Set in County Donegal, the poet’s polyphonic third novel wittily explores the fragile dynamics of a family navigating the loss of a father The dark hull of a shipwreck, beached and rotting on the sand, provides the powerful symbolism in award-winning poet and author Susannah Dickey’s third novel Into the Wreck. Five members of a family mourn the death of a gentle but distant father: a man shaped i...
Set in County Donegal, the poet’s polyphonic third novel wittily explores the fragile dynamics of a family navigating the loss of a father The dark hull of a shipwreck, beached and rotting on the sand, provides the powerful symbolism in award-winning poet and author Susannah Dickey’s third novel Into the Wreck. Five members of a family mourn the death of a gentle but distant father: a man shaped into silence by the Troubles, and whose absence leaves each of them trying to comprehend a family truth that was never fully articulated. The story is set in a coastal town in modern-day County Donegal, delivered to us in five separate narratives. Gemma, the middle child of three, is studying for A-levels alongside an awkwardly timed new obsession with boys; she harbours a self-imposed responsibility to maintain the fragile equilibrium of the family home. Anna, the eldest, fled to London at 16 to escape constant confrontations with her mother and is now forced to return for her father’s funeral, while Matthew, the youngest, silently and heartbreakingly carries the weight of the world’s and the family’s problems on his 15-year-old shoulders. Continue reading...
Notionally about the vampire, Radu Jude’s new movie involves a bizarre troupe of actors doing a floor-show routine Did Radu Jude just invent pop-up cinema? The Romanian director’s movies have a wildly improvised, no-budget theatricality in the spirit of Brecht or Fassbinder, a make-do-and-mend cinema that looks as if it has been made up on the spot with the materials to hand, including bits of TV ...
Notionally about the vampire, Radu Jude’s new movie involves a bizarre troupe of actors doing a floor-show routine Did Radu Jude just invent pop-up cinema? The Romanian director’s movies have a wildly improvised, no-budget theatricality in the spirit of Brecht or Fassbinder, a make-do-and-mend cinema that looks as if it has been made up on the spot with the materials to hand, including bits of TV ads, bad AI in the service of bad porn (what he, in an earlier film, called “loony porn” ) and amdram scenes with actors in ridiculous dress-up. It sometimes seems as if each Jude film is almost to be viewed once only; if you press play again, or go to the cinema to see it a second time, there will be only a blank screen, as if Jude and his ragged company have folded their tents and vanished. This new movie is crazily stretched out to epic length with knockabout comedy and stretches of tedium redeemed (just about) with angry, pointed satire. It is – notionally – about Dracula; or rather, about a smug and supercilious film-maker (Adonis Tanta) introducing us to the cheapo film he is concocting on the subject on his iPad, using unbearable AI. We also see a rackety troupe of actors doing a floor-show routine about Dracula in what looks like a restaurant, with veteran Romanian actor Gabriel Spahiu playing the aged and delusional old thesp who once thought he really was Dracula, and Oana Maria Zaharia as Vampira, a sexy and, indeed, vampy representative of the undead. This group encourages its audience to have sexual encounters with the cast-members; it also offers families a more wholesome kind of hide-and-seek romp where the audience chase the vampire actors out into the street. Continue reading...
A number of underperforming international car brands are likely to either exit the mainland Chinese market or scale down operations, as losses mount due to falling sales and shrinking market share. Carmakers delivering fewer than 1,000 units a month already faced a do-or-die situation in the world’s largest automotive market because the weak sales were not enough to cover their manufacturing and o...
A number of underperforming international car brands are likely to either exit the mainland Chinese market or scale down operations, as losses mount due to falling sales and shrinking market share. Carmakers delivering fewer than 1,000 units a month already faced a do-or-die situation in the world’s largest automotive market because the weak sales were not enough to cover their manufacturing and operating costs, according to analysts. Some carmakers are likely to follow Skoda, Volkswagen’s...
Listen to Odd Lots on Apple Podcasts Listen to Odd Lots on Spotify Watch Odd Lots on YouTube Subscribe to the newsletter The relationship between the US and Europe is deteriorating along both security and economic dimensions. The Trump administration has imposed tariffs, while also being sharply critical of NATO allies. So what are European leaders to do? Hope things go back to normal in the US? O...
Listen to Odd Lots on Apple Podcasts Listen to Odd Lots on Spotify Watch Odd Lots on YouTube Subscribe to the newsletter The relationship between the US and Europe is deteriorating along both security and economic dimensions. The Trump administration has imposed tariffs, while also being sharply critical of NATO allies. So what are European leaders to do? Hope things go back to normal in the US? Or perhaps become closer with China? Our guest on this episode says the latter would be a grave mistake. This episode was recorded live on April 1 at the DC headquarters of the Council on Foreign Relations. We spoke with Gina Raimondo, now a CFR Distinguished Fellow, who previously served as the commerce secretary in the Biden Administration, and prior to that was the governor of Rhode Island. She discusses her view that European industry is being hollowed out by China, and that the only path forward is a global, unified, non-China trading bloc, which is an idea that's being thwarted by the Trump administration. We also talk about the legacy of the CHIPS Act, and her fears about AI creating mass unemployment and destabilizing our democracy.
