Planet Business: Cereal killers, ‘Clintipathy’ and ‘The Crown’

Wall Street has been rattled this week, but then when is it not? This picture of traders working on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) was taken on Monday, the last day of historical "bogey month" October. Markets were relatively scare-free on the day, so whether the trader on the right is yawning, aghast or simply whispering into his hand, it's impossible to tell.

Investor jitters spread later in the week, however, with the lead-narrowing consequences of the FBI’s 11th-hour intervention in the US presidential campaign blamed. The market has “priced in a Clinton win and it hasn’t priced in a Trump win at all”, said one broker/market analyst. Maybe November is Wall Street’s new October.

The lexicon: Clintipathy

"Clintipathy", defined as "a pathological hatred of the Clintons", is brought to us by history professor Gil Troy, author of The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s, who informed Time magazine readers that the condition is partly reasonable, but partly sexist and unfair.

The hatred is rooted in the couple’s roles as symbols of the Hippie Sixties and Yuppie Eighties, according to Troy, but it is old-fashioned sexism that “compounds the culture clash” and colours Hillary as “the schoolmarmish, substitute teacher”.

And yet the Clintons have also undoubtedly made moral missteps in their “Shakespearean relationship” with the US public, and the result now is “a combustible environment [that] perceives minor ethical twitches like major crimes”. As another pithy commentator observed, this may still be the election that puts “emails before females”.

Getting to know: Crispin Odey

Hedge fund manager Crispin Odey is the kind of man who will happily perform a swift about-turn. Earlier this year, he sold down his stake in Sports Direct, saying he had "seen the writing on the wall", only to rebuild his stake days later when the share price fell delightfully low.

This week, he wrote that UK stocks could slump 80 per cent as its post-Brexit economy suffers from the not-so-winning combination of recession and higher inflation. His firm, Odey Asset Management, has short positions – bets that stocks will fall – in a clutch of FTSE 100 stocks, so if he’s right, a crash could generate a bonanza for clients. The Brexit-backing Odey raked it in after the referendum result, but those gains soon evaporated, and his main fund is now nursing some deep losses for 2016 to date. So, on to the next thing, right?

The list: ‘The Crown’ cheat sheet

Netflix's new royal series The Crown, which launches worldwide on Friday, isn't just another costume drama. It's a tanks-on-the-lawn moment by the Californian internet television giant.

1. Money no object: Netflix spends about $6 billion (€5.4bn) a year on content – only sports broadcaster ESPN shells out more – and some estimates suggest that, on a per-episode basis, The Crown will be its most expensive series ever.

2. BBC blues: the BBC had been fighting to win the rights to the series, regarding it as a “classic BBC subject”, but it couldn’t compete with Netflix.

3. Accelerated production: media analysts from UBS highlighted The Crown earlier this year as evidence of "a step-change in activity" from US content players in the European market.

4. Older subscribers: some 60 episodes – six 10-part seasons – are planned, with Netflix hoping the theme of the British royal family will woo both UK subscribers and an older demographic.

5. International growth: Netflix has already shaken off a slowdown in new subscribers. Its international tally swelled by 3.2 million in a glittering third quarter for the reigning content king.

In numbers: Snap, crackle and flop

7

Consecutive quarterly declines in sales at Kellogg’s, with the cereal manufacturer blaming the figures on poor demand for its products.

30

Number of seconds Kellogg’s advertisements from the 1940s said it took to serve your family a bowl of Corn Flakes with milk in the morning. Sadly, this “30-second breakfast” has come up against an interesting new hurdle.

40

Percentage of millennials surveyed by Mintel in 2015 who said cereal was an inconvenient breakfast choice because they had to clean up after eating it.