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Natwest shares today in 2024 are lower than they were in 1989...

That time, last century, Maggie Thatcher was still in power, the Web was a dream, and the first mobile text message was years away...

If the red Tories are replaced by red Labour, it's going to be more of the same -- only worse. Think USSR, circa 1975.

Banks are capitalist exploiters of the West, and comrades will want a slice. What's yours is theirs. Those calls for a punitive bank windfall tax are only going to get louder (not quieter). UK bank shares remain risky.

Finance oils the wheels of capitalism and wealth. Finance delivers a generous multiplier effect, that enables a lowly carpenter to buy a midsized house.

A no-finance or low-finance economy has a name -- it is called communism.

With all the negative misery on here, year after year, it's always a surprise that nobody is shorting this share! A 3 x leveraged short on LLOY would have netted +50% since Xmas alone and folks would be raking in the cash.

UK GDP per head has been in decline for well over a century. Used to be no.1 or no.2 in the world, it’s now hovering around no.30. UK has struggled with it for decades, it's not a new thing.

Labour's poll lead over the Tories has fallen a huge 7 points in 2 weeks, due to Labour's humiliating green u-turn and yet more horrific anti-Semitism.

If the Tories can deliver giant tax cuts in H1 2024, and restore the feelgood factor by summer, Rishi can win the UK election in H2 2024.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13081807/Chaos-Labour-poll-lead-falls-seven-points-anti-Semitic-crisis-Rochdale-meeting.html?ico=related-replace

It's been mentioned before -- the ONS is an utterly discredited institution, its figures are often wildly wrong, and they are often subject to wild future revisions. Keep in mind also that the ONS is just a small department with a small number of staff in a small office in London. It's not a great office of state with an AI supercomputer and millions of staff. Thus, it's vital to treat their stats with a large pinch of salt...

One should also note:

1. Don't be surprised if these stats get revised up bigly in a year or so...

2. Strip out the neverending NHS, train and other *strikes* -- which are deliberately designed by red unions to drag down the Tory economy -- and GDP is almost certainly in positive YoY real growth.

3. Look closer at today's press release, and you will see UK nominal GDP grew a huge +5% YoY in Q4 2023 (yes, it really did).

STP -- Think we all know the UK is sliding into hard-left communism, and there is nothing we can do to stop it. Whether it it is red Tories or red Labour, the result is going to be (roughly) the same. More taxes, more surveillance, more oppression. It's just a sliding scale of how bad it gets. And, without question, Labour is going to be worse than Tory.

UK bank shares are struggling (again) because the US is about to enact even tougher banking regulations in 2024, there is the ongoing Iran wobble, while a UK Labour govt may be poised to slam the financial sector with a vicious windfall tax in 2025. The overhang from America, Iran and UK is keeping a lid on LLOY for now.

LTI -- It's a commentary on the UK stockmarket and culture. Misery, doom and pessimism among UK investors, pension funds, govt, media, journalists and analysts are driving the FTSE down into global irrelevance. If I were the Lloyds CEO, I'd be delisting from London and relisting in NY for 2024.

Rich78 -- Yup, the FT got it wrong and mis-predicted the Brexit result. That must sting.

STP -- Can totally understand why UK folks go on a lifetime of benefits. You can get from the state a free house, free car, free food, free cash, the list now is almost endless. Some claim you can make the equivalent of ~£80k a year, if you know which forms to fill in.

You can see why ARM chose to list in the US, and not in the UK. American investors are way more positive, can always see the tech future more clearly than any other nation, and they love to talk companies up. That $123b ARM valuation today is a huge 4 times higher than one the UK FT newspaper published just a few months ago, in a misery-laden report at the time of the float. No wonder the UK stockmarket is all but dead, and the US is half the world equity market.

Piled into China near the top... Piling into India near a top... Sounds good...

Lol.

CGNR has been going since the last century, never sold any gold, and its shareprice has plunged an astonishing -99.9% this century!

Work, wage and financial opportunity in the UK are heavily dependent on where one lives. Within a 20-50 mile radius of Central London, the world is your oyster. Beyond that, not so much.

S&P topped out today at 4999.89!

It beggars belief how far the Bank of England has fallen in the past 10 years or so. From Brexit to recession "predictions" to Covid to inflation to rate-cutting, it's just one mistake after another. Their international reputation is in tatters.

Looks like 5k for the S&P incoming today.

UK total state-pension spending -- as a % of total UK GDP -- has actually *fallen* in the past decade from 8% in 2013 to 7% in 2023.

That is worth repeating -- let it sink in -- the cost of the UK state pension, relative to GDP, is falling (not rising). Supporting the UK state pension is actually getting cheaper.

The biggest rise in underlying UK pension costs is coming from "sickness and disability" claims, which have *tripled* between 2000 and 2023.

Investing £200k in the Nasdaq during the past 15 years would now be worth £3-4m and you'd be one of the richest people in Britain!

All eyes on the S&P500 this week... It looks set top the record 5,000 level for the first time ever in history.

If you'd stuck £100k in LLOY in 1998, a quarter-century ago, you'd today have about £110k... If you'd stuck it in the S&P500, you'd have about £1m and be a millionaire.