RE: Another listed company falls5 Mar 2024 22:13
Not to go over old ground again but the UK stockmarket has been our of favour since Brexit; I'm afraid Boris doesn't win any plaudits either (regardless of what he said, the UK stockmarket still declined).
Personally, I think it's a combination of the 2008 banking crisis and the subsequent new solvency rules (which has seen pension funds moving increasingly into bonds) and Brexit (however you like to cut it, the City's "domain" has been reduced by Brexit and it's longer the destination for companies that want to trade in the EU). The EU bourses have made inroads into the City's territory and although the impact may not be as significant as once might have been feared, has still none the less helped to undermine the City. You could also perhaps throw the ongoing demise of the Hong Kong stock exchange into the mix too; given the historic ties between London and Hong Kong, and the continuing shift to Shanghai, London is not quite the international centre it once was.
However, at the end of the day, if British private investors continue to chase their rainbows in the US etc. then it becomes an increasingly uphill battle and I think it's about time that the government removed the tax-free incentive to invest offshore via ISAs (personally I'd stop any new overseas investments being made in existing ISAs and, perhaps, introduce transitional rules to force ISA holders to divest of their existing overseas holdings at some point in the next, say, ten years). UK PIs might not like it at first but if money is re-redirected from (say) the US market into the UK market then we should start to see some recovery in UK equities (the price rises in the US are, in part, being driven by cash rather than fundamentals). At the end of the day, if UK investors choose to forego ISAs, in preference to ordinary share trading accounts, going forward then the tax generated can be used to pay down the National Debt.