Newsmax: Buy into bad news
If you fancy a real belter of a chat, zinging with quick wit and gay repartee in the manner of Dorothy Parker after a couple of well-chosen sharpeners, you could do worse than to assemble some investment enthusiasts to discuss the efficient market hypothesis vs the random walk theory, with a bit of behavioural economics slipped in for added spice.
Disappointingly, however, the best-laid theories of mice and men tend to keel over in the face of a genuine black swan event, including but not limited to the asylum being taken over by the lunatics.
When you have an organ as august as Vanity Fair running a poll to ask its readers to rate the most bonkers event of a presidency that is just getting into its stride, you know all rational bets are off, so why wouldn’t a niche cable television channel such as Newsmax arrive on the New York Stock Exchange and promptly watch its share price balloon by 2,200% in its first couple of days on the boards?
The old-school investor might raise a quizzical eyebrow at a market capitalisation topping $20bn when Newsmax managed to lose $72m on revenue of $171m last year, and it did drop 80% on its third day of trading, but whatever; its founder, Christopher Ruddy, is a chum of The Donald and a regular at Mar-a-Lago, and the channel serves up content that appeals to those who find that Fox News is trending dangerously towards the lily-livered liberal persuasion. Thankfully for all concerned, Newsmax prides itself on fighting “incredible media bias, now reaching a dangerous level”.
Maersk: Heading for a dry dock
Scholars of popular culture may suggest that, prior to the Trumpian era, Donalds made a limited impact on the social and cultural landscape. In the US, the most prominent contribution is that of a rather ineffectual cartoon duck, and at a push you might credit the achievements of Ronald McDonald in expanding the national waistline.
Harking back to the president’s Scottish roots, there is the protagonist of the popular song Donald, where’s ya troosers?, which may have a certain piquancy for those who remember Moscow’s Miss Universe competition.
But now we have a president who seems to regard the Great Wall of China as something of a beginner’s effort, and having cut his teeth on the Rio Grande in his first stay in the Oval Office, he’s now hellbent on erecting tariff walls around the land of the free that will keep its trade safe from the most pernicious of penguins.
This has caused unprecedented head-scratching and teeth-gnashing from anybody who has ever seen the inside of an economics classroom, and it has very real consequences for the likes of Maersk, the world’s largest shipping company.
Maersk recently reported excellent results for 2024, and it looked set fair to continue its growth story on the back of its reputation for operational excellence, but no matter how good you are at moving stuff around, you are likely to be hung out to dry if the wheels of global trade stop turning. Maersk’s share price has taken a hammering through no fault of its own as the tariffs have been flying about, and the future looks unclear.
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