In recent months I have found the comments below THG stories in the Times to be quite useful as they have been in dramatic contrast to the recycled PR puff pieces above the line – indeed many of them pointing out the until recently utterly uncritical coverage of Magic Matt Moulding and his friends from Softbank.

In Equity Markets, the near 5% rise in October effectively reversed the equivalent selloff in September as the market mechanics unwound, while bond markets saw the month close with sharply higher volatility and some very aggressive flattening of the yield curve at the front end, seemingly as central banks stopped buying in short dated bonds as part of a ‘tapering’ exercise.

After a weak September, Equity markets have recovered in the last few weeks as buy on the dips seems to have kicked back in (as well as some momentum chasing or buy on the rips) for a strong looking seasonal effect in the fourth quarter.

As COP26 turns into a sort of Glastonbury for ESG funds, nobody seems to have noticed that all the big energy users have already committed to ‘new nuclear’ already and thus it is the collection of Robber Barons from Finance, tech, industry and the Green Industrial Complex who are all busy lobbying government ministers for a share in the huge Green Tax revenues that should be coming under scrutiny for their sustainability.

The latest piece for AFR went up yesterday. It is behind a firewall, so here for readers is a version of the draft I sent. Essentially it is making the point that inflation has not arrived thanks to Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP), but rather due to Zero Covid and Zero Carbon policies and that, for all its irrationality, reversing ZIRP would not only not solve inflation, but likely cause stagflation.