The latest Investing Matters Podcast episode featuring Jeremy Skillington, CEO of Poolbeg Pharma has just been released. Listen here.
Gold is soaring. Billionaires are bailing out of stocks. Wall Street starting to wobble.
Discuss...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13180433/billionaires-Jeff-Bezos-Leon-Black-Mark-Zuckerberg-sell-stocks.html?ico=related-replace
Somebody bought ~£60k of shares yesterday and made ~£20k overnight. Pure luck and coincidence, no doubt.
LTI,
You're on the wrong side of history, mate. The FTSE100 rocketed +400% between 1984 and 1997, an average gain of roughly +30% per every single year. Gordon Brown raided pensions in 1997 and taxed dividends to death -- the FTSE100 has barely moved a pathetic +50% between 1997 and 2024, an average "gain" of roughly +2% every single year. Dividend tax obliterated FTSE100 growth overnight by -90% (and everyone's related pensions or savings or assets). It has destroyed the London stockmarket as a credible worldwide player. Some estimates suggest the Brown tax raid has cost $1-2T in lost money, enough on its own to put the FTSE100 up at 10-15k today. Finally, as someone posted on here the other day -- removing stamp duty would immediately deliver capital gains of £100b, some 5-20 times more than today's silly ISA gimmick.
It's also worth noting that any (small) tax gains from a UK ISA are going to be completely wiped out by the massive +5% council tax rises coming in April 2024, and the neverending fiscal drag on unchanged income-tax thresholds.
Hunt and Rishi had one job today... And they blew it.
LTI,
If Hunt were serious about juicing up the UK stockmarket, he'd signal the abolishment of the pernicious dividend tax, the abolishment of uncompetitive stamp duty, the reversal of pension-govt-bond regulations that funnel cash away from shares, and the creation of a Norway-like $1T state-investment fund. That lot would take the FTSE100 to 20,000 by 2030.
Instead, we get a gimmicky ISA that probably less than 10% of the UK population will ever properly use. Don't be surprised if most people just buy a US S&P500 ETF listed in London! What's more, the FTSE100 has barely moved today on the UK ISA news -- even the market knows it's a pre-election gimmick.
UK ISA is a gimmick -- designed to placate Tory City chums and excite middle-class voters nationwide just before the next election.
Let's assume (very generously) that 1/3 of the 12m adults with ISAs decide to buy into a UK ISA with the full £5k... That gives £20b to invest in the £2.6T UK stockmarket... Equivalent to an insignificant 0.8% gain... This is going to move the needle less than 1%... It’s an election gimmick.
It should be 5-10p off income tax. And a raising of the starting thresholds by +5%. People are tired of overpaying tax, and then watching it get swallowed up by the bottomless pit of comrades who run the state apparatus.
Actually, London (2nd) just closed the gap on New York (1st) in the latest Global Financial Centre Index (GFCI) by a huge +10 points at the end of 2023. London's banking, insurance, law and forex are in good shape. The City of London is NOT declining. It remains as strong as ever.
But the London Stock Exchange (LSE) -- where shares are listed and traded -- is in a mess. That is the part that the LSE and UK govt need to fix. Nobody worldwide wants to list their firm in London, because the locals talk them down or sell them off on the cheap. Just ask ARM...
That post proves my point to a tee... We Brits just don't have the culture for stockmarket *optimism* -- which is the fuel that drives shareprices higher. Instead, we prefer misery, pessimism, fear and hysteria, panicking wildly about PE ratios. The US market is way more focused on the forward-looking, longterm, tech potential, and will drive stocks higher to help firms achieve their goals of funding, awareness, and excitement. While New York builds trillion-dollar stocks (like Facebook), London wallows in misery and decline.
Doubt the UK stockmarket will ever recover. There's just too much pessimism, self-loathing and misery now in the UK. Small, medium and large companies are being sold off abroad en-masse and on the cheap. Tech firms throw in the towel at the absolute earliest opportunity. Stock exchanges are being hollowed out. Liquidity has evaporated. A study last week showed the UK to be the 2nd most-miserable nation on all of planet Earth. We just don't have the culture anymore to talk up stocks or run a buoyant market.
CBX has been re-listed as CEL AI, with the ticker CLAI.
It is pivoting into wellness and beauty AI.
Interesting to note that 50% of all UK bets by volume today are being placed on a "Conservative majority" for the 2024 UK nationwide election. With 30% being placed on a "hung parliament". Only 20% on Labour...