A quick reminder that the annual ISA contribution limit has gone up to £10,200 a year if you’re lucky enough to be 50 or over between now and April 5th 2010.
(Let’s be honest, eh? We’d all rather have the riches of the young!)
The rest of the populace will have to wait until April 6th 2010 for the new ISA limit to apply.
I’ve written in detail why all UK investors should try to exploit this new maximum ISA limit to the full, by investing in stocks for the long-term.
I am not sure I like David Cameron, the UK Conservative party leader and the likely next prime minister of Great Britain.
I’m more sure I don’t like his sidekick George Osborne.
Yet I do feel sorry for them.
I don’t pity them because of how the media paints them as gilded toffs (it seems accurate), or because they have to sit facing miserable Gordon Brown in Parliament (talk about a bad day at the office!)
Rather, I feel sorry for them because now they have successfully moved the issue of spending cuts onto the public agenda — despite the efforts of the obfuscating Labour front bench — they have set off on a path that will see them slashing expenditure both wasteful and not so wasteful, which they need to do if Britain is to remain solvent.
If they manage to get our economy back into balance without riots, they’ll deserve the knighthoods they’ve probably been writing in front of the names on their diaries since age 13 and 3/4.
But we should give them their knighthoods now.
Because if we wait ten years until the deed is done, they’ll be so hated by the forgetful and hard-pressed British public that all the duck moats in their backbencher’s mansions won’t save them from the mob.
This is Cameron’s curse — to do the right thing, to save the economy, and to be hated for it.
My weekly commentary followed by some links to a few good blogs and financial articles.
I have only just seen this full interview with Warren Buffett on CNBC, which was conducted on September 16th.
Warren’s recollections on the collapse of Lehman Brothers a year ago makes fascinating viewing (perhaps even the wily old Sage of Omaha was excited by the market meltdown?)
As a fan of Buffett the man as well as the investor, I like how he frankly admits he couldn’t understand the deal being proposed to him about getting into a bid for Lehmans.
He didn’t understand the deal, so he didn’t do it.
I noticed adverts for a 5.3% bond from the UK’s Royal Bank of Scotland in some old newspapers while catching up today.
After doing some research, I’ve established that the so-called ‘Royal Bond’ began trading at the start of September 2009, with a lifespan of six years.
In summary:
The bond was priced at launch at £100, but it’s already been bid up in price, reducing the yield.
