What caught my eye this week.
Where were you for the Great Crash of 2026? Cowering behind the sofa? Or toasting your short positions in the back of an Uber on the way to snag a Lambo?
[Lamb-OH, dear. It’s a car, not a quadruped. Eh? Yes I know we usually have roast dinner on a Sunday.]
Not a crash in the stock market. Don’t panic! Equities continue to chug along in a Schrödinger Bubble.
No, I’m talking about the Great Silver Crash of Friday, 30 January 2026:
Down over 30% at one point. That’s almost the entire Covid crash in the stock market in just one day for the ‘other’ precious metal.
Silver surfer
Gold and silver had been on a tear for months, of course – silver had pretty much gone parabolic. (See the second graph in my links below.)
So to see a blow-up is hardly unexpected, even if – as usual – there seems no certain reason why it crashed from a ludicrously overbought position today as opposed to a week ago.
[Yes dear, I know the man on CNBC said he knows. Why’s he on the telly then and not on his private island? And no I didn’t sell grannie’s silver spoons like you told me to.]
Clearly Trump choosing a non-crazy for the next Federal Reserve chair must have been the catalyst for lesser paranoiacs to start dumping their precious metals and bunker down payments.
But you don’t need to be George Soros to suspect a lot of leverage was involved to create carnage on this scale – and that the ferocity suggests a big squeeze.
Maybe the crazy run-up to this plunge was all due to a handful of hedge knights funds jousting with each other? The Benighted of the Seven Kingdoms having at it?
Paging Michael Lewis!
[No, MICHAEL Lewis dear, not John Lewis. Yes, him who wrote the film about Christian Bale.]
Have a great weekend.
From Monevator
Our updated guide to help you find the best broker – Monevator
Don’t tell me your opinion, show me your portfolio – Monevator [Mogul members]
From the archive-ator: All about the annual ISA allowance – Monevator
News
Ground rent to be capped in England and Wales at £250 a year – Guardian
The UK cities where living standards are rising fastest – Centre for Cities
India, EU agree ‘mother of all trade deals’ – AFP via Yahoo Finance
Household water bills to rise by 5.4% in England and Wales – Guardian
Gold topped $5,000 for the first time ever this week, but now it’s falling – BBC
London’s high land prices need ‘market adjustment’, says housing minister [Paywall] – FT
Mortgage shock for borrowers as nearly 1m five-year deals end soon – Standard
Record number in UK living in ‘very deep poverty’, analysis shows- Guardian
Prime London prices to bottom out this year – This is Money
Millions to get £150 off energy bills for a further five years – BBC
Robinhood CEO says tokenised stocks could prevent another GameStop freeze – CoinDesk
Tether will become ‘gold central bank’ in post-dollar world, says CEO – The Block
Indonesian stock exchange CEO resigns after $84bn market rout – CNBC
Debasement fear – not central bank buying – is driving precious metals – Robin Brooks
Products and services
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More on how leasehold rent (ground rent) will be capped at £250… – Which
…what is changing and when will it happen? – This Is Money
Get up to £1,500 cashback when you transfer your cash and/or investments to Charles Stanley Direct through this affiliate link. Terms apply – Charles Stanley
Santander switch offer: £200 + £25 Amazon gift card – Be Clever With Your Cash
The best fixed-rate cash ISAs – This Is Money
Government confirms you can still open and save into a LISA, pending changes – GOV.UK
Get up to £3,000 cashback when you open or switch to an Interactive Investor SIPP. Terms and fees apply, affiliate link – Interactive Investor
Six ways to find great travel insurance without overpaying – Which
How to get cheap filler seats for theatres and other shows – Be Clever With Your Cash
Homes for sale with air source heat pumps or solar panels, in pictures – Guardian
Scammers mini-special
How scammers tried to steal one man’s Coinbase wallet – CNBC
Scammers got this ‘tech-savvy zillennial’ to click on a dodgy link – Guardian
China executes 11 people linked to Myanmar scam operation – Guardian
Comment and opinion
Don’t be overly fearful of all-time highs – Chart Kid Matt
Do you need to earn £71,000 to match a jobless household on benefits? [Podcast] – BBC
The midlife (spending) crisis – A Wealth of Common Sense
Should artists get a basic income like they do in Ireland? – BBC
Leasehold reforms could have unintended consequences – This Is Money
Top tips to protect your pension in turbulent times – Guardian
When it’s worth paying up for funds [US/niche but interesting] – Morningstar
Renters’ Rights Act brings an accidental tax headache for 150,000+ tenants – T.P.A.
