A couple of readers have asked me what I think about the MPs’ expenses scandal that’s turned the British Isles into a Banana Republic. My first thought is Banana Republic politics is rather fitting for the UK today, given our dire national finances, unelected leader and last week’s threat to our debt’s AAA status. Beyond [...]
Commentary
First-time buyers under 35 who are saving a cash deposit for a house might want to haul over to Abbey’s website, pronto. The bank has a new product called the Abbey 5% ‘Home Saver’ Account that at a glance looks ideal for any saver who qualifies. It certainly beats the UK government’s approach to helping [...]
Alas it seems Zopa, the UK peer-to-peer lender, isn’t immune to the downturn – at least not if my recent experience is anything to go by. Readers may recall I was worried that bad debts would rise at Zopa as far back as March 2008. My fear was that consumers starved of finance by the [...]
I had a lot of fun today covering the UK Budget over on the Monevator Twitter channel. It was fun racing other finance bloggers and the bloke who does the BBC captions to announce the news. There were two occasions though when I was late with my updates. Both times it was because I was [...]
Amid the horror story that was the UK budget today, one bright spot stood out for those of us trying to save and invest our way to wealth. The government is raising the annual limit on ISA contributions from £7,200 to £10,200. Half of this ISA limit can be ‘wrapped’ around cash savings, just like [...]
The only thing worse than losing money in the investing game is thinking about profitable opportunities you missed out on. (Yes, investing is pretty much a recipe for misery. Seriously, go invest in a tracker instead). Anyone brave enough to buy certain UK bank shares a few weeks ago would by now have made a [...]
(Source: Google Finance) When I wrote about currency risks and opportunities for investors in January, I mentioned I was going to leave my holdings in Japan untouched, rather than cashing in on the Japanese yen’s strength by converting my Nikkei tracker funds back into UK pounds. At the end of March, however, I changed my [...]
Eating breakfast this morning, I caught Hugh Hendry, the gloomy and currently outperforming UK fund manager, on CNBC. Hendry’s main call, which he has been rewarded by repeating for months now, is to avoid equities. Yes, the market has fallen, Hendry says, but that doesn’t mean it won’t keep falling. Look at the Great Crash [...]
Today Lloyds Banking Group ceded control to the UK government in return for UK taxpayers insuring £260 billion of toxic loans it acquired via its government-brokered merger with HBOS. The UK government’s stake has jumped from 45% to 65% under the terms. Lloyds has also agreed with its new owners that it will lend an [...]
Interest rates, the economy, the stock market… everything is down. The only way (some day) is up!
A few months ago, nobody but a few U.S. Federal Reserve groupies had ever heard of quantitative easing. Yet today we’re told it’s the only thing that can save the financial system from meltdown. Indeed, the U.S. authorities have been moving towards quantitative easing for months, while the Bank of England has just got a [...]
Update: Voting is now closed, and we’re into round 3. Thanks everyone! Regular readers may recall that Monevator is in a financial blog competition, hosted by Free Money Finance. Well, we made it into round 2! Today I’m up in game 8, which you’ll find here. To vote, you read my post and my rival’s [...]
I spent a few hours this morning reading Warren Buffett’s new 2008 letter to shareholders. Maybe I should be worried the direction my life is taking, but Buffett’s annual letter has become a highlight of the year for me. It’s hard to write about investing in an engaging way (as Monevator subscribers will doubtless confirm) [...]
My bet that HSBC (and Standard Chartered) were weathering the crisis better than other UK banks has taken another knock, with the FT revealing today HSBC’s plans to raise £12 billion to shore up its finances. The bad news has long been expected, and the is price down 45% since October 2008. (To think that [...]
I was going to post this yesterday, but creator Jonathan Jarvis’ website was down, presumably under the load of thousands of Wall Street bankers (or their secretaries) desperately clicking to learn where they went so wrong: .
A quick thought on this week’s money news Another action-packed week, with fears about banks continuing, manufacturers slashing jobs as if cutting grass, and house repossessions in the UK soaring. No wonder stock markets fell. The UK FTSE 100 dropped 3.32% to close at 3,889, flirting again with the last year’s lows. The thorn is [...]