Member Info for skier1

Yup, it's yet another tax hike.

A modest 5% dividend in no way compensates for the -40% BDEV share price plunge in the past 18 years, the -10% decline YTD, the worsening dividend tax environment, the worsening CGT tax environment, the worsening ISA tax environment, the worsening pension tax environment, and the Labour push to make housebuilders effectively construct small houses at a big loss.

Barratt is clashing with the Labour regime about their 50% "affordable" house "plan". Vice-Chairman Rayner effectively wants new houses capped at ~80% of their true market value -- and they want shareholders and other capitalist exploiters of the West to pay for it.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/08/29/baffling-affordable-housing-rules-wreck-rayners-building/

How much, in total, did you buy? How much, in total, will you sell? If you bought (say) £10,000, and sold for the lot for £13,000, there is no CGT tax to pay (for now).

"...Patient capital in the form of pension fund assets is needed ASAP to deter & offset parasite short selling outfits like the two who are currently short Rightmove (Kitbury Capital & Hawk Ridge). Why are they short RMV at 21x when an Australian rival trades at 3x their valuation?"...

To be fair, Rightmove management have been (and are) rubbish. Rightmove has a commanding 85-90% share of the UK home-listings market, and a 65-70% operating margin. They should have used that dominance in the 2010s to raise cash or stock and expand abroad at a lightning pace in the 2020s. The UK market has been fully harvested for years. Growth was abroad. Instead, they've sat around, tapping their pencils, waiting for overseas rivals to come in and eat their lunch or take them over. Very lazy "management". And yet another loss for UK Plc. Any future profits, cashflow, software IP, patents, top management jobs or top salaries will inevitably flee the country for Australia or elsewhere. Rightmove has become Wrongmove.

Lloyds app and website down, this morning.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13804193/Lloyds-Bank-app-Hundreds-customers-reporting-issues-online-banking.html?ito=pull-notification&ci=iIPqAR-Wk6&xi=6a085cb7-4530-40ba-ad02-8a411d84a1c1&ai=13804193

The Institute of Directors (IoD) today is reporting a collapse in UK business confidence, due to Labour. The mendacious gloom about the economy, the reckless unions, the surge in political prisoners, it's finally starting to take a toll on the nation's economy.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13802761/Labour-scaring-big-firms-UK-bosses-warn-business-confidence-collapsing-Sir-Keir-Starmers-government-tax-rises-workplace-reform-loom.html

The Nordics forced employees into pseudo-unions by law after Sweden panicked during an attempted Marxist revolution in the 1930s. They have a "light" union model, and bears little resemblance to the "heavy" militant model seen in the UK since the 1960s.

What's more, Scandinavia is just a miniscule 0.3% of the global population. It has not really been replicated successfully anywhere else on the other 99.7% of planet Earth.

Just drive up the motorway to Birmingham or Swansea or Hull or Glasgow and see with your own eyes the utter devastation in these union-scarred landscapes.

At a local, national and international level, there is little to no evidence that unions work for the masses.

If you look at all the heavily unionized industries in the UK, at a microeconomic level, they are all an unmitigated disaster... coal, ships, trains, planes, cars, NHS... the list goes on and on... every single one of the unionized industries has collapsed into oblivion, or they relentlessly generate astonishing financial losses, or they simply don't work.

What's more, the macroeconomic trend clearly shows, the lower the union-membership rate, the richer the country. For example, Switzerland and the US are 50-500% wealthier than the UK, but have 40-60% lower union membership. Cuba has 90% union membership, nearly every worker is in a union, but it is one of the poorest nations on Earth.

Unions sound great, on paper -- help the worker. But, in the real world -- they mostly help the boss.

As somebody once said about Scargill and coal -- he started with a big union and small house... he ended with a small union and big house.

Jeremy Clarkson is writing in The Sun today that Kier Starmer is a "full-on communist". We are moving into scary times.

Regarding Oasis -- they are a pub band that got lucky. Never cracked America. But fair play to Liam and Noel. They have a great line in banter. And if I could make 50 mill in a month for slow-strumming a GCSE Music guitar and wailing into a microphone the same way for every single song, I'd be on it like a rat up a drainpipe 🎸

Nvidia initially plunged -8% on Q2 results, but has recovered so far a bit to -4% due a huge $50b buyback. Revenue growth numbers look a touch slower than expected (122% vs. 130%). This feels like we're at or near peak-AI.

On a related sidenote, Warren Buffett now has a staggering $287 billion in pure cash. Feels like he's prepping for a stockmarket crash.

Today is a major pivot-point in whether the US markets -- and by extension UK markets and LLOY -- continue their uptrend, or begin a downtrend. Nvidia reports its results at 9pm UK.

SMCI, a superhot AI stock, similar to Nvidia has plunged 20-25% today. The markets are jumpy.

Many have been saying that on here for months and years... The Labour regime continues to overegg the misery pudding and deliberately talk down the UK economy to accelerate the vampire squid of Marxist state control that is wrapping its blood funnel around the face of the Great British taxpayer. It is time to stop. The UK economy is in pretty good shape, recovering strongly from a Labour financial crisis (2008), a China Covid crisis (2020), and a Russia energy crisis (2022). Time for the Labour regime to speak the economic truth. Tax hikes are NOT needed.

..."Pensions are therefore responsible for the economic mess we are in, so must now pay the price"...

UK today is the world's no.1 fastest-growing G7 major economy globally on the whole planet, for 3 of the past 4 years... and all while clearing up the mess from a Labour financial crisis (2008), a China Covid crisis (2020), and a Russia energy crisis (2022).

Time to stop posting the economic lies.

And time to stop sowing fear and division among Britain's vulnerable pensioners.

There's no need for it.

UK in H1 2024 (thanks to the Tories) is the world's no.1 fastest-growing G7 economy, it has the world's no.2 lowest state debt in the entire G7 worldwide, and it has near-record-low unemployment.

There is absolutely *no need whatsoever* for yet more Starmer gloom, more doom, more self-inflicted misery, or more tax in H2 2024. None whatsoever. Zero. None.

Here's what's *really* happening... The Marxists are taking Orwellian control of your freedom to speak, your freedom to protest, and now your family's wallet.

A dripfeed revolution.

To be fair, telling lies is what politicians do. Their job is to fake it til they make it.

The real underlying problem is the "useful idiots" who voted Labour or proxy-Labour (aka Reform) to hand D*ck Turpin a super-majority. We're not gonna raise taxes, honest... Ah, sounds good... Have my vote 🤦‍♂️

Labour looks set to increase CGT tax by an eye-watering amount in Oct 2024. Possibly nearly doubling it for some. It's going to make the already unattractive London FTSE stockmarket even more unattractive.

As for LGEN -- folks have been tipping LGEN since forever... but it never goes anywhere. The share price was around £2 last century, and it remains around £2 this century. There are much better stocks out there.

Not sure I'd be celebrating a company with declining revenue today and declining R&D for the product (revenue) of tomorrow.

BT really needs an AI or quantum story, to reignite its share price. Something for shareholders to get excited about, beyond overpriced broadband or patchy mobile.

Cost-cutting and research-cutting and job-cutting to the bone is short-termist financial engineering... It's not long-term growth.

Revolut has 2 x more customers worldwide than Lloyds, and a 10 x faster growth rate for both revenue and customers. Revolut is a fintech bank of the future. Lloyds is a fossil mortgage bank from the previous century.

That said, Revolut is the biggest startup in all of Europe... Which means, in our Great British tradition, it is surely only a matter of time before the Americans swoop in, buy it up on the cheap, and relocate the HQ, top jobs, IP and profit overseas 👍