Meet the top-secret NS&I agent who tells people they’ve won £1m – This Is Money
Hargreaves Lansdown’s private equity masters come for a bite – Simple Living in Somerset
“We lived in a van in South London to save up to move to Portugal” – Standard
Elon Musk is wrong. People still need to save – Bloomberg via FA Mag
Naughty corner: Active antics
Zoom’s ‘hidden gem’ stake in Anthropic could be worth $2bn – CNBC
Which UK investment trusts own SpaceX shares? – Morningstar
Megacap tech’s relative valuation near 2022 lows – Sherwood
Termites are feasting on the foundations of dollar dominance [Paywall] – FT
Business Breakdowns: Games Workshop [Podcast] – via Apple
Appreciation for depreciation – Permanent Equity
You probably shouldn’t trade based on insider buying – SSRN
Kindle book bargains
The Book of Money by Monzo – £0.99 on Kindle
The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy – £0.99 on Kindle
80/20 Daily by Richard Koch – £0.99 on Kindle
Feel Good Productivity by Ali Abdaal – £0.99 on Kindle
Or pick up one of the all-time great investing classics – Monevator shop
Environmental factors
How to apply for solar panel funding schemes – The Independent
Australians finding out what happens to human bodies at 49C – Guardian
Plans to power London landmarks with river Thames heat – BBC
Repurposing AI data centre heat to warm homes – CNBC
How humans are making the world’s wildlife dangerously samey – The Conversation
Let the Chinese electric vehicles in – Noahpinion
Robot overlord roundup
The adolescence of technology – Dario Amodei
Wall Street thinks the next bottleneck in AI is chip equipment – Sherwood
AI is hitting the UK harder than other big economies, study finds – Guardian
Why AI won’t wipe out white collar jobs [Paywall] – The Economist
Machine learning in investing – Larry Swedroe
Moltbot is taking over Silicon Valley – Wired
TSMC risk – Stratechery
Not at the dinner table
This is why you have to care – Ryan Holiday
Danger for ‘middle powers’ as the world inches back to pre-WW2 order – BBC
World files for economic divorce from America – Paul Krugman
Centrist ideas no longer wanted in the Tory party, says Badenoch – Guardian
The ICE shootings are a tipping point – Strength in Numbers
The end of panda diplomacy as Japan returns bears to China – Guardian
Francis Fukuyama: after Davos – Persuasion
The great entertainment – Kyla Scanlon
Brainy mini-special
Neuroplasticity: how the brain can change – The Conversation
UK man given Musk’s Neuralink brain chip says it ‘feels magical’ – Sky
Scientists find helping to raise grandchildren is good for the brain – USA Today
Terry Pratchett’s novels may have held clues to his dementia – The Conversation
Off our beat
Where breakthrough ideas actually come from – Next Big Idea Club
Polygamous working: why some people hold down two jobs or more – Guardian
A mental model that could change your life – Darius Foroux
Career advice for young people from top VC Bill Gurley – via Tim Ferriss
How Europe is planning to build its own sovereign tech stack – Sherwood
In defence of pop-ups – Seth Godin
And finally…
“The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan. Stick to the good plan.”
– Jack Bogle, The Little Book of Common Sense Investing
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On Thursday I said to my wife, I did, “I think we’d better sell some gold and silver next week”. Timing’s a bugger, isn’t it?
Oh well, now we’ll just have to buy more.
Parabolic run ups always pull back hard and fast. Markets rise much further than you expect, and then fall faster than you’d imagined. Rinse and repeat.
5% in SILG, GDX, GDXJ miner/ junior and GLDE gold + income ETFs and ETP. Even on SILG, this puts me all the ways back to…the beginning of January.
No biggie. Provided, of course, that this isn’t a long term trend reversal.
Currently though, I’m not too worried given that:
– physical silver is trading $50-$80 troy ounce over spot (acting as a magnet for prices in the paper market);
– demand is driven fundamentally by Chinese derisking out of (easy to seize/freeze) US Treasuries (and Xi just purged the top honcho on the PRC Central Military Commission opposed to a Taiwan blockade);
– retail are only just waking up to the trade (miners now make up just 1% of US equity market cap, whereas in the fifties it was 12%, and, before the surge of the past year, ‘badged’ public market silver miners barely topped $50 bn in their combined market cap);
– silver (and copper) demand is exploding off of the back of the energy transition (especially for solar), the accelerating electrification in EMs, and the unprecedented data centres buildout; and,
– there is a structural production shortfall (for silver, copper, lithium and rare earths – it’s actually worse for copper, but silver’s also undersupplied for the foreseeable future given; as with gold, platinum, copper and rare earths; chronic underinvestment by the miners over many years).
