Gotta catch a return on investment on 'em all 📈

Happy Monday. Call your parents, raid your old bedroom, find your Pokémon cards - forget Will Grigg, Charizard is on fire.

It turns out, that since 2004, the value of Pokémon cards have rocketed more than 3,800%. For context, in the same period, the S&P500 returned about 486% and the FTSE 100 about 145% - these shiny cardboard critters are leaving blue-chips in the dust! Forget bulls and bears - it’s all about Pikachus and Charizards.

Obviously, this isn’t investment advice. As if it needed to be said - don’t ever take investment advice from a Teapot.

MARKETS

Data: Google Finance, 5-day Market Close

Notable UK earnings this week: Zegona Communications (ZEG), JD Sports (JD.), Kingfisher (KGF), Dar Global (DAR), Oxford Biomedica (OXB).

Notable US earnings this week: Costco (COST), Micron Technology (MU), Cintas Corporation (CTAS), Firefly Aerospace (FLY).

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PROJECT WATCH

🎥 £34m film studio expansion approved in Hartlepool. Read more

🌊 Allseas wins decommissioning contract for North Sea rig. Read more

🍃 Govt funding secured for green methanol project. Read more

BUSINESS & FINANCE

Govt borrowing hits new August heights as credit card takes a pounding
New ONS figures show UK government borrowing hit £18bn in August-£3.5bn more than last year, and a full £5.2bn over what the Office for Budget Responsibility pencilled in. Turns out the age-old tradition of spending more than you earn is still alive and staggering in Whitehall.

In fact, this August’s borrowing total is the worst since the pandemic, a nostalgic callback to that time when “unprecedented” was drinking game-level vocabulary. Despite a bounce in tax and NI receipts (up £4.3bn year-on-year), the Treasury still managed to outspend those gains-on public services, benefits, and that sticky old chestnut, interest payments on debt.

To date, we’ve borrowed £83.8bn in just five months, the second-highest April to August figure since records began in 1993, embarrassingly eclipsed only by the full-fat chaos of 2020 (remember covid?). Debt now sits at 96.4% of GDP-levels we haven’t seen since the Beatles were still playing in sweaty Liverpool pubs.

Economists are already sharpening their pencils. With public finances tanking and growth limping along, Capital Economics reckons Reeves will need to dig up another £28bn come budget day on 26th November - sounds like a sticky wicket to me.

UK secures US tech investment (as UK firms look stateside)
While Donald Trump was in town, Sir Keir Starmer shook hands and signed what’s been dubbed the “Tech Prosperity Deal”. Flashy name, isn't it? This supposedly statesmanlike handshake is tied up with £150bn in US investment promises and the hope of 7,600 new jobs. (Never mind that the UK’s lost 127,000 people from payrolls in the last year).

Of the promised billions, £90bn is from Blackstone, a US private equity behemoth that famously gobbles up half of Britain’s rental market whenever it fancies. Perhaps the financial equivalent of inviting a fox to your data centre henhouse? Microsoft says it’ll spend £22bn on UK operations, and Google’s getting its servers hot and bothered in Hertfordshire to the tune of £5bn. You’d think September was Christmas with all these digital goodies flying in - and you thought only your nan gave gifts unwrapped in vague promises.

But it’s not all quantum rainbows and AI gold dust. British pharmaceuticals are quietly packing their bags. AstraZeneca, supposedly our biopharma crown jewel, has hit pause on a £200m R&D site in Cambridge, while Merck pulled the handbrake on a £1bn investment. Their reasoning? They say the UK makes doing business feel like wading through a vat of Marmite: sticky, salty, and not everyone’s cup of tea. The irony? While we’re wooing American tech giants, our own innovations are Ubering their way across the Atlantic. GSK’s spending a juicy £22bn – in the US.

POLITICS

Verdicts & values
Scotland has banged the gavel on its centuries-old “not proven” verdict - the peculiar third option in criminal trials that, like “not guilty”, meant acquittal but carried an unspoken we don’t quite believe you. Dating back to the 17th century, it was meant to signal “case not proven” rather than “innocent”. In practice, it left victims without closure and defendants under a cloud of suspicion.

After decades of campaigns, MSPs voted 71–46 to scrap it, as part of sweeping reforms. From now on, guilty verdicts will require 10 of 15 jurors (up from eight), a move designed to calm fears of more wrongful convictions.

The reforms also create a specialist sexual offences court with trauma-trained judges, a victims’ commissioner, lifelong anonymity for survivors, and parole rules forcing murderers to reveal burial sites before release.

Debates, democratic defence, departures
In Westminster, the Lords turned to life’s final verdict. Nearly 200 peers debated the Terminally Ill Adults Bill, which would let patients with under six months to live apply for an assisted death, signed off by two doctors and a review panel.

After two marathon days, the bill passed its second reading without a vote and heads to committee, which must report back by November 7. If the bill did eventually pass Royal Assent, the first assisted deaths wouldn’t happen until 2029/30. Parliament may still dither, but the clock is ticking on one of Britain’s biggest ethical shifts in centuries.

The Commons, meanwhile, was rattled by another kind of threat: espionage. Charges against two men accused of spying for China were suddenly dropped, to the fury of Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle, who dashed off a “strong and punchy” letter to the Home Secretary. Prosecutors said the evidence no longer met the test.