Donny DBM/iStock via Getty Images I believe that more money can be made by buying high and selling at even higher prices. I take exception to the idea of buying low and selling high - Richard Driehaus, the father of momentum investing Preface Allow me to start by stating unequivocally that I am not a dedicated momentum investor. Nor am I a dedicated value investor. In fact, if you want to put a la...
Donny DBM/iStock via Getty Images I believe that more money can be made by buying high and selling at even higher prices. I take exception to the idea of buying low and selling high - Richard Driehaus, the father of momentum investing Preface Allow me to start by stating unequivocally that I am not a dedicated momentum investor. Nor am I a dedicated value investor. In fact, if you want to put a label on me, I am probably best described as a thematic investor. I believe in certain themes (aka megatrends) taking control of the world we live in and, if you can identify and invest correctly in those themes, it actually makes little difference whether the companies you end up investing in can best be described as one or the other. In last month's Absolute Return Letter – How (Not) to Value Equities – which you can find here , I made the point that momentum investors shouldn't be overly concerned about the point I made, i.e. that the returns on U.S. equities over the next decade are likely to fall dramatically short of the returns we have gotten used to in recent years. I have had a few comments and questions on the back of that argument. It is therefore only natural that I elaborate on the point I made. What do I really mean when I say that momentum investors shouldn't pay too much attention to how expensive markets are? And which signals do I use to detect when, suddenly, it isn't irrelevant anymore? In this month's Absolute Return Letter, I will dig deeper on those two questions. A bit of history I am old enough to remember the boom and bust in Japan in the late 1980s and early 1990s and, likewise, the dotcom boom and bust in the U.S. some ten years later. I think of those two incidents virtually every day, as I remind myself of not falling into the same trap again. Momentum investors had a feast in Japan in the late 1980s, and they enjoyed it no less in USA a decade later. I was the new kid on the block in Copenhagen when Nationalbanken (the Central Bank of Denmark), ...
NATO Was A Big Loser In The Iran War Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), NATO members are not legally required to join any member’s military operations that are not formally sanctioned by the alliance or not aimed at protecting the homelands of the membership. But they often do just that. President Donald Trump speaks from the Cross Hall of the White House in Washi...
NATO Was A Big Loser In The Iran War Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), NATO members are not legally required to join any member’s military operations that are not formally sanctioned by the alliance or not aimed at protecting the homelands of the membership. But they often do just that. President Donald Trump speaks from the Cross Hall of the White House in Washington on April 1, 2026. Alex Brandon/Pool/Getty Images Some NATO members joined the Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq on the theory that, in the post-9/11 environment, the Taliban and Saddam Hussein were dangers to all Western security. They followed the precedent set by America’s 1999 intervention in the distant Balkans, leading a three-month NATO campaign to dismantle Slobodan Milošević’s often bloody ambitions of a Greater Serbia. The United States also joined the 2011 U.N.-approved, and French- and British-inspired, NATO “coalition of the willing” bombing campaign in Libya. That effort proved a seven-month misadventure—especially since the targeted Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi had given up his nuclear weapons program and was desperately trying to cut a deal with the West. When NATO members in the past have operated unilaterally to defend their own national interests, they have often called on the United States, as NATO’s strongest member, for overt help. For nearly 40 years, the United States had offered logistical, intelligence, reconnaissance, refueling, and diplomatic support to the French in their unilateral and postcolonial efforts to protect Chad from Libya and, later, Islamists. During the 1982 Falklands War, a solitary Britain faced enormous logistical challenges in steaming halfway around the world to eject Argentina from its windswept and sparse islands. U.S. aid was critical to the effort. So America stepped up to help with intelligence, reconnaissance, the supply of some two million gallons of much-needed gasoline, and crucial restocking of Britain’s dep...
Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc. and Nippon Life Insurance Co. are in talks to set up a private credit fund with initial capital of at least ¥500 billion ($3.1 billion), people familiar with the matter said, as the Japanese financial giants seek to capitalize on a surge in corporate deals. Japan’s second-largest bank and biggest life insurer are working on the details of the fund, which will p...
Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc. and Nippon Life Insurance Co. are in talks to set up a private credit fund with initial capital of at least ¥500 billion ($3.1 billion), people familiar with the matter said, as the Japanese financial giants seek to capitalize on a surge in corporate deals. Japan’s second-largest bank and biggest life insurer are working on the details of the fund, which will provide loans for leveraged buyouts and other areas such as real estate transactions and mezzanine financing, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are confidential. The two companies are planning to set up a joint venture that will manage the fund, which could also accept other investors, the people said. They have yet to decide the fund’s size, and it’s not clear yet how the commitments between the firms will be split. A Nippon Life spokesman said the company has been exploring various ways to enhance its asset management business but nothing has been decided. Sumitomo Mitsui representatives declined to comment. The move would mark a milestone in Japan’s credit market, where the three biggest banks — including Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. and Mizuho Financial Group Inc. — have dominated lending for buyouts in the country. The fund opens up the opportunity for non-banks to provide credit for such deals as well. In LBOs, loans are made using the assets of takeover targets as collateral. Demand to finance buyouts is rising as more Japanese companies sell non-core assets or take themselves private following reforms to make listed firms more accountable to shareholders. Japan Lobby to Steer Banks on Tackling Booming LBO Business Private Credit Dealmakers Face Years of Heavy Lifting in Japan Land of the Rising Sun Warms to Private Credit: Going Private Japan’s banking industry and financial regulator are trying to expand the providers of LBO finance to include regional banks and insurers, to better accommodate growing demand and avoid con...