As always, time will tell. In the meantime, buckle up. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.
Ain’t that the truth. Did sell some at peak but wish I’d had the nerve to sell more. Still, the portfolio did look very nice a couple of days ago!
A great take on the world and electric cars in the … Let the Chinese electric vehicles in – Noahpinion Article. Thanks for the links.
JimJim
In a world where you can buy linkers, hold to maturity and get paid an income along the way I don’t see the case for gold as an inflation hedge or anything else other than a punt. It doesn’t even seem to be usefully anticorrelated with anything any more.
Not saying I don’t see the appeal nor denying I have a small stash of britannias in the apocalypse fund
I clicked on a couple of interesting-looking links, namely “Don’t be overly fearful of all-time highs” and “This is why you have to care”, to discover that each of them has text composed in the “modern” style of a series of thudding micro-paragraphs. How irritating!
Writers have apparently lost faith in writing a classical text, using sentences, and instead have moved to a textual simulation of a pompous oration. Rather than developing a line of argument, journalists, and their emulators, tend to this staccato delivery mode.
Well, perhaps this sounds like “just a matter of taste” (as if good taste held no inherent value), but I do wonder whether we lose some level of critical thought and analysis when articles are written more to persuade than to explain.
@B. Lackdown #5
“In a world where you can buy linkers, hold to maturity and get paid an income along the way I don’t see the case for gold …”
Index-linked government bonds are nowhere near as safe as you seen to think they are. The issuing state will need to repay the debt in a currency which it does not control, namely real value. Printing more nominal currency to repay index-linked debt falling due today exacerbates the problem is how to repay the bonds falling due in the future.
I’ve never understood why the UK issues so much index-linked debt. It’s got the potential to be a tremendous threat to the state’s creditworthiness.
Gold, of course, needs no central authority to give it value, which can be a useful attribute if the government which you could have lent to ceases to exist because of conquest or some other misfortune.
Global Index linked Bonds hedged to the Pound for me
However wife has some reasonable amounts of what was increasingly very expensive silver jewellery -necklaces etc
Gold and silver are where the third world has always their worldly assets -often in portable easily encashed form ie jewellery
A first world third world conundrum
My compromise seems to have worked-so far!
xxd09
@Jonathan the Evil #6
> I do wonder whether we lose some level of critical thought and analysis when articles are written more to persuade than to explain.
OMYAC It’s the tik tok attention span wot did it, innit. Plus if your window to the world is a handheld glowing rectangle of doom there’s only so much text you can get onto that until human vision becomes 20/10 as standard and the screen resolutions match /OMYAC
I agree totally. The art of exposition and basic rhetoric seems to be fading rapidly. Still, a recent Monevator post was titled sic transit gloria, so we will salute the post-literate world
#5 B.Lackdown
If you think that holding sterling long term against the BofE definition of inflation will protect your purchasing power against the seismic shifts in the global monetary and trading system well… good luck with that!
I have got a small position in a physical silver ETC that I bought with a single modest lump sum back in 2020 and never added to it. Early last week I was surprised how large it got (you can imagine how much it grew in about 6 years). Then I thought: time to rebalance but I was busy and couldn’t do it. Then in the middle of the week I listened to this on the excellent FT Unhedged podcast and thought again I’d better rebalance on Thursday:
https://www.ft.com/content/8f3026b5-70b7-4b7b-9070-1db85a5160eb
But I was too busy on Thursday and left it for Friday. Then you know how it ended. On Friday a couple of hours before market close, when I finally had time to rebalance, about a third of what I had the week before had gone! I am still making a killing with this position though. It’s just not as fantastic as it could have been. So much for being such a passive investor! More importantly, my total portfolio only moved 0.26% down Yesterday from what it was last week and its value in US Dollars even went up by 0.35% compared to last week.
I took a big chunk of profits from my silver and gold ETFs on Wednesday and feel smug about it now. Of course the timing was just luck. There is probably some truth to the debasement trade, but momentum chasing and FOMO took over and the signs have been there for months. The Economist called it in November:
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/11/16/is-this-the-end-of-the-scorching-gold-rally?giftId=NjU1NzVhYmUtM2JmNC00ZTVhLTgzMTItZDA4MGUwNTNmYmQ0&utm_campaign=gifted_article
https://www.economist.com/special-report/2025/10/13/the-case-against-holding-bonds
from October last year (and paywalled) makes interesting/sobering reading; especially IMO the section about linkers!
