DINNER PARTY INTEL: Handy investment

1. Handy investment

Don’t believe all the investment gossip in times of high inflation, warns Credit Suisse chief investment officer Nannette Hechler-Fayd’herbe.  

Chanel bags, preferably those designed by Karl Lagerfeld, rise in value by 7% in normal times and by 17% in high-inflation years, she says.  But the handbags index goes back only 14 years. Similar findings are based on collectibles indices that are compiled in different ways,  in  some cases over a  short period.

2. Medicinal brew

A daily bottle of lager could help to keep men healthy by boosting the range of bacteria that live in their guts, scientists at the University of Lisbon have claimed.

Researchers found that men who drank one 330ml bottle of alcoholic or nonalcoholic lager a day for a month developed a more diverse set of gut microbes that could help to reduce the risk of common chronic conditions, including heart disease and diabetes.

3. Automatic crashes

Almost 400 car crashes over 10 months in the US involved advanced driver-assistance technologies, according to the country’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. It was the first release of large-scale data about these systems.

In 392 incidents from July 1 2021 to May 15 six people died and five were seriously injured. Teslas operating with Autopilot, the more ambitious full self-driving mode, or any of its associated component features were involved in 273 crashes.