Chinese tech companies are engaged in a public war of words as they compete to capitalise on US start-up Anthropic’s decision to pull its industry-leading Claude models from open-source AI agent tool OpenClaw. The development comes as AI agents have triggered a huge increase in demand for AI tokens – the core metric of AI usage – raising questions about the long-term ability of industry players to...
Chinese tech companies are engaged in a public war of words as they compete to capitalise on US start-up Anthropic’s decision to pull its industry-leading Claude models from open-source AI agent tool OpenClaw. The development comes as AI agents have triggered a huge increase in demand for AI tokens – the core metric of AI usage – raising questions about the long-term ability of industry players to meet this demand amid a growing global crunch in computational power. On Sunday, Anthropic...
hapabapa/iStock Editorial via Getty Images I decided to do a postmortem on my November 20, 2023 buy recommendation for Moderna ( MRNA ). That recommendation didn't work out too well; the stock dropped 37.20% from article publication to its March 30 closing price of $48.23. My thesis for buying Moderna was based on speculation about the success of the company's mRNA platform and drug pipeline. I ha...
hapabapa/iStock Editorial via Getty Images I decided to do a postmortem on my November 20, 2023 buy recommendation for Moderna ( MRNA ). That recommendation didn't work out too well; the stock dropped 37.20% from article publication to its March 30 closing price of $48.23. My thesis for buying Moderna was based on speculation about the success of the company's mRNA platform and drug pipeline. I had also factored in the downside from the decline in the number of people getting COVID-19 vaccinations; Moderna had called for a 2024 annual low of $4 billion. Moderna The actual results were far worse: the company's COVID-19 (Spikevax) sales for the full year 2024 were $3.1 billion, missing company estimates. Its RSV sales were also a major disappointment. The company generated only $25 million in 2024 RSV (mRESVIA) sales. Additionally, Moderna lacked new drugs in its pipeline to offset declining revenue from COVID-19 vaccines. The market also disliked Moderna's declining profits; it was last profitable in late 2023, highlighting post-COVID revenue declines and high research and development (R&D) spending on its pipeline. Data by YCharts Once the market realized the company would remain unprofitable and burn cash for several years, investors quickly exited their positions. The stock fell to a 52-week low of $22.28 on November 21, 2025. However, it has since rebounded. Data by YCharts The stock price is up over 70% year-to-date (as of March 31, 2026). There are reasons that some are getting excited about the stock again and reasons to invest in it today. Moderna may have already passed its peak spending phase. Some of its most expensive Phase III trials are nearing completion, particularly in the seasonal vaccine space, and future R&D expenses should decline. Although it will continue to invest in cancer drug trials, developing cancer drugs is less costly than developing viral vaccines. Therefore, its profitability should begin improving moving forward. Senior VP & Head of ...
Michael Vi Wipro ( WIT ) secured a major eight-year strategic deal with Singapore-based Olam Group ( OLGPF ), with total contract value expected to exceed $1B. As part of the broader agreement, the Indian IT services company will acquire Olam’s ( OLGPF ) IT and digital services arm, Mindsprint, for $375M in an all-cash transaction. The unit will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Wipro ( WIT ), s...
Michael Vi Wipro ( WIT ) secured a major eight-year strategic deal with Singapore-based Olam Group ( OLGPF ), with total contract value expected to exceed $1B. As part of the broader agreement, the Indian IT services company will acquire Olam’s ( OLGPF ) IT and digital services arm, Mindsprint, for $375M in an all-cash transaction. The unit will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Wipro ( WIT ), subject to regulatory approvals, with closure expected by June 2026. Mindsprint, founded in 2007, employs over 3,200 professionals across key markets including India, Singapore, the US, the UK, and the Middle East, with expertise in supply chain, digital platforms, and proprietary solutions. The $1B deal includes a committed spend of about $800M over eight years, with Olam ( OLGPF ) expected to spend roughly $100M annually on IT transformation services. Wipro ( WIT ) will deploy end-to-end, AI-led transformation services across Olam’s “farm-to-fork” value chain the company said in a statement . More on Wipro Wipro Has More Growth Challenges As Transition To GenAI Platform Continues Wipro Limited 2026 Q3 - Results - Earnings Call Presentation Wipro Limited 2026 Q3 - Results - Earnings Call Presentation IT consulting firms trend higher following India trade deal Wipro Non-GAAP EPS of $0.04 in-line, revenue of $2.62B misses by $30M