@Al Cam #13: So I’ve now read analysis arguing against bonds.
Vanguard’s reasoning that equity returns over the next decade are likely to be depressed looks pretty rational.
I philosopically dislike precious metals. My reasoning makes me think the only sensible investment might be beans and ammunition.
Is there any chance us Mavens could get access to Finimus’ latest piece?
I’m purely passive but still also hunched over a spreadsheet managing the family portfolio.
Also, his higher wealth level (that we know about thanks to some transparency eg on Bitcoin gains) is somewhat inspirational/aspirational, even to us Mavens!
What’s the alternative to linkers?
Govt debt is too high in most countries. The most likely way out is by stealth – inflation. The system *might* blow up in the process. Gold is good as an insurance against extreme crisis. Or gold might go on to lose 80% of its value. Gold can’t be the only defensive asset.
Nominal bonds are much more at risk. Linker holders *might* be bailed in somehow, which requires more contortions from governments and amounts to admitting default, which they will try to avoid.
Cash is vulnerable to inflation too. MM funds can freeze. Bank deposits are sitting ducks in a crisis.
Annuities? It’s a black box how insurances hedge inflation. If they do it right, they probably use linkers. If they don’t, they default on the annuity or go bust.
A mix of linkers eg. 50% UK, 25% US, 25% Germany looks like the best option we’ve got.
@Sparschwein (#16):
Did you read the Economist special report? IMO, they do a pretty good job of debunking any alleged “special treatment” for linkers in all scenarios.
Life insurers (LI’s) rarely use linkers. The first thing most LI’s do with any DB pensions acquired (via BPA) is sell the schemes bonds (esp. linkers AIUI) and re-risk. LI’s like swaps and many other types of instruments and, of course, re-insurance too.
You pays your money, …. and currency diversification or currency risk …
Bernstein talks about an inter-planetary spaceship, but even if you have one I am not sure where you are going to go in it? There ain’t no absolutely safe haven.
@Al Cam – in the same issue the Economist writes “the more likely outcome is that linkers are left on the market and function as intended, preserving their owners’ purchasing power even as that of bog-standard bondholders falls”.
Yes linkers have some risk too, and the gut feel is against all kinds of bonds these days (which is probably why we’re getting a decent real return). What I was aiming at is, linkers look relatively less risky compared to the other options, and they deserve to be a big chunk of the defensive allocation.
If insurers re-risk and use swaps (counterparty risk etc), then that’s rather more concerning, isn’t it? My plan used to include an inflation-linked annuity as a floor, but I’m not sure anymore. Considering that in the scenario when we’d need the annuity most, in a major inflationary crisis, the insurance company could default on their obligations or go bust.
No safe haven is the point. Yes linkers have counterparty risk and personal inflation rate risk. Gold also has counterparty risk unless you keep physical at home, and even then it has confiscation risk (even in the UK – see the Exchange Control Act 1966), burglary risk and a negative interest rate of 1-2% a year to insure it. And it managed the astonishing feat of being underwater in real terms 1980-2006.
Interestingly I believe that when gold was confiscated in the US people were still allowed to hold gold mining stocks so were able to gain exposure that way.
Pfau’s take (in summary) on Bernstein’s deep risk vs shallow risk idea can be read at: https://retirementresearcher.com/inflation-deflation-confiscation-devastation-the-four-horsemen-of-risk/
#19
Yes indeed gold was a laggard during that period. A period characterized by low inflation, the expansion of private low cost debt on an enormous scale, the removal of capital controls with concomitant benign globalisation world wide bringing cheap labour to Western economies, control of government spending with low government/GDP in advanced economies. And an era that was largely peaceful, with trade mostly controlled and enabled by a single credit worthy global hegemon.
If you see any of those stars aligning again, and not the inverse as we currently have…. Do let us know.
Strong goldbug energy here. I think the fundamental point of investment is recognising that what we have today is unlikely to be what we have tomorrow.
26 years underwater while costing 2% a year is impressive.
I’m no goldbug or silver or other metals perma bull, but the multi decade demand picture for silver and copper looks very strong, whilst the supply picture looks something between fragile (silver) to somewhat alarming (copper).
Whilst it’s obviously madness on stilts’ speculation for any major precious or industrial metal to go up by hundreds of percent in just a year, this doesn’t in itself invalidate the apparent demand/supply mismatch on the horizon.
