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I’ve been in company schemes that only opened once a year, and if you missed the deadline you had to wait another 12 months, so would be worth confirming with employer if that is the nature of this scheme or if maybe it has a cutoff date for applications on each new month (to align with payroll admin etc in that month). I always took the approach to get a voucher that was either at the limit, or based on a specific bike I knew I would buy +£x and then spending surplus on accessories and clothing (I usually end up with tubes, tyres , bags, bottles, cages, cycle computers etc) to make up to voucher total or within a few pence of it
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Yes exactly - elevated PSA and enlarged prostate can both be attributable to other non-cancer related causes, leaving biopsy as current standard of care for confirmatory testing, which is in itself inherently risky to perform, and the new study aims to compare it to newer diagnostic tools like fast MRI etc
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Obviously recognise age and family history would place me in a high risk group but would prefer to hedge my bets on seeing the outcome of the soon to start TRANSFORM study comparing risk benefit of a number of existing and new diagnostic and treatment options. Should be 3 years until they get the results from the first patient cohort of 12500 men in UK, then another 300000 men into next cohort but first results of that probably a decade away or so I think
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I’m in early 50s and have been thinking about the prostate test, but what puts me off is that there is presumably some rationale behind the absence of a national screening program, in that the risks of over-diagnosis and over-treatment may outweigh (at a population level) the benefits of earlier detection of those cancers which would actually proceed to be harmful. My dad got diagnosed a couple of years ago at 78 when by chance had a PSA test which was significantly elevated, followed by digital exam, followed by biopsy, which confirmed malignant tumour, and after hormone treatment and a month of radiotherapy he recently got the all clear.
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Have not watched the video but I don’t think anyone should necessarily infer too much about the broader market from the perspective of buffets historically high amount of cash. He is defined by the value investing approach, buying undervalued and selling overvalued stocks - I think his recent actions are mainly a consequence of certain holdings like Apple meeting his selling criteria (and the amount of cash on hand is a consequence of how successful those investments have been, rather than him wanting to hold a specific amount of cash), i am sure he will be looking for where to invest that money next, as far as I am aware he is not known as someone that tries to time the market. I believe that he (or Berkshire Hathaway) still holds a very large amount of stocks that continue to meet his criteria as value investments and which would be expected to weather any volatility or uncertainty in the short to medium term (like a lot of the S&P500 outside of the mega cap tech stocks)
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Yes agreed but I suppose I was thinking about how the indirect implications of your plan might look, in that by placing the money in that non-taxable environment for your benefit and in excess of the benefit which the law entitles you to as an individual, you are avoiding the alternative which would be to place the money in an investment which would potentially be subject to tax hence why HMRC could view it as improper
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I suppose it’s not easy to extrapolate the HMRC £100 interest rule to PBs held in child’s name, and I think HMRC approach would be based more on core principles that money held in a Child’s account should be solely for Child’s benefit and both the initial investment and any income derived from it should not be subject to being claimed back by the parent at a future date, because if they were than it could have the appearance of intentional tax evasion, i.e. sidestepping the £50K allowance on PBs and their associated benefits that adults are granted.
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Sorry you are right I misrepresented that, 38 is the current Shiller PE ratio which smooths out price and earnings over the 10 year period in question and is not the usual 1 year PE ratio.
This site shows 2 charts comparing the PE ratio and Shiller PE ratio over the last hundred years or so
https://www.longtermtrends.net/sp500-price-earnings-shiller-pe-ratio/ -
Nice, reminds me of Robert Shiller’s P/E based method of forecasting expected future returns from S&P500, but looked at multiple 10 year timeframes and varied it by looking at actual annualised returns over multiple 10y periods from various starting points, this gave me a bit of a nerd-on when I first saw it in his book Irrational Exuberance. If you take todays P/E of 38 for the index, the chart shows that you might reasonably expect (based on historical performance) a return of 0% over the next 10 years from an S&P based tracker. Note the image included here indicates current PE as 31 which it was in December 2023 when that chart was last updated, and does not take into account the significant growth this year driven by a very small number of mega cap tech stocks rather than participation in the rise by the broader index . So although it is generally advised to not try and time the market, there are some valid considerations about whether lump
Sum Investments into index tracker funds are a good idea at specific points in time
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