Picking stocks is famously difficult. But just how difficult is one of the oldest arguments in finance. New York Times columnist Jeff Sommer reopened the debate last week with a piece describing a recent study by an Arizona State University business professor, Hendrik Bessembinder. Bessembinder looked at the performance of publicly traded stocks in the US from 1926 to 2016 …

A few months ago, no one would have noticed British opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn’s address at the annual conference of his Labour Party. But that was before he engineered its biggest increase in vote share since World War II after Theresa May gambled on a snap election and lost her majority. The election, Corbyn told the Labour faithful, “has put …

KHOBAR / Reuters Saudi Arabia and Russia plan to set up a $1 billion fund to invest in energy projects, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said in a interview broadcast by Al Arabiya TV on Monday. The fund, to be finalised during this week’s visit by Saudi King Salman to Moscow, was part of efforts by two of the world’s …