Member Info for skier1

..."[LLOY] over 5% down, nyuk, nyuk, nyuk"...

You can blame Jeremy Hunt, UK chancellor, for this one today.

Hunt spent most of the weekend panicking about a "serious risk" to the UK economy and making other preposterous doom-loop statements to various TV stations... Despite the actual capital at risk from SVB bank being less than a tiny 0.1% of the entire UK economy.

Yet another example of Britain's growing culture of self-loathing misery and excessive hysteria.

Dow Futures are up 300 points, and the US govt has assured SVB and Signature depositors they will get access to their cash.

Mini-crisis over.

Anyone else noticed a large number of empty pumps and long car queues at UK petrol stations in the past week or so?

What's going on?

Yes, pretty much every major bank on the planet today is (or was) losing money in govt bonds -- on paper -- due to the post-covid inflation spike.

Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) looks like an outlier. SVB is an ultra-high-risk lender for tech startups in California. Boom has been followed by tech bust... Lloyds is a low-risk lender to marketing co-ordinators in S****horpe. Whole different ballgame.

As predicted, 6 months ago...

Britain's cultural desire for self-loathing is quite something.

No matter what the number, up or down, Britain's economists, analysts and media simply cannot control their urges to talk down the country and sneer at its future prospects. They are out of control. GDP growth is now a "slump".

We truly are the weirdest, most miserable nation on Earth :-(

There was 40cm of fresh snowfall last night on the slopes of Cairngorm (Aviemore), east-central Scotland.

Brix
Good luck, mate. Hope the gamble pays in spades. Sounds like you're eyes-wide-open on it.

EOG has collapsed an astonishing -96% from its peak.

Will never understand the outdated British obsession to gamble on oilies and pour money into a hole of dinosaur juice that has a 90%+ chance of failure.

LLOY is (still) overpaying dividends, and underinvesting in future growth markets. It suffers from classic British short-termist mal-management, egged on by substandard pension funds. There is a reason why the LLOY shareprice has slumped -30% since 2010.

Wouldn't crow too much about dividends -- they (ultimately) limit shareprice upside, and they are the next big target for painful tax grabs by the leftwing Tories and Labour ultras. Net-net, the dividend obsession is not good for British firms (like Lloyds).

Well over 90% of new UK car sales are sold on finance (debt) and have been for years.

Know someone who has a £25k Kia SUV on a PCH (lease) deal for £170 a month. It's practically free motoring. Some great deals out there (if patient).

To be fair, the London Stock Exchange has been in decline since the late-1990s, decades before Brexit.

Many, many reasons...

An outdated, obsessive and bizarre shareholder-dividend culture. Exchange-listing rules that are way more restrictive than New York. A frenzied small-investor culture that loves to gamble on oily holes in the ground, yet shuns tech growth. A bizarre and ultra-miserable analyst culture that takes pride in talking down every British company until they are crushed. And an even more ultra-bizarre civil-service culture where govt officials actively take pride in egging on foreign firms to asset-strip UK tech champions. London (and UK) has been happy for decades to wave off DeepMind, ARM and many other tech geniuses into overseas hands.

The LSE's decline began decades ago. It is nothing new.

NI and Hampshire are both hovering around 1.9m population.

Russia hovers around $32k GDP PC PPP. Northern Ireland hovers around $31k GDP PC PPP.

Plenty of other comparisons, too.

NI population is -65% smaller than Yorkshire.

Apple -- one single company -- exports more revenue worldwide in 2 weeks than NI does for the entire population globally in a whole year!

Point being... don't get carried away with the NI hysteria...

Don't get too hung-up on Northern Ireland. NI represents only a tiny 2% of the whole UK economy. GDP per-head is lower than Russia (at war). Its population is smaller than Hampshire.

LTI
Yes, mate. It's getting tiresome. Same old nonsense and hysteria every few weeks.

The "fruit and veg" wobble sounds like more Project Fear hysteria by Remainerist ultras.

Same old playbook... Focus on one hot topic, exaggerate wildly the issue for a few weeks, "predict" endless future scenarios of misery and doom... Rinse and repeat.

Last quarter we were plunging into economic recession collapse... This quarter we are about to starve to death from a tomato collapse... Next quarter we'll be in some other hysterical mania...

Zzzz...

Those who like buybacks (at LLOY) have a new fan in Warren Buffett...

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/25/warren-buffett-annual-letter-berkshire-hathaway-stock-buybacks.html

It's been possible to get as much as 7-8% gross interest from UK savings accounts in recent months.

Always amazed at how few people shop around for the best savers.

As predicted, months ago, inflation will tumble in 2023. Wholesale inflation has already crashed. For example, gas prices this week are at an 18-month low. Retail deflation will follow.

As predicted, months ago, the UK is in much better economic shape than the Remainerist media loop-of-doom narrative.

Project Fear has lost again...

Reducing the people's freedom to travel in their own country -- on roads that the people already paid for -- is not Western democracy. It is communism.

Britain must have a referendum on LTNs. Let the silent majority speak.