Shernel Thielman

This year, listed companies that make their living from specialised knowledge had a hard time of it. Publishers of legal, tax and medical information, consultancies and providers of business software saw their share prices fall by half or more in some cases. The fear was easy to summarise: if a computer program can answer a legal question or prepare a tax return within seconds, who still needs expensive professional information? An understandable fear That fear is not unfounded. Artificial...

This week the price of a barrel of Brent crude, the international benchmark for oil, rose above 112 dollars, its highest level in five months. The trigger was a series of deadly attacks in Saudi Arabia, which fuelled fears that tensions in the Middle East could disrupt oil supply. On the financial markets this caused unease: equities fell and investors sought the safety of government bonds. Why oil works its way through everything Oil is not an ordinary commodity. It is embedded in virtually...

Last week the financial markets were given a clear reminder that enthusiasm and returns are not the same thing. Shares in chipmakers and in companies building data centres for artificial intelligence fell sharply worldwide. The trigger did not come from the technology itself, but from the bond market. The interest rate on the loans of a heavily financed data centre operator rose to around fifteen percent, a level investors normally associate with companies in serious trouble. A pattern that...