Weekend reading: Merry Christmas everyone

What caught my eye this week.

I can’t deny the Monevator Christmas party is always a little awkward, but I look forward to it every year.

It’s the anonymity that makes it tricky. Not just keeping our identities secret from the waiting staff, but also from each other.

Finumus doesn’t want anybody to know who he really is, you see. But when you land your private helicopter in the pub garden it’s a bit of a giveaway.

Meanwhile my false beard always gets covered in gravy.

Secret Santa adds to the surreal air, but again it’s easy to guess who gave what.

Did I really need The Accumulator’s slightly musky Chillbreaker now the cost-of-living crisis is over?

And while Squirrel accepted her framed stock certificate of a triple-levered uranium ETF – blatantly from Finumus – with good grace, TA groaned as he unwrapped a copy of One Up On Wall Street.

“Every bloody year…” he complained, warding off Peter Lynch’s stock-picking classic with a copy of Tim Hale’s Smart Money – which he carries with him everywhere to shun temptation, like a Holy cross.

Lynch’s book flew back through the air at me – it’s not easy to duck when you’re sporting a three-foot long beard – and I packed it away for next year.

(Stay hungry, stay frugal!)

Then there are the gatecrashers.

It’s nice enough when Lars shows his face for old time’s sake. And it’s heartening to see The Greybeard grown fat on his equity income trust dividends after all these years.

But is that not Ermine in the corner? Plotting something with a bright-looking fellow on a dusty old Sinclair computer?

When the whole of yesteryear’s Team Monevator turns up expecting brandy and mince pies, I’m afraid to say we sneak out the back door and escape via that waiting chopper.

Monevator membership revenues are going quite well, but we’re not running another Studio 54 here!

Thank you, thank you

Talking of membership, a huge thanks to the many readers who now support this site with a few quid every month. It’s made a big difference.

I was reading Ed Zitron this week on how the Internet, media, and just using a computer has been progressively ruined over the past decade, and I thought again that I’d probably have turned off Monevator if enough people hadn’t signed up to support our work.

Zitron writes:

As every single platform we use is desperate to juice growth from every user, everything we interact with is hyper-monetized through plugins, advertising, microtransactions and other things that constantly gnaw at the user experience.

We load websites expecting them to be broken, especially on mobile, because every single website has to have 15+ different ad trackers, video ads that cover large chunks of the screen, all while demanding our email or for us to let them send us notifications.

I know – of course we do some of this ourselves.

We show ads to non-members on the website, and I prompt new visitors to sign-up to read us by email. We (sparingly) use affiliate links. And some of this involves the same tracking stuff we’re all exposed to on every other site on the Internet, apart from possibly Wikipedia.

I suppose a few people may consider us adding a membership tier to be part of this ‘making everything worse’.

Well I don’t.

I love the membership tier and the purity of email.

Some dwindling number of diehards will never accept that creating digital products and destinations for years on end has to be paid for somehow.

But for the rest of us I prefer a model where we directly pay for things.

I do it myself with other websites and newsletters. Though I accept the costs add up, and there is a limit.

If you are of the grumpier persuasion, you’d probably be surprised at everything I turn down.

Paid-for links to crypto, currency exchange, and loan sites. (We never sell links). Well-known companies asking us to create stealthy articles to promote their products. Lucrative guest posts by SEO firms. The long trails of clickbait ads that even old-line newspaper sites have at the end of every article these days.

Again, you might say you’re looking at an advert next to these words on our website right now.

All I can say is that this is the thin end of a very thick wedge. And I fight to stay at the right end.

We’re still standing, yeah yeah yeah

Zitron’s article turned a bit hyperbolic but I agree with most of it.

However where I disagree is his broad brush claim that media sites have done all this ‘enshittification’ for vast growth and profits.

In fact they’ve usually made endless compromises and degraded the experience to near-unusable levels either because they are desperate not to go bust or because they already went bust and the new owner is squeezing out whatever juice is left in the brand. The big platforms have sucked all the air and money out of the Internet, and everyone else is left to starve.

We’re spoiled in the UK. We have the BBC and (whatever you think of the politics) The Guardian, two of the least-polluted free media sites left standing.

But countless others have gone dark, or else it would have been better had they done so.

As for independent blogs, maybe 95% of those I’ve linked to in the UK are no longer around.