As to Treasurys, Bunds, Gilts and other DM government bonds (and with a h/t here to David Stevenson today), this neatly encapsulates the longer term bear and bull cases:
“Torsten Slok over at PE firm Apollo also has a useful summary of what’s going on in the Treasury markets and why long yields are rising. He suggests 10 conclusions:
1. For every $5 the government collects in taxes, a dollar goes to paying interest on debt.
2. $10 trillion of government debt will mature over the next year, which is 33% of all debt outstanding.
3. The share of T-bills outstanding has increased to 22%, and 85% of Treasury gross issuance is T-bills.
4. The average federal net interest expense per day, including weekends, is now $3.5 billion.
5. Foreign ownership of Treasuries has declined to 25% of the total outstanding, down from 33% a decade ago.
6. Japan has been increasing its holdings of Treasuries while China has been lowering its holdings.
7. In Treasury auctions, tails and stop-through have been small and relatively balanced, implying that there is still solid demand across the curve.
8. Treasury auction metrics show that indirect bidding, often a proxy for foreign central bank demand, has been declining over the past year, particularly for notes.
9. The Fed cutting interest rates has not lowered inflows into money market funds, implying that “money on the sidelines” is not as interest rate sensitive as many people think.
10. 89% of US government debt is fixed rate, and 22% of debt outstanding is in bills.”
I agree with this as a balancd picture.
For the moment things are sustainable but longer term, this can’t go on.
Of course, if FOMC, MPC, BoJ and ECB policy rates fall in the short to medium term then DM government bonds will do well.
But it’s going, IMHO, to take a political/ social entitlement sacred cow slaughtering/ austerian/ higher tax revolution (more like Javier Milei than Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Regan) to turn the ship around, and even then it’ll likely be over generational timelines.
By instinct / preference I’m a big state progressive Keynesian, with MMT sympathies. But the evidence points to a crisis at some point a la 1976.
It gives me no pleasure to concede this point, but the EU and UK can’t continue to spend as if they were still on their pre 2008 growth trajectory.
Unless a significant AI/ML productivity pump shows up soon, with much increased output per hour work sustained over many years (which I wouldn’t bet on), then Europe and the UK are both eventually heading for a major solvency situation.
An update on ‘element 47’ in the financial and real world markets:
– Physical silver continues to trade at substantial premiums to paper claims, and is far less affected by volatility
– Silver miner mark down remains significantly less than for spot silver in the paper silver market. The LSE listed SILG silver miner ETF was already back yesterday to where it was as recently as 9-12 January, just three weeks ago. Today it’s at 16 Jan levels.
– Miners ordinarily are more leveraged and volatile than the underlying, but here they’ve behaved less so.
– There’s both more and less to Friday’s crazy, but not wholly unpredicted, intraday price swings than meets the eye.
– Fundamental drivers of demand look strong and indeed demand is actually strong now in the physical delivery market.
– I found these commentaries over the w/e on Subsack helpful:
https://open.substack.com/pub/paretoinvestor/p/pareto-pure-alpha-portfolios-update-february-2026
https://open.substack.com/pub/campbellramble/p/when-you-feel-pain-remember-to-reflect
https://open.substack.com/pub/tscsw/p/the-31-silver-crash-why-markets-got
https://open.substack.com/pub/shanakaanslemperera/p/the-argentum-verdict
https://open.substack.com/pub/nyugrad/p/be-greedy-when-everyone-is-crapping
We’ll see if this is really a secular change or just a Hunt Bros style flash in the pan in a trend that got ahead of itself and knocked sideways by the unexpected Fed nominee.
I’m keeping my 5% in precious metal miners given that DJT still has nearly 3 years to go and I’m not seeing much sign (Japan and Argentina possibly excepted) of emerging fiscal rectitude anywhere.
Still, 6,7,8,9 sigma intraday moves are… discombobulating. Definitely discomfort investing.
On the Morningstar Space X article one of my oldest positions is in SMT, and I’ve never taken any profits, here is it edging up yet again towards a high but it would seem that a Space X IPO would be worth holding on for…
@Larsen — Congratulations on that long-term investment. 🙂 Well, remember the SpaceX valuation should in theory be mostly accounted for in the price, if not the NAV. (I’m aware SMT is on a small discount, though how it’s narrowed! I own some too currently, incidentally.)
From memory SpaceX is valued at nearly 100x *sales*. Even I, a veteran of Tesla’s ascent, find that hard to swallow! Not to say it’s definitely massively overpriced but it’s trivial to see it could be.
@TI, yes agree with all of that, I’m mostly passive but I held on to some of the ITs I started off with.
