Features
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Malta gets to be part of all the big worldwide lottery draws
IKEA, Starbucks, Primark, EuroMillions – why does Malta tend to miss out on the good stuff? Okay, the lack of Scandinavian furniture will have to wait – but someone has figured out a way to bring you the world’s biggest lottery jackpots. And if...
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When the murder of a priest meted a cruel death penalty
Although priests in the past were among the most revered people in Malta, two priests were murdered on the island in the 19th century. Dun Alwiġ Decelis, aged 75, lived in Triq tal-Għaqba, the uphill road from Lija cemetery to Naxxar. In spite of...
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What year will online gambling be legal in the US?
There are an awful lot of United States citizens that would love a simple answer to the question of when will online gambling be legal in the US. But the truth of the matter is that still there are many jurisdictions where it is still illegal to...
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Brazil and the upcoming elections
Over the past months, emerging market (EM) assets were hit primarily by the trade war saga, which triggered an exodus as they flocked to safer assets. Brazil was also part of the flock, however the higher levels of the sell-off were and are...
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#HelpThemRead charity drive by Remax & Friends
Earlier this month, the Remax & Friends Foundation launched a charity drive to purchase reading equipment for more than 67 visually impaired children, thus enabling them to read. The drive is being supported by the President’s Trust and the...
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Argentina’s new plan
On Monday, Argentina’s President Macri admitted that the country is in a state of emergency. The entire government has realised that their lack of initial action was an error. Without getting into detail, Macri warned that the country cannot keep...
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How Coca Cola bought Costa coffee for €4.4 billion
The €4.4 billion sale of the Costa coffee chain to Coca-Cola began brewing when Whitbread's boss Alison Brittain crossed paths with the chief executive of the soft drinks giant at a conference in May. Brittain, who has led Costa-owner...
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Amazon – an addition to the US dream team
We started coverage of Amazon with a price target of $2200. Amazon reported good results for Q2 2018 and more importantly Q3 2018 guidance is driven by the fast growing and high margin Amazon Web Services which at the moment only accounts for 10%...
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Unfair competition is the main concern for businesses
The main concern for medium-sized companies is increasing competition from illicit trade, a survey has shown. Competition and a lack of a level playing field was disheartening business owners who said they were the primary constraints to the...
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How much importance is given to bond liquidity in investment decisions?
One out of the key considerations investors should pay particular notice to when making investment decisions is to ascertain how liquid an instrument is, both at the time of purchase as well as at the time of divestiture. Equities, bonds,...
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MSE Equity Price Index enters correction territory
The MSE Equity Price Index moved lower for the fourth consecutive day as it slipped by a further 0.91% to a fresh 32-month low of 4,256.120 points, reflecting the drops in the share price of five large caps whilst only Malita and GlobalCapital...
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Facebook gets a thumbs down from PR strategists
When it comes to its handling of the scandal over how its users' data was harvested to help elect US President Donald Trump, Facebook gets an almighty thumbs down from crisis management experts. Public relations specialists questioned by AFP were...
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Tulip mania: the classic story of a Dutch financial bubble is mostly wrong
Right now, it’s Bitcoin. But in the past we’ve had dotcom stocks, the 1929 crash, 19th-century railways and the South Sea Bubble of 1720. All these were compared by contemporaries to “tulip mania”, the Dutch financial craze for tulip bulbs in the...
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Communicating research findings shouldn't be rocket science
In times when fake news and alternative facts circulate in society, spreading scientifically based findings is more important than ever. This makes science communication one of academia’s most vital tasks. But despite the pivotal role scientific...
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Type of investments and strategies
The majority of individuals in society will love to invest for profits, but the lack of knowledge about the investment world is often an impediment to make the step towards investing. In this article, I would like to explore, with the amateur...
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L’Oréal SA – Potential upside in shares remain
About the SharesL’Oréal shares are up 10% year-to-date and 100% over a period of 5-years.This excellent performance is not a coincidence. It is a result of strong earning results and confidence in management’s ability to deliver growth and...
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In economics as in life, balance is essential - or is it?
Vespas will always retain value – they're an investment, you see. Well at least that’s what a guy with a second-hand Vespa for sale told me while I was looking at his (oh-my-so-cute) machine. It’s what you are expected to do if you want to sell –...
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Resources and costs
Debate about whether Malta’s resources are being used efficiently has raged on for months and is unlikely to end anytime soon. For every remark about Malta’s beauty there’s another arguing the country is “concrete, concrete, concrete.” A binary...
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Big data presents some huge opportunities
Mining big data has paid off handsomely for UPS, with the worldwide delivery service saving nearly 150 million litres of fuel and reducing travel distances by 586 unnecessary kilometres through analysing data generated by their services. The term...
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Predictions – Is the king naked?
“It’s better to roughly right than precisely wrong” - John Maynard Keynes Medieval mathematicians would not have understood the concept of having a one-half chance of getting tails when tossing a die. It’s tails, they might have said, because an...