Honestly, I’m sometimes tempted to turn Monevator into a subscription-only newsletter and switch off the lights, too. It’s a better experience for readers and better for us. No more fighting spam each day!

But we still get so many emails from new people thanking us for helping them take their first steps in investing, or from older hands for keeping them on the straight and narrow.

I’ve collected several hundred of these. That folder is probably the crowning achievement of my working life.

Perhaps I should have tried harder to achieve more, I guess, but anyway I’m loathe to turn off the site while we’re making a difference – however much Google is trying to kill us and others off with its endless algorithm changes.

So again, if you’re signed up as a Monevator member then thank you!

You make it possible for us to continue to keep 99% of the 2,000-plus articles we’ve written free to read. A portion of your subscription covers the 30 minutes or more I spend every day keeping Monevator clear of toxic links, racist and sexist comments, and bit rot.

Hopefully you’re enjoying the extra member content too, of course!

We’re able to go deeper in the member-only articles, especially with my active ones. And it’s very nice not to worry about search engines with them.

Don’t forget you can browse all our Mavens and Moguls posts in their archives. There’s quite a few now!

The weakest link

On the opposite tack, a few members have asked me to paywall more content.

Really – I was surprised too, but I guess it reflects a desire not to be taken advantage of.

Personally I feel we have the right balance with our investing-related content, but there is a chance that I will eventually make the Weekend Reading links a members-only affair.

Doing these links is a service to our regular readers. Nobody stumbles across them via search.

And Weekend Reading is the reading list I’d love to see each week if I wasn’t creating it myself. It takes eight to ten hours to compile each one (much of which consists of reading and rejecting articles you never see links to) but it is a labour of love.

However its roots lie in that better Internet of 20 years ago.

Back then we used to do ‘blog carnivals’ where blogs would link to each other to spread their traffic and credibility around.

Yet besides one or two honourable exceptions – thank you Simple Living in Somerset and Abnormal Returns – almost nobody links freely now.

I’ve included hundreds of links to certain blogs and had at most a couple back to us over two decades. More often zero.

I get it’s harder because we’re a British site and we can be kind of nerdy. But we do have some articles that are universally worthy of linking to.

Even worse, Google probably penalises us nowadays for doing what used to be the right thing and highlighting the best of the web via these links.

It’s so rare to do this now that it’s potentially become an indicator of a spammy link farm.

Ho hum. A halfway house would be to keep the Weekend Reading list free but for email subscribers only. So again, subscribe to the free emails if you haven’t.

Finally, if you’re a member but you’re not getting the emails you expect to see, then please do drop me a line via a reply to this email (ideally) or via the contact form link top-right (risk of getting stuck in spam.)

The system is not perfect, but I can always sort out problems. Ditto if you have log-in issues. (Deleting your cookies usually does the trick).

The best readers on the Web

Okay, that’s a lot in the weeds for a busy Christmas weekend.

I try not to solicit membership too often but the reality is some people churn away (et tu Maven?) so we have to keep topping up.

TLDR: please everyone sign-up as members and then we can stay classy indefinitely.

Beyond that, thanks for reading us for another year.

With all the competition from cat and dog TikToks and belaboured YouTube videos where someone reads out their Vanguard statement for 20 minutes for 100,000 views, we do not take our audience for granted.

Nor, for that matter, the many wonderful readers who add so much value in our comments.

If Monevator still has a USP in today’s universally indexing-friendly age, it’s surely in the quality of the discussions that take place beneath so many of our articles.

Happy new year

Right, that’s us almost done for 2024. I’ll have my Moguls missive out for December but otherwise we’re taking a break until the first Saturday of the new year.

So cheers, Merry Christmas – and see you in 2025!

(Now grab the other end of this cracker TA…)

From Monevator

Vanguard raises prices: what’s the alternative? – Monevator

From the archive-ator: Board games to keep you busy during our Christmas break – Monevator

News

Note: Some links are Google search results – in PC/desktop view click through to read the article. Try privacy/incognito mode to avoid cookies. Consider subscribing to sites you visit a lot.