Plus one for making Finumus’s latest piece available to Mavens too, please.
Why not just upgrade your subscription?
The Moguls articles are not ones I would routinely read, and do come at extra cost which I would prefer not to incur
@Ian @Martin T
First off thanks for becoming Mavens. I know the monthly amounts may seem very small to people and perhaps even an annoying faff to pay but if enough people do it then it adds up and it’s what’s making Monevator viable these days.
RE: Finumus’ piece, of course I get the appeal. He’s one of my favourite writers too! 🙂
However as @Gizzard says the solution really is to upgrade. If on a monthly plan you can upgrade for just a month then drop back to Mavens. If annual admittedly you’d have to commit for longer.
In an ideal world I’d have everything on Monevator free, like in the old days. But this is not an ideal world. The online web is getting eaten by AI.
For context, Monevator website traffic is now about where it was a decade ago! Despite, I’d venture, the content being at least twice as good. Traffic was way higher in the interim. So moving to a paywalled/membership option is a matter of survival really.
In fact I have had friends in publishing — and even some members, perhaps they can pop in here if they read this to confirm — who have urged me to put all but a handful of articles behind the membership wall.
I continue to resist that, and I know that some people do kindly pay for membership as a way of keeping most of the site free for the greater good. However the direction of travel is inescapable and at the moment we’re mostly training chatbots who go on to give us nothing back for our efforts in return. I think it’s very likely we’ll get more paywalled in time. Maybe one article every week, and perhaps some of the archive.
Against that backdrop, I can’t really chop and change what’s behind the paywall based on demand. I have to stick with what we’ve laid out and hope we can carry enough people on balance.
I also don’t really think it’s fair to Moguls who have paid more for that tier if the ‘popular’ articles are essentially made into Mavens articles on demand.
Finally there’s the extremely real matter of the content and who we want to expose it to. As a general rule, Moguls stuff is very much ‘not for everyone’. Most people should be more or less passive investors (more in most cases) and perhaps most Moguls should too in the long run.
But some of us have passions or proclivities or even a need to do what’s maybe not best for us pursuing something else — higher returns, some kind of thrill, intellectual interest, whatnot. (I’m guilty on all counts! 🙂 )
It’s been a big relief to me to be able to run articles like that again (which were on the site in the early days but which I largely dropped for ‘duty of care’ reasons) behind the Moguls paywall. There are far fewer Mogul members and the articles come with heavy warnings, reminders, and disclaimers, so people should understand what they’re getting and take responsibility for anything they do.
I’m comfortable with Finumus discussing, say, leveraging his equity portfolio to this small self-selected audience. I’m not comfortable exposing a more typical reader to this kind of stuff (not meaning you guys specifically, just explaining the general principle).
Finally, Finumus and I always discuss where his posts should go, and he also said this was a Moguls post. He’s more comfortable writing about this stuff for that select audience, too.
Hope this all makes sense even if you disagree with aspects of it, and thanks again for supporting the site! 🙂
@TI #32 re: “and even some members, perhaps they can pop in here if they read this to confirm”: Yes indeed. And I am sure that I am not the only one.
Given the ‘game changer’ of AI, and not in a good way for sites reliant on advertising revenue and SEO, subscription based for all / almost all (or at least most) content seems the only viable way to go for blogs, like this one, which offer up such tremendous and compendious value, expert depth and encyclopedic range in a subject area (investment) which has indisputably massive financial benefits and implications for it’s readership.
Noone I know of is as tight as I am, but I still pay up for Monevator Moguls and one other UK investment site.
Off topic, but the thread has quietened down.
I’ve just seen a small 2 bed bungalow for a great price – (good for daughter (rental) and possibly us as a bolt hole in 10 years time if abroad a lot)
I don’t have all the cash to hand – probably £100k short until I sell and BTL.
Is it simple to transfer cash from II s&s isa into a flexible cash ISA?
– there’s a good chance if I buy after 6/4 I will be able to replenish later in the same tax year.
– I have no subs headroom for this year
I’d rather not lose the tax free wrapper obvs.
Thanks
B
@Boltt – I did a few such transfers at the start of last year, and none were difficult. Some were frighteningly easy, particularly some of the app-only ones, which also seem more likely to offer flexible ISAs (assuming you’re comfortable with selfie-identification using photo ID and the idea of only having access via the app). You don’t have to deal with II but they keep you updated on progress. The timelines were much quicker than advertised although I made sure I had a cash balance already at II. I can try to dig out/remember the easiest of them at the weekend if it would help. One was a little tricky because I did need to contact II for a pseudo Sort Code to get through the process.
