ING, of course, is a bank; and banks don't like falling interest rates, right? For the dominant stream of income is their core business model, i.e. borrowing short-term and lending long-term, reaping the difference in interest rates in the process.

Update as of 27 March: With specific auto tariffs announced by the Trump administration, Renault is the one European car maker in the green, confirming this narrative. The company's competitive edge, hence, ought to reward it with an even higher PE than originally anticipated here, so I now pencil in a ratio of 12.

Update as of 10 April: As written here in February, Delta is the leading carrier among the major US airlines and keeps that pole position even amidst the tariff-induced turmoil. True, the carrier had to jettison its record guidance for 2025 it had issued in January; still, Delta made a gross profit of roughly 1 cent per available seat mile in the traditionally weak winter quarter when other airlines struggle to turn any profit at all (my calculations from an adj.

Update as of 13 May: Amidst the tariff chaos and thus increased uncertainty about underlying growth trends, and after Balfour's recent quarterly report, I lowered exp. revenue growth to 12 per cent p.a., increased profit margins just a notch to 3.5 per cent and reduced the discount rate slightly to 9 per cent, still resulting in a fair value close to 600p.

There's a single reason why American is the least attractive of US legacy carriers (in terms of investing, anyway): its balance sheet. If most airlines and certainly those in the US are loaded up to the hilt with debt, American goes so far as to boast negative equity - any startup would go belly-up with a balance sheet such as this one.

Update as of 10 April: Both commercially and, according to several industry rankings and customer surveys, in terms of its product, Cathay Pacific is up there with the top carriers in international air travel. Only Singapore Airlines, the region's other leading carrier, matches Cathay's remarkable margins and earnings strength.

Update as of 9 April: Just like any other basic resources stock, SSAB got hammered ever since the advent of Trump's reciprocal tariffs and their ongoing escalation down to recession fears; thus, as always with markets tumbling on a broad basis, it's no use to catch a falling knife. Once the current, all-out sell-off is over, however, I stick to SSAB's relatively positive prospects due to the catalysts as given below, since nothing has changed with the EU's investment agenda.

It is one of the three biggest carmakers in the world, with a dominant market share of some 21 per cent in its home market - which actually grew in the recent past. Yet both from a strategic and a global perspective, the Wolfsburgers are under marked pressure.

It's a brutally competitive market without doubt, and with competitors such as Ryanair and its mercurial CEO around, you get perhaps some extra heat compared with other industries. Yet short-haul, leisure-focussed air travel in Europe has seen a few decent years ever since the start of consumers' revenge buying in the aftermath of the pandemic.