminals could use this login information to hack in to other accounts, or gain remote access to a computer.

 

Twitter users were receiving direct messages that said: "This you????" and contained a link. Now another phishing message, reading "hi, i'm 24/female/horny ... i have to get off here but message me on my windows live messenger name", is also spreading across the service.

 

"It's bad enough if hackers gain control of your Twitter account, but if you also use that same password on other websites and our research shows that 33 per cent of people do that all the time then they could access your Gmail, Hotmail, Facebook, eBay and PayPal accounts too," said Graham Cluley, a security expert with Sophos.

 

"Our advice is to be cautious about the links you click on, choose a strong password, and, if you find that you're spreading suspicious messages from your Twitter account, change your passwords immediately.

 

"You should also check the Settings/Connections area of your Twitter account. If there are any third-party applications you don't recognise listed there, revoke their permission to access your account."  

 

Twitter said that it was aware of the problem, and was working hard to secure the site against similar future attacks.

 

Libraries Struggles to Achieve Web.

The UK's online heritage could be lost forever if the government does not grant a "right to archive", a group of leading libraries has said.  The British Library, along with other institutions, has been archiving UK websites since 2004 but has only been able to cover 6,000 of an estimated 8m.

 

Currently, it must ask permission from website owners before archiving them.  We've got the know-how but we need the rules to say we don't need to ask permission," said a spokesman for the British Library.  "We're archiving for the nation rather than commercial gain."

 

The British Library believes the UK Web Archive could prove as useful to historians as ancient pamphlets and other ephemeral material in its archive.  The consortium, which also includes the National Library of Wales and the Wellcome Library, is lobbying the government to clarify elements of the Legal Deposit Libraries Act.

 

The act, which among other things means that every UK print publication is automatically deposited by publishers in the British Library, was extended in 2003 to cover online material. But the British Library says it never clarified what steps had to be taken before electronic material was recorded.

 

"We're in the ridiculous position where we have to ask permission of each webmaster before we archive a site," the spokesman said.  The Department of Culture Media and Sport is currently consulting on the act.

 

"We can't make a judgement about what people in the future will find useful," said the British Library spokesman.  The British Library said research showed that the average life expectancy of a website was just 44 to 75 days, and suggested that at least 10% of all UK websites were either lost or replaced by new material every six months.

 

There are other achieves, including the WayBack Machine http://www.archive.org which aim to catalogue and record websites as they change over the years.

 

Broadband Tax Condemned by MPs

A government proposal to charge people with fixed phone lines 50p per month to help fund ultra-fast broadband has been condemned as "unfair" by MPs.

 

The cross-party Business Innovation and Skills Committee said most of those who would pay the tax would not benefit from the faster broadband service.  The focus should be on providing basic broadband for all and allowing markets to deliver higher speeds, it said.

 

The government said the plan was the "best way to drive further investment".  It maintains that faster speeds are "vital to the UK's growth".  However, the committee argued: "We believe that a 50p levy placed on fixed telecommunication lines is an ill-directed charge.  "It will place a disproportionate cost on a majority who will not, or are unable to, reap the benefits of that charge."

 

The government's broadband plans outlined in its Digital Economy Bill, have two main concepts.  It wants to ensure a minimum speed of 2Mbps to all parts of Britain by 2012, and then deliver ultra-fast broadband to most of the country by 2017.  

 

The committee agreed that the government should help deliver 2Mbps to all by 2012 but said that it was "concerned" that the government had not defined what it guaranteed.  Broadband speeds rarely meet the advertised speeds, depending on the number of users online and distance from an exchange.

 

The committee believes that the government should commit to delivering a minimum of 2Mbps "under normal circumstances, to all users at all times".  But the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said that the government wanted everyone to "access the huge social, economic and health benefits" that high speeds offer.

 

“We are currently consulting on the most effective way to deploy this investment with public and commercial benefits in mind, and will consider the Committee's report in our final response," said the spokesman.

 

When Gordon Brown and the Cabinet visited Exeter recently, Nigel Wilkinson from WNW Design took the opportunity to raise this matter with Justice Minister Jack Straw. With the government wanting to promote a high-skills, low carbon economy in the south west it is vital that ultra fast broadband is available outside the main urban areas. Nigel was able to highlight this point to Mr Straw, who promised to feedback these concerns to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

 

 

Regards

 

Nigel Wilkinson, Managing Director, WNW Design

 

Visit our regularly updated blog www.wnwdesign.co.uk/wordpress

 

BUSINESSES AND exhibitors alike are busy preparing for the remaining two expowest events, which are now in their 30th year.

 

The expowest Cornwall event, to be held at the Royal Cornwall Showground, Wadebridge on March 2,3 and 4 will be the next opportunity for businesses to help plan and prepare for the forthcoming season. As ever the event will feature a comprehensive range of exhibitors offering everything to meet the needs of anyone in the hospitality and catering industry and now also the care and health sector.

 

The expowest South Wales event, will follow on March 23 and 24 2010 at the United Counties Showground, Carmarthen and will feature a similar range of suppliers.

 

The expowest events have, over the last three decades, become firmly established as a crucial trading time for businesses as they look to plan for the coming season. People attending expowest will include owners and managers of hotels, guest houses, pubs, clubs, restaurants, cafes and convenience food outlets as well as people from the care and nursing home sector and educational establishments.

 

Peter Sugden, Managing Director of Truro-based organisers Exhibitions South West said '' We are delighted to be celebrating our 30th year in Cornwall and to once again be bringing forward the single biggest opportunity for businesses across the hospitality, catering and care sectors to find all the goods and services they need.

''Following a successful expowest Westcountry event, we're once again looking forward to bringing together under one roof, a massive range of local and national suppliers at both the Cornwall and South Wales events''

 

Expowest exhibitions are specialist shows for trade only. Businesses that would like to exhibit at the shows should call 01872 245220

 

Trade visitors can register for a free ticket at www.expowestexhibitions.com

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