Thanks Invariant.
Good to know it’s pretty easy, did you already have the Flexible cash ISA in place? I seem to recall you need at least a £1 to open an account – and I’ve used £20k already rather than £19,999 that I sometimes do.
I do some digging on opening a flexible ISA with £0 – waiting until 6/4 may delay things too long. Anyway, I’ll open a cash isa with £1 next year, if needed, as insurance.
@TI thanks for taking the time to provide such a full answer – another benefit of belonging to a closed group!
My Mavens subscription really is worth its weight in gold (even at today’s prices!), and I only wish I had discovered it sooner, instead of slavishly following the dubious ‘advice’ and recommendations of HL for so long. Hindsight….
Being rather less pecunious than Finumus, I can’t justify the Moguls subscription, plus I would worry about being seduced into once again believing I could beat the market, so I’ll have to forego this particular entertainment.
As an annual subscriber, the monthly upgrade isn’t available to me; I suppose you could make selected articles pay-per-view, but that might be a lot of extra work for you?
I completely understand the reasoning behind charging for certain articles; MV is one of the few subscriptions I am prepared to pay for, and it’s worth it if it ensures the continuing quality of the content, and the comments afterwards.
So, no hard feelings, and keep up the good work. Perhaps you’d be kind enough to give @TA a little nudge, and tell him that some of us are waiting with bated breath for the next instalment of his de-risking epic…!!! BW, MT
Looks like Tesco ISA is flexible and fundable by transfer – I’ll look in the Morning
No, I just opened new ones and chose to fund them via transfer. Most of them imply that you need at least a £1, and that you need to fund them within a few days, but that didn’t apply when funding them via transfer. I still got some emails threatening closure from some providers. In one case the email explained that they might close it if a transfer was slow but they’d just open another one when it arrived. Note that some providers don’t accept transfers from S&S ISAs, seemingly regardless of whether it’s a cash balance, so check the small print.
Whilst I have the floor on transfering S&S ISAs to cash ISAs, I’ll share one problem that I found just today, just in case it helps anyone else avoid the same mistake. I transferred my entire M&G ISA – who don’t support cash in their ISA – to a fixed rate ISA. Today I received a cheque in the post for a dividend payment which was credited after the transfer, which M&G couldn’t reinvest because they’ve closed my ISA. So, now I’ve lost the ISA wrapper for that dividend payment. According to the government advice to providers, they should have transferred this to my new provider – except that the window for adding funds to the fixed ISA is closed. It’s not yet clear whether they tried that first and failed, or whether I can persuade both parties to rectify the matter. Anyway, if anyone is transfering an M&G ISA, then I’d suggest you don’t do it to a fixed rate product.
@Invariant
Much appreciated – I’llget it done just in case, it’s worth having in reserve just in case for future financial emergencies!
Tesco wouldn’t accept transfer from s&s isa to cash isa – I’ll keep looking
Neither did Lloyds
@Boltt – I’ve checked back, and I did transfers from II to both Trading 212 and Aldermore flexible cash ISAs. For non-flexible, I did them to Moneybox, Vida and Shawbrook – you could presumably then do a further transfer to any flexible ISA. Trading 212 and Moneybox were both done without any paper forms, and both took just 4 days from applying to open the account to the funds arriving.
There is a form for LLoyds to transfer in from a s&s isa. Sounds like a palaver and not very quick – so I cut my losses and tried 212.
After hunted for 30 minutes for bank account and sort number for ii I have up and found a transfer button that accepted their a/c number (7 digits). Fingers crossed..
I don’t want to be doing this stuff much past 65
@Delta Hedge — Thanks for chiming in, and you could be right. 🙂 Ultimately we didn’t create Monevator solely to maximise profits though (a good thing too given there were approximately zero for the first ten years at least and arguably 10-15 years!) and if I can find a balance where we continue to offer free material while saving the very best for our supporters then I’d like to strive for it. At least for a while longer…
Thanks for the ongoing support!
A very belated reply to @TI #44 with a perhaps reassuring thought: maybe blogs do, eventually, get permanently and irrecoverably ‘disrupted’ by LLMs and the seemingly endless ens*it*fication of search (or, at least, Google search).
But that doesn’t mean it happens tomorrow. Or even, necessarily, the day after that.
Look at Kodak.
The first digital camera was invented in 1978. The first filmless camera was introduced by Sony in 1981. The first electronic camera was marketed to US consumers in 1986.
What happened to Kodak after 1986? Well, it kept thriving.