Bank of England holds interest rates, says economy doing worse – BBC

UK companies cut jobs at fastest rate in nearly four years – City AM

London rents rise by record 11.6% year-over-year in November – Bloomberg

Brexit reduced goods exports by £27bn, with smaller firms most affected – LSE

Hargreaves Lansdown blocks access to four investment trusts – Investor’s Chronicle

Rachel Reeves puts pensions review on hold [Search result] – FT

Anger greets decision not to compensate ‘Waspi women’ – Guardian

The relentless advance of American asset managers in Europe – FT

‘Risk to renters’ as buy-to-let lending predicted to fall – BBC

Boaz Weinstein starts campaign to take over UK investment trusts – Yahoo Finance

US fintech company collapses and takes life savings with it – Independent

A turbulent year for London’s markets…in four graphs – City AM [Remember when I was told I was scaremongering?]

Products and services

What to do if you need to remortgage in 2024 – Which

Chase’s new best buy account pays 5% plus a six month 1.5% booster – Chase

Should you ever use or buy gift cards? – Be Clever With Your Cash

Open an account with low-cost platform InvestEngine via our link and get up to £100 when you invest at least £100 (T&Cs apply. Capital at risk) – InvestEngine

Why does a first class stamp now cost £1.65 when they were 27p in 2000? – T.I.M.

How to buy a castle in France for the price of a semi in Britain – This Is Money

More than half of all bank transfer scams originate on Meta – Which

How to ensure you qualify for Nationwide’s £100 Fairer Share payment next year – This Is Money

Homes for sale with dining rooms fit for Christmas lunch, in pictures – Guardian

Comment and opinion

All that really matters in investing – Optimistic Callie

Sharing lessons – Humble Dollar

Why 2025 could be the start of the ‘Great Downsizing’ – This Is Money

The three best inflation hedges – A Wealth of Common Sense

If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? – Hot Takes

The trouble with US equity exceptionalism – Behavioural Investment

Morningstar’s annual safe withdrawal rate review [US but relevant] – Morningstar

Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous – A Teachable Moment

Making a retirement plan when you’re still young – Flow FP

Sizing Bitcoin in portfolios – Blackrock

Towards a longer view of US financial markets [Nerdy] – CFA Institute

Naughty corner: Active antics

Beware the return of the S&P 500 bubble – UK Dividend Stocks

Warhammer is weird. That’s why it works [Search result] – FT

Persistent alpha – Verdad

Who Neil Woodford blames for his funds’ collapse – City AM

A common misconception about Warren Buffett – Flyover Stocks

Traders are going crazy over obscure quantum computing stocks – Sherwood

Why the 2022-2024 fintech winter may thaw in 2025 – The Basis Point

Some angel investors are better than others [Research] – NBER

Kindle book bargains

Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder by Nassim Taleb – £0.99 on Kindle

The Big Con [On the Consulting Industry] by Mariana Mazzucato – £0.99 on Kindle

Nudge: The Final Edition by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein – £0.99 on Kindle

How Westminster Works…and Why It Doesn’t by Ian Dunt – £0.99 on Kindle

Environmental factors

How balcony solar is taking off – Guardian

Pacific nations wrestle with how to protect oceans – and livelihoods – Guardian

Seven climate wins you might have missed in 2024 – BBC

Asia reveals how a hobby is driving singing birds to extinction – Yahoo

Rapid spread of bee-killing Asian hornets halted in UK – Guardian

Illegal cockfighting threatens sea turtles across Central America – Mongabay

Caviar pizzas, new money, and the death of the ancient fish – Hakai

Robot overlord roundup

Apple urged to scrap AI feature after false headlines – BBC

To whom does the world belong? – Boston Review [h/t Abnormal Returns]

Existential mini-special

An uncertain future requires uncertain prediction skills – Wired

We don’t have to destroy ourselves – The Garden of Forking Paths

Uncertainty is a part of being human – Guardian

Off our beat

I have a few questions – Morgan Housel

Easier for Rachel – Humble Dollar

How fit are you? 11 ways to easily test your strength, balance, and mobility – Guardian

Hundreds of websites to be shutdown under UK’s ‘chilling’ Internet laws – Telegraph via Slashdot

Why most of us are posting less – Culture Study

A weekend at the ventriloquist’s convention [Loooong] – N + 1

How Paul Krugman change the public face of economics – Noahpinion

How to avoid getting lost in thought – Raptitude

And finally…

“Wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished: but he that gathereth by labour shall increase.”
– Holy Bible: King James Version

Like these links? Subscribe to get them every Friday. Note this article includes affiliate links, such as from Amazon and Interactive Investor.