While Parliament was grounded, a plan for a hundred thousand more departures was cleared for take-off at Gatwick Airport. The £2.2bn tweak involves shuffling its currently unusable northern runway 12 metres north. Residents under the flight path can charge triple-glazing upgrades to the airport and, if they decide to move out, have the stamp duty on their new home covered too. Progress in Britain comes with either thicker windows or thicker skin.

ACROSS THE POND

Trump’s case against NYT thrown out
A U.S. judge has flat-out rejected Donald Trump’s audacious $15 billion lawsuit against The New York Times and Penguin Random House. Liz Truss’s lettuce had a longer shelf-life than Trump’s complaint, which was deemed "decidedly improper and impermissible" by U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday. His ruling may be reminiscent of a parent scolding their child for attempting to squeeze a square peg into a round hole, nonetheless offering Trump’s camp 28 days to try again-in a "professional and dignified manner," no less.

The President's legal eagles claimed the suit was not merely another exercise in bombastic self-promotion. They criticised The New York Times for allegedly weaving an entire tapestry of untruths, including juicy tales of Trump’s dictatorial tendencies and behind-the-camera antics of "The Apprentice". Quite the episode, here comes Judge Merryday with perhaps the most sarky smackdown of late, comparing the complaint to the Hyde Park Speakers' Corner rather than a legal document.

Skilled visa fees set for $100k fees
Donald Trump has upped the ante for skilled workers arriving in the US, with a new $100,000 cherry on top for H-1B visa applications. A baffling charge supposedly designed to ensure tech companies hire Americans first, and likely have foreign workers checking their piggy banks twice - and thrice - before leaping.

The H-1B visa programme, rolling out the red carpet for skilled foreign aficionados, now confronts what might be an eye-watering setback. Critics argue tech companies often use these visas as a way to play dodgeball around higher US wages, perhaps leaving American techies to feel a bit like wallflowers at the Silicon Valley ball.

Meanwhile, irony sprinkles the saga like a good British rain - after all, First Lady Melania Trump herself strutted her way into the US modelling scene in the '90s with one of these very visas. In the last year, India was the largest beneficiary of the H-1B visa, making up 71% of approved applications.

"America First" in this case might mean "America First, or a mortgage second," as UK businesses with stateside interests must now re-calculate their ledger with Uncle Sam’s latest demands. This time it’s not the pizza delivery charge that’s stinging pockets but a fee predicting the fate of future tech collaborations.

TECH

Through Zuck’s looking glass
Meta has unveiled its first augmented reality glasses with a built-in display. The sleek frames hide a monocular microdisplay bright enough for outdoor use yet invisible when not in play.

Paired with a Neural Band, a wrist controller that detects subtle finger twitches, you can type and navigate silently without lifting a finger. The launch wasn’t quite glitch-free: a live video call failed and an AI cooking demo stalled mid-recipe - hiccups Meta blamed on Wi-Fi.

TikTok to tinker tailor to TfL
TikTok’s long-running Washington melodrama has found a new act. Congress forced ByteDance to sell or be banned. Now, a consortium led by Oracle, Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz looks set to take 80% of TikTok’s US arm.

Back in Britain, MI6 is modernising with Silent Courier - a dark web portal inviting would-be agents to safely pass on secrets. Chief Spy, Sir Richard Moore, will unveil it in Istanbul, complete with YouTube tutorials on VPN etiquette.

Mind the age gap: two teenagers have been charged over a £39m hack on TfL that left services glitching for months and 5,000 customers’ bank data exposed. And, a suspected cyber attack on Collins Aerospace knocked out check-in systems at Heathrow, Berlin and Brussels, sending thousands of passengers back to pen, paper and patience.

WORLD

Book bans & bangles
The Taliban have banned books written by women and outlawed entire subjects like gender studies, human rights, and sexual harassment. The blacklist includes 140 titles by women and over 300 by Iranian authors. This comes the same week the Taliban banned fibre-optic internet in 10 provinces.

Against this backdrop of erasure, a story of retrieval: Peter and Barbie Reynolds, a British couple in their 70s, detained by the Taliban for eight months, were released and flown home. The pair had spent decades running training programmes in Kabul and Bamiyan, even after the Taliban’s 2021 return.

And in Egypt, authorities admitted that a 3,000-year-old gold bracelet, once belonging to Pharaoh Amenemope, had been stolen from a museum. It was sold for a mere $3,735 and melted down. Four suspects have confessed, but the said eternal artefact is gone forever - proving no spell in the Book of the Dead can defend Ma'at when Isfet is armed with mortals’ eternal greed.

Pixels & Phillipino protests
In South Korea, the law has entered the uncanny valley. A court ruled that you can defame virtual K-pop stars, ordering one social media user to cough up £265 for mocking Plave - a boyband of avatars powered by anonymous actors in motion-capture suits. The defence argued they were only insulting “cartoons”. In short, pixels have feelings now.

And in reality, in Manila, fury boiled over into the streets. Tens of thousands protested after revelations that billions in flood-control funds were siphoned off into luxury cars and non-existent projects. The so-called “Trillion Peso March” demanded justice on the anniversary of Ferdinand Marcos Sr’s martial law. His son, now president, vowed “no one will be spared” in the probe - though given half the congress has been implicated, one wonders who’ll be left to pass the budget.

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