Kodak’s revenues peaked in 1996.
Fast forward 15 years, and it declared bankruptcy.
But for 18 years after the development which sounded it’s death’s knell it kept growing revenue.
In the medium to intermediate term it may make sense for blogs (like SaaS companies perhaps) to continue just as before, and to bet on continuity. The status quo ante.
And the medium to intermediate term can be quite a while.
But, longer term, all is change.
As Frank Herbert’s eponymous protagonist (and humanitity’s antagonist) puts it in ‘God Emperor on Dune’: “History is a constant race between invention and catastrophe. Education helps but it’s never enough. You also must run”; “It is difficult to live in the present, pointless to live in the future and impossible to live in the past”; “Things move. It is an ultimate pragmatism in the midst of Infinity, a demanding consciousness where you come at last into the unbroken awareness that the universe moves of itself, that it changes, that its rules change, that nothing remains permanent or absolute throughout all”; and, of course, “In all of my universe I have seen no law of nature, unchanging and inexorable. The universe presents only changing relationships which are sometimes seen as laws by short lived awareness. These fleshy sensoria which we call self are ephemera withering in the blaze of infinity, fleetingly aware of temporary conditions which confine our activities and change as our activities change. If you must label the absolute, use its proper name: Temporary.”
@Delta Hedge — Thanks for thoughts. I have seen this movie many times before though (especially re: publishing) and *if* AI really does a number on independent websites/blogs, which it is currently doing, then a lingering death will be a small mercy. This graphic from Goldman Sachs is illustrative!
https://x.com/BrianSozzi/status/2020797734911955198
At the moment Membership is still creeping up; for as long as that holds, the ‘AI killed Monevator’ story is on pause. 😉
But time will tell in the long run…
One heck of a sobering chart that @TI.
It illustrates the problem in a nutshell.
There’s no single rule or principle that works for everything always. In business, life or investing. They’re each ‘infinite games’, where the rules and players change, with no known for sure end date. And changing constantly but unpredictably so in terms of exactly when, how, by how much, and to what effects.
So, Short Innovation and Long Continuity in the immediate term (due to investor anchoring on disruptive growth, and recency bias and herding due to its near term outperformance); then followed by a hard orthogonal pivot to Long Innovation and Short Continuity in the longer term, *usually* works.
But, sometimes, Continuity does get immediately crippled by disruption, and then doesn’t come back. Ever….
It can be just fine and dandy to pay 500x plus TTM earnings (Amazon, Tesla, and maybe even Palantir, in their growthiest of growth heydays).
But, then again, it can be too much to pay even a mere 5x TTM PE (when a business gets immediately and irrecoverably walloped by ‘innovation’ taking its market share away or by transforming its market beyond recognition).
And, sometimes, it’s the other way around, such that ‘cheaper’ (or, at least, ‘quality adjusted GARP’ cheaper) does work better than ‘growth at any price’.
It’s the paradox of the market.
The uncertainty about what to do, and why, at every single moment and with every move, is why the excess long run returns exist.
On the whole AI threat to financial journalism and blogging, it looks like the LLMs have already come for the wealth managers.
Chris Price today in the DT writing on “Stockbrokers and wealth managers hit by AI fears as shares tumble”.
Not shedding my tears for SJP, but rather more sympathetic towards low cost listed broker AJB, which has also been pummeled.
And see that David Stevenson is also writing today (also in the DT) on the ongoing ‘SaaSapocalypse’ (19% sector fall in one month, pretty grim for shareholders 🙁 )
He tips HgCapital for those with a (high?) conviction that the sector recovers, and highlights that probabilistic, and inherently uncertain and unreliable (with generic neural net architectures) models may be a very poor fit to replace the (bespoke) deterministic (and predictably reliable, if limited and expensive) software of older yore.
One for the brave, maybe…. (DYODD/ DYOR and YMMV).
In any event, my inbox and my Substack feed are both in an absolute meltdown about the ‘end of SaaS’; which might be a contrarian signal, or might not.
Like finance blogs, wealth managers, and everything else which so called ‘AI’ (or, more accurately, “narrow ML”, and an ML implemented through a singular pre trained probabilistic paradigm) is supposed to replace; SaaS is either going to be just fine (and do great off of these valuations), or it’s completely f**ked.
There’s not much middle ground.
If the business model goes then there’s not much of a… business.
So, it’s an optionality trade really.
Maybe the landscape isn’t as bleak for UK FIRE and Investment Bloggery: Mike’s back at 7circles:
https://the7circles.uk/irregular-roundup-12th-february-2026/