What caught my eye this week.
Some good news for investment trust fans this week, as the Financial Times reports:
The UK government has exempted investment trusts from onerous cost disclosures in a move analysts believe will boost the £260bn industry and could support trusts’ share prices.
In a joint statement this week, the government and Financial Conduct Authority said investment trusts will be excluded from European regulation that affects how their charges are reported.
The rules on packaged retail and insurance-based investment products, or Priips, meant that investment trusts appeared more expensive than other types of financial product.
This is because institutions such as wealth managers and private banks would have to include the cost of investment trusts in their “ongoing charges figure” for clients, while shares and other types of investments were excluded from the fee.
Investment trusts were brought into the Priips regulation a decade ago. But this has deterred institutions from buying them due to having to report artificially higher costs, analysts said.
Will this tackle the wide discounts that have plagued trusts for the last couple of years?
It can only help.
But trusts have suffered from a pile-up of other problems too – not least the bear market for British shares since late 2021, and more widely all things not-Big-Tech.
Still, the industry seems ecstatic.
One manager, William MacLeod, compared the rule change to the Big Bang of the 1980s. MacLeod is quoted in This Is Money as saying:
“What’s happened today is a lot less dramatic than the big bang in the 80s, but for those of us in the sector and all investment company investors, it is no less seismic.
“It is momentous breakthrough that is long overdue.
he campaign group – helped immensely by the support and dedication of Baronesses Bowles and Altmann – has worked tirelessly for these changes for a number of years now and today is a day of both relief and celebration.
“Righting this wrong is profound for the UK market, the sector, and investors of all sizes.”
There’s plenty more jubilation where that came from, and elsewhere:
Christian Pittard, head of closed-end funds at abrdn, said:
“The new Government has made boosting economic growth – by channelling capital into areas like renewable energy and infrastructure– its raison d’etre.
“These funds already invest billions into these areas – delivering crucial economic growth projects.
“However, cost disclosure rules, which have amounted to a distortive ‘double counting’ of costs, have negatively impacted investor sentiment, therefore choking flows into investment trusts. They have been a key cause of these three lost years of infrastructure investment.”
Made in the UK
Most Monevator readers are (rightly) passive investors, so you may meet this excitement with a shrug.
But even if it doesn’t affect your investing directly, trusts are important for the British stock market – with their £260bn in assets representing 30% of the FTSE 250 index – and arguably for the UK economy, by funnelling capital towards infrastructure, renewables, property, and other investment.
Trusts still have 99 problems – everything from the shift to indexing and consolidation among wealth managers to recent poor returns – to overcome.
But at least cost disclosures now ain’t one.
As I wrote in Moguls a while back, there’s seemingly value on offer with many investment trusts.
Some have since recovered, but many extra-wide discounts persist. Perhaps this move on disclosures will be a catalyst to reverse things?
- Read the press release from the FCA (if you’re having trouble sleeping)
How to back Monevator versus the robots
Talking of hidden value, it’s been a while since I did a housekeeping note on our membership service.
Monevator member numbers are still inching higher.
But we do seem to have hit a newsletter industry-wide plateau that predicts a maximum percentage of free email subscribers will pay the minimum £3 a month we ask for.
Nevertheless, we’re still thrilled so many of you have signed up!
Which is why I want to remind members again that:
- If you’re having any kind of log-in problems as a member, it will almost certainly be a cookies issue. Please clear your cookies (at least the Monevator ones) and make sure you allow third-party cookies. Also turn off ad-blocking for the Monevator website. Logged in members see an ad-free Monevator anyway! The cookies are needed for the software to show you member content. If you are fanatically opposed to all cookies, you can still read our member content via the emails…
- …on which note if you’re not getting member emails despite being subscribed to free Monevator emails – and you’d like be emailed both – then please let me know in the comments below or use the contact form to tell me. There’s a couple of dozen members not getting member emails, and I can change that if I know who you are and what you want.
Rise of the robots
Again, please do consider signing up to at least our Mavens member tier if you’ve not already done so.
There’s more than a year’s worth of Mavens and Mogul articles ready for you to tuck into.
Meanwhile, Google is now inserting huge AI summaries at the top of all its search results in the UK.
This means Google gets to sell advertising to web searchers without those searchers ever seeing the work of the people who actually put the knowledge online.
It’s early days, but I could see us eventually paywalling the whole of Monevator.
Obviously as someone who has shepherded two to three free articles a week on to this website for the past 17 years, that’s the last thing I want to do.
Our whole modest mission was to do our bit for everyone’s financial savvy, as best we could.
