Member Info for fleccy

I don't understand what the Triple lock has to do Lloyds, to warrant so much debate? I'm not sure what most on here define as wealthy, but my guess is that most are working class who've saved their @rses off, and invested rather than blowing their cash on booze, fags, and takeaways. People who rely on state pension have either made bad choices, or been too timid to take chances and missed out on opportunities as they showed themselves. I think we can all look back, with hindsight, and say I wish I'd bought that house then, or invested in that stock when it was dirt cheap. Apart from events out of our control, most are where they are because of ourselves.

This article from 2020 makes my point.

"End of the landline? One in five households ditch home phones - and 72 per cent of those who keep them say it's only for the broadband, show figures
Research by comparethemarket.com showed 1 in 5 homes still have landlines
Less than a quarter of 18 to 34 year olds found to have landlines in their homes
20% of people said they got rid of home phone due to cold calls and scammers"

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8949459/One-five-households-ditch-home-phones.html

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2021/04/26-percent-of-uk-people-never-use-their-landline-for-phone-calls.html

"A new Opinium survey of 2,001 UK adults, which was conducted in mid-March 2021 and commissioned by Uswitch, has revealed that 26% of people with a landline don’t even have a phone attached to it and 35% of respondents said they only have a landline because it’s needed for their broadband connection.
By now it’s a well-known fact that traditional landline phone services are in terminal decline, at least they are for the residential market. Today most of us own a Mobile phone and probably make way more use of it than our dusty home phones, many of which are connected via a copper line over the traditional phone (PSTN / POTS) network. This is hardly a surprise, given the higher cost of call packages via traditional home phones.

On top of that a lot of people also complement this with Voice-over-IP (VoIP) services (Skype, Vonage etc.) and free internet messaging solutions (Email, Facebook, WhatsApp etc.), all of which are changing how we communicate. The number of homes with a landline has thus fallen by c.4 million (down 15%) since the year 2000 to about 22 million connections now."

"I know what's going on because I still have contacts in BT voice networks and they have been trying to tell the likes of Marc Allera that killing pstn in 2025 is not a done deal, but he knows best because he's got a degree in business studies."

The guys who work in BT Voice networks, associated with designing and maintaining PSTN might have an opinion, but that's all it is since their specialisation is different than the VOIP systems using pure IP networks. It's still early 2022, so BT have more than three years to sort this out, which should be easy as the underlying technology is tried and tested. I'm with Sky, connected via Openreach FTTC broadband, and although I have a telephone line, I don't have a phone plugged into it. I have a mobile on a sim only contract, as does my wife, and we make all our calls via mobile, or WhatsApp. We're not alone in deciding to scrap the landline, I have spoken to many who've done the same, why would anyone pay for the expense of landline calls, when you have unlimited calls for less than £7.50 a month in my case, and less than that in my wife's case. Ok we have two mobiles, but that's our choice. As far as WhatsApp's concerned, we use that to video call friends and family, it's no big leap for people to migrate to different systems. I don't get your argument that PSTN is required after 2025, since a large percentage of telephone users have already stopped using the PSTN network.

"The shutdown of the Sys X and Axe 10 processors being one of them.
The "written in stone" 2025 closure of the voice network seems to be more like written in polyfilla.
And UPS for every home?
Yeah, right.Great planning as usual from the idiots who know nothing about the technology."

Terraplane, this wont stop the PSTN switch off before 2026; All this means is that BT are re-looking at the product offerings around Digital voice. My guess is, that many will move onto a Hybrid mobile/Voip service, probably covered under a mobile contract. The tech is already available to use mobile for voip via Wifi, for example WhatsApp, so I suspect BT will supply mobiles with a Voip App installed, utilising Broadband when available and the mobile network when not. For rural users, who for some exceptional reason don't have mobile coverage, then some sort of UPS might fill that gap. Chances are all the other Mobile providers will operate a similar service, with each provider supplying their own Voip apps for Wifi access as part of converged offerings. I don't really see this news as any sort of gamechanger.

