Member Info for skier1

..."What’s that saying ? Buy the rumour and sell the news or something like that ! Classic example here"...

Err, the strongest new rumours on the Vodafone-Three merger first began back in Feb 2022... The VOD share price has since collapsed an astonishing -50%...

Sell the rumour, and sell the news.

As predicted -- last week -- the market is not liking the deal.

VOD share price is now at its lowest level since 1997, in the last century!

Vodafone is taking on a rubbish network, extra debt, and 1-2 years of nagging uncertainty while the Britain-hating CMA authority decides at its leisure whether to give the red or green light (probably red).

There is a painful road ahead.

The UK state is quietly taking control of our family's daily lives and lifestyles -- and the pace is accelerating. From govt-run food prices to govt-subsidized energy to food prohibition to the relentless tax ramp to 24hr camera surveillance, every month ratchets up yet another notch of state control. Barely a week goes by in the UK without the rollout of a new law, new tax, or new punishing fine. Next year is an election year.

It wouldn't be a surprise here, at all, to see UK state mortgage subsidies and repossession bailouts -- paid for by a bank windfall tax of billions -- in 2024 or 2025.

This is going to hang over LLOY (and other bank shares) for the foreseeable.

There are wild price variations between UK housing types over the past 50 years. Outside London, flats haven't gone up much, due to oversupply, absurd leasehold-freehold laws, scandalous build quality (noise pollution), and social stigma. Semi-detached and some terraced houses have gone up a lot, but prices are capped by the stigma of noisy neighbours you can never escape. Detached prices have gone through the roof, due to snobbery and no annoying neighours, and this is the category that has mostly driven 10 x UK growth since the 1970s and 1980s.

Would be good, also, to see some median stats, and not just average or mean.

PS. Who is moving to Spain now?

Good grief.

Stop it!

That "survey" feels like yet another absurd "forecast" that will almost certainly be wrong.

ScotRef will win... oh.

Trump will not win... oh.

Brexit will not win... oh.

Brexit will drive a massive recession and unemployment... oh.

There will be no inflation... oh.

There will be a UK recession... oh.

Germany will grow... oh.

There will be Eurozone growth... oh.

Labour will get a 140 majority... lol.

UK is the fastest-growing economy in the G7 worldwide and now outgrowing the Eurozone!

Net wealth per-head in the UK jumped higher than every major country in the Eurozone in 2022. Net wealth per-head in the UK is now +50% higher than Germany and almost triple that of Spain!

Brexit is starting to get a head of steam.

It is time to stop the bitterness and misery, stop listening to the wildly wrong Brexit "forecasts" from the Bank of England and others, and get back to making Britain even greater. Stop talking down your own country. The UK is changing. You need to change, too.

There are a heck of a lot of headwinds. Only 1 country in the world today sells commercial lab meat (Singapore). No more countries in the world are selling it commercially since 2020. Italy is going to ban lab meat in 2023. The world's most-advanced lab-meat manufacturer is currently only producing the equivalent of 0.2 cows per entire year -- barely a heifer's rear leg...

Lots of wild "forecasts" out there, but the actual global output so far looks wildly below industry expectations or predictions.

Eurozone has plunged into recession in H1 2023.

Germany is now the sick man of Europe.

Ireland, Holland and Greece also shrinking.

Britain is growing.

UK is the fastest-growing G7 country for two years in a row in 2021 and 2022, and now outgrowing the Eurozone in 2023. Britain is getting a Brexit boost, as predicted.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/08/euro-zone-enters-recession-after-germany-ireland-growth-revision.html

Vodafone is about to overpay for a rubbish mobile network with rubbish customer service and is groaning under an epic debt load. Vodafone has already got roughly $70,000,000,000.00 of debt and is about to take on Three for another $6,000,000,000.00 of debt! Those IG sellers may well be right...

Kaupthing and other banks went bust with $85b of debt in 2008 and UK savers got their full savings back from the UK regulator within weeks.

Global debt markets are so big and strong now, in 2023, the UK could easily bail out savers with a trillion dollars or more in weeks. The backup guarantee looks good.

A123,

All UK banks are protected by the £85k govt guarantee. There is (literally) zero risk to that 7% rate.

Yes, that was posted last week. Japan and US markets, in particular, look very bullish right now.

The mismanagement here is quite staggering!

Vodafone bizarrely quits the high-profit US market...

Dives recklessly into the low-profit India market...

And is now vastly overpaying for the UK's (by far) worst mobile network...

VOD just stumbles from one clanger to the next.

There's a reason why the share price has collapsed an astonishing-80% this century... Wouldn't be a surprise now to see this fall under 50p before the end of the year... It's just one strategic disaster after another.

That's exactly what the BBC article points out.

The academic theories suggest lab meat cannot scale up.... The world's most advanced lab-meat seller in the real world today is struggling to make more than 0.1 tons a year... While Spanish and Brazilian firms desperate to hype their valuations are now claiming they'll be making 1,000 tons a year in a few quarters.

There is a reality gap.

With a bit of effort, it's currently possible to squirrel away over £1000 a month at 7% interest and completely risk-free in a bank or building society. There haven't been deals as good as that for a decade or two.

Some great savings deals out there right now, with rates in the 5-9% range. Great alternatives to divvy stocks.

Very negative article on the BBC today about the longterm outlook for lab meat and fish.

Essentially, saying the lab meat dream is over.

The industry can't scale up.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-65784505

Sorry, folks, we need to put aside our envy, self-loathing, and bitterness. There is no getting around the stats and facts. America is ~3 times richer per-head (net) than the UK.

As for the "medical bills" stuff... The UK NHS has 7 million waiting for to see a doctor. It's like a 1970s USSR bread queue.

LTI,

US net wealth per-head in 2023 is almost 3 times higher than the UK.

Imagine, if you have £1m of net assets today... if you lived in the US, you'd probably have £3m.

America's success and wealth is astonishing. Like night and day, compared with almost the rest of the entire world. Only Switzerland gets close.

The US big tech giants (BTG) rose to the top by out-competing and out-innovating everyone else on the planet. Good luck to them. It would be grossly unfair to break them up after a fair win.

The US has bottomless access to funding because it is a successful, ultra-rich country. Again, it got there by out-competing everyone one else.

The UK CMA was (allegedly) ordered by the US FTC to block Microsoft-Activision.

Britain has been selling off its "family silver" for decades. We love to talk ourselves down, and we love to sell-off our best stuff on the cheap. We are a weird nation with a weird culture (sadly).