by The Investor
on April 22, 2009
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 today, with the rest (or more, up to the £10,200 limit) put into a stocks and shares ISA.
This means you can now save £5,100 in cash per year, tax free, or better yet use the ISA allowance to build up a long-term share portfolio.
I plan to use the full £10,200 limit every year to gradually shield more and more of my investments from tax.
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by The Investor
on April 20, 2009
I looked last week at the steep rises in US and UK bank share prices as the fear factor has fallen back.
U.S. banks are up 50% over the month, for instance.
But in the case of certain UK banks, the reversal has been even more extreme.
Consider Barclays shares here in the UK.
When I first wrote about the emotions driving bank share prices back in January, Barclays shares were priced at 90p. Yet I trusted HSBC and Standard Chartered more as banks to see out the turmoil, as they seemed far less likely to have got into serious difficulties.
In terms of the subsequent share performance, it hasn’t been my greatest short-term call. Barclays shares fell back to 60p for a while, but they’ve since risen to over £2 a share.
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by The Investor
on April 18, 2009
Every week I read a large number of personal finance and investing articles. Here’s my latest weekly shortcut to the best.
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by The Investor
on April 17, 2009
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 small fortune.
Barclays shares, for example, have more than tripled since early March.
It’s been a similar story in the U.S. as in the U.K., as the graph shown above from The Economist indicates. US banks as a group are up over 50% in the month.
Indeed, the U.S. banks are largely behind the global rally.
News of record profits at the giant Wells Fargo bank a week ago fueled the latest leg up of the banking stocks recovery. Goldman Sachs followed up on April 13th, reporting expectation busting profits of $1.8 billion, and JP Morgan kept the party moving with better than expected results on the 16th. And today Citigroup posted profits for the first time since 2007.
But what do these results really tell us about bank earnings, and about the sustainability of the recent rally?
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