Investment & Investing

Mainly yes. Tax on interest is just charged after those allowances. Although depending exactly on what you've got in your stocks and shares ISA you may also be looking at stuff that gets taxed as income tax , e.g. bonds (although I am very rusty on all of this).

scary

looking at ftse all share is very different

However, the S&P 500 is up, everything is still booming. This suggests that inflation has driven down the value of money so much that the stock market looks good in comparison, not because it is actually in good health.

Oh yeah, totally. I mean we've printed and borrowed fucking tonnes of money since 2008. That you can get rich from buying and selling worthless digital coins gives some indication of how much slush there is running around.

But I suspect the market currently thinks that the supply issues will solve themselves over the coming quarters. Guess we shall see.

The FTSE 100 is probably a fairer comparison but yeah, your point still stands. No super growthy stocks on this side of the Atlantic that hold a candle to the mega caps in the US. Someone smarter than me can probably chime in with how much of that S&P growth has been driven by the Top 10-15 largest companies. Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Alphabet, Tesla, NVIDIA (yes, NVIDIA is currently top 10!) etc. My guesstimate would be a fuckton of it.

get rich from buying and selling worthless digital coins

.

NVIDIA (yes, NVIDIA is currently top 10!)

:)

I get you, and this is a good illustration of the different impact of using median rather than mean.

Your timing thing is interesting though. I put some cash into a fund in July. 1m up 2%, 2-3m down to 6%. 4m up 1.5%.

So if I'd waited 2 months to go in, i'd now be up perhaps 7%! oop

So if I'd waited 2 months to go in, i'd now be up perhaps 7%!

If we could just know roughly when to get in and get out, we'd be rich!

Inevitably some people end up doing this by chance, and then mistake their good luck for being fucking geniuses.

Edit: Genii?

There was an article in the FT recently on the subject of how much TESLA influences the wider financial market. Apart from being a huge chunk of the index, it also features in a hugely disproportionate amount of derivative trades, due to its volatility (aka Musk tweets).

It's kind of scary / fascinating.

Why the singling out of Nvidia?

I won't be surprised if this is the peak and we're about to see the bear...

Everything was being bought up including gold, Rolexes and cryptos. Too much cash.

If you withdrew a billion or 9, where would you invest it for the upcoming crash?

Nothing for/against it, just because it's up something close to 10,000% over the past 10 years and it's a growth stock poster child.

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Give it to a hedge fund with a world-class protection strategy and wait for the carnage to unfold... wait a bit more then snap shit up when it's dead cheap and liquidity is lacking. Be wary of a dead cat bounce or two but also don't have to time the recovery perfectly, better to err on the side of caution and miss some of the early upside than catching a falling knife.

In phoning up new PensionCo (for new workplace pension) to update some details (they had my old mobile no) I find out they've been holding on to an old workplace pension for nearly 20 years.

Somehow a really old workplace pension had been split into two (I guess it relates to my job before I moved to the US). One part was transferred over to a new PensionCo, but the older part wasn't, and has sat with this company with a really old contact address for 20 years.

It's not a huge amount at all (it would have only been ~2 years of pension contributions when I didn't earn much), but it's a bonus/surprise to find and means I'm in a slightly less behind where I should really be.

What annoys me though (more than my own lack of admin in letting this slip through the net) is that despite holding a critical illness policy for someone with the same name, date of birth and National Insurance number, they're quite happy to keep an out of date address and phone number on the pension record of the same person. Surely they could have something that says "wait a sec, are these two meant to be connected?"

[EDIT] Reminds me of when my bank had two different dates of birth for me, one for my personal account and one for my joint account. WTF!

Didn't realise that Evergrande has finally defaulted, be interesting to see how the state intervenes to contain it

Read something about this, apparently the CCP have a plan and a process where they take over the failed business, hive off the contracts and assets to other enterprises and manage the liabilities over a protracted period so that the whole thing doesn't cause contagion.

The shareholders get wiped out.

Yeh, they had Ray Dalio on Newsnight last night and he said because the debt is in Yuan the state will be able to intervene and stop any fallout wider

A friend of mine just left his job at Strava to join Circa5000 - he tells me they're an ethical investment company, like Nutmeg but they don't put their money into any of the evil things. I'm trying it out with a low monthly payment but can't vouch for it yet. But if anyone wants to try it this link will get you and me £15.

https://circa5000.com/invite?referrer=TWF0dGhldyBTcGFya2Vz&code=156311.755006

Anyone nervous yet?

Nope, just means this month I'm able to buy units for cheaper than last month.

For now, this ^

Reassuring! I wasn't nervous til I went on the FT and the comments were predicting a bloodbath...

Don't read the comments.

But yes, things will get rough.

As long as you didn't buy at the top, and can carry on buying small amounts through the dip things will work out.

Comments are the best part of the FT.

It all depends on your investment horizon. If I wanted to retire next year then yeah I'd be shitting it, because I'd be wanting to sell soon.

As I don't want to retire for another 15 years, I'd actually prefer there to be a crash now**, so that I can buy at a cheaper price, and reap the most benefits of the bounce-back.

HODL

** obviously sucks for whoever's on the receiving end though.