"Not really, Barclays is down 30% over the last year, but Lloyds and Natwest are both inline with the FTSE."

I meant Barclays is down 30% relative to the FTSE.

"You will see Lloyd’s sp hitting *35p - 40p* range in 2022...
Happy to put £10 to charity on it.....ALL IMHO-DYOR"

I hope so, I'll be topping up big time.

"TheReducer post 14.46 Barclays board
Wish i could word things like so .
Would also apply to Lloyds me-thinks ?"

Not really, Barclays is down 30% over the last year, but Lloyds and Natwest are both inline with the FTSE.

https://www.google.com/finance/quote/LLOY:LON?window=1Y&comparison=LON%3ABARC%2CLON%3ANWG%2CINDEXFTSE%3AUKX

I hoping for 41p again by the 6th April, the same day I'm topping up my ISA. I don't see much chance of that, but I'd love to see the price drop from here, even though I currently hold 290,928 Lloyds shares. As far as the future, 70p is easily doable, even 60p is far too cheap imo.

"You are better off buying quality US growth every time over this capital destructive U.K. dividend rubbish. Post brexit Lloyds couldn’t break .70p it now can’t break .50p, and a 4 pc yield compensates for that? "

Porsche, you are the complete polar opposite of me. Since market's/sectors, and growth vs value move in cycles, wouldn't it make sense to say that Value/Dividend and growth stocks are overdue a cycle rotation?
You're telling people to invest in Big US tech, when they are facing huge regulatory headwinds in the near future. I suspect Warren Buffet would disagree with your view.

"could be storing up problems further down the line for banks when mortgage and credit card payments are due."

Anything unsecured is risky, but UK mortgages are pretty much cast iron. Unlike the US in 2007, UK property is supprted by high demand. People are desperate to get out of rental into home ownership, and the majority of UK mortgages are in positive equity.

A speech aimed at increasing negative sentiment, depressing sterling, and by extension hitting UK focused stock prices.

Dividend stocks may be out of fashion, but the dividends are a substitute for growth, since you can grow the value of your investment by dividend reinvestment. My view is reinvest and top up now, and reap the rewards when prices normalise.

"This share is 100% a dividend play & with inflation around 8% the divi lags behind. There that’s why the drop."

Talking down the UK economy.

Apparently Bank stocks are taking a hit due to Bond jitters.

"The major regulatory blunder is an early embarrassment for C.S. Venkatakrishnan, the newly-appointed chief executive of Barclays, whose previous roles included heading up the bank's global markets and risk operations"

If he is in any was culpable, then he should go too. I'm just pointing out, that new CEO's have a tendency to kitchen sink as much bad news at the start of their tenure. Maybe they're compelled to report this immediately, or maybe not, I don't know; Either way there'll probably be a bunch of US class action lawsuits on the back of this.

"barclays getting mauled this morning re a trading error..you would of thought there would be more back up /risk checks"

New captain at the helm. Would this have been reported immediately, if Staley was still steering the ship? I suspect the new Captain is clearing the decks, before setting sail.

"Lots of American banks would love to aquire Barclays North American highy profitable investment banking and capital markets businesses"

No doubt they would, but my point was that they wouldn't be able to, since the US competition authorities wouldn't allow it. Any acquisition attempt would be challenged by the other banks, on competition grounds, and likely blocked by the authorities.

"Eightyeight88
Barclays Yes
Lloyds No"

Why do you say that Stagecoach? Barclays took over the investment assets of Lehman in 2008, and in view of Barclays US assets any merger would raise big competition issues. A merger with Lloyds wouldn't have such issues, since Lloyds is a UK focused retail bank, without an investment banking arm.

I'm not sure how they can offer interest rates at double the BOE base rate, on savings up to £250,000. It could get quite expensive, if popular. It will likely spark a response from the major high street lenders, should it be successful. We could soon see an interest rate war between Banks.

I find her quite grating, she makes assertions that are obviously politically motivated. I assume you're watching the Treasury Committee questioning Sunak?