But I’ll be damned if I’m going to slave to keep training a robot to parrot my stuff while Monevator visitors dwindle to zero.
It may ultimately be futile to resist the AI-era, but if it comes to it we’ll try writing only for the real flesh-and-blood people who value us most, not for a mega-corp’s bottom line.
Sorry for the downbeat note, which is hopefully over-pessimistic.
Have a great weekend!
From Monevator
No Cat Food retirement portfolio update 2024 – Monevator [Members]
Passing investing, edge, and market efficiency – Monevator
From the archive-ator: How to spot a bull market top – 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.
US Federal Reserve goes big with a 0.5% interest rate cut… – CNBC
…but Bank of England keeps UK rates on hold at 5%… – Guardian
…with core and services inflation in the UK still too hot – Portfolio Advisor
Nearly 2.1m British savers set to pay tax on their cash interest – This Is Money
British government debt hits 100% of GDP – Reuters
Consumer confidence plummets ahead of ‘painful’ Autumn Budget – This Is Money
Stablecoins are crypto’s breakout profit machine – Sherwood
‘Buy the dip’ has a patchy record [Note: ‘buy the dip hit ratio’ axis is LHS] – Goldman Sachs
Products and services
Four questions to ask a potential financial advisor – Which
Fixed mortgage rates fall again, but at a more subdued pace – Mortgage Advisor
Open an account with low-cost platform InvestEngine via our link and get up to £50 when you invest at least £100 (T&Cs apply. Capital at risk) – InvestEngine
The 15 towns set to get a new banking hub – This Is Money
Supermarket Christmas savings schemes explained – Be Clever With Your Cash
Get £100-£2,000 cashback when you open a SIPP with Interactive Investor (T&Cs apply. Capital at risk) – Interactive Investor
How to get 10% cashback from UK attractions with American Express – Which
Homes for sale with first-time buyer incentives, in pictures – Guardian
Comment and opinion
An app for that? No thanks Vanguard! – Simple Living in Somerset
Invest like the worst: wealth-destroying concentration – Acadian
The important parts of investing you can’t quantify – Morningstar
Why Britain has stagnated [Long report] – Sam Bowman et al. at Foundations
Are demographics destiny for the stock market? – Of Dollars and Data
Only investing at the peaks: animated edition [with video] – A.W.O.C.S.
Choose boring over exciting – The Financial Bodyguard
A deep dive into the Renter’s Rights bill [Podcast] – The Property Podcast
Five strategies for reducing an inheritance tax bill – The Orchard Practice
Are passive investors affecting the stock market? [Podcast] – Rational Reminder
Exploring the ‘hidden’ risks of lifestyle pension funds – This Is Money
Does the so-called behaviour gap really exist? [Research] – SSRN
Naughty corner: Active antics
Growth isn’t enough when it comes to a good stock pick – Humble Dollar
Nick Sleep’s Nomad Partnership letters [Podcast] – Founders
Startup mortality rates and venture capital investing – AVC
Veteran value investor Bill Nygren [Podcast] – Behind the Balance Sheet
A profile of AQR’s Cliff Asness – Institutional Investor
Kindle book bargains
What They Don’t Teach You About Money by Claer Barrett – £0.99 on Kindle
Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away by Annie Duke – £0.99 on Kindle
The Good Enough Job by Simon Stolzoff – £0.99 on Kindle
Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth – £0.99 on Kindle
Environmental factors
Is it time to invest in the UK’s green transition again? [Search result] – FT
It’s getting wet out there – Klement on Investing
ESG is dead. Long live ESG – FT
Only 2% of $3 trillion in green bonds drives real climate action – Bloomberg
Fossil fuels mini-special
Fossil fuel rollercoaster – Cold Eye Earth
The sort-of environmental case for US fracking – Slow Boring
Robot overlord roundup
Why Microsoft’s co-pilot AI falsely accused court reporter of the crimes he covered – The Conversation
Engels, agriculture, and AI – Fork Lightning
Off our beat
Young women are starting to leave men behind [Search result] – FT
Statistics: may contain lies [Podcast] – Decision Nerds
Amazon orders its 350,000 employees back to the office, five days a week… – Sherwood
…which makes it a ‘dinosaur’, says UK management expert – Guardian
Are we too impatient to be intelligent? – Behavioural Scientist [h/t Abnormal Returns]
How to avoid ‘sanewashing’ politicians – Poynter
Avoiding Alzheimer’s – Humble Dollar One and Two
Moments that change your life – We’re Gonna Get Those Bastards
Take something away – Collaborative Fund
And finally…
“Don’t tell me what you think, tell me what you have in your portfolio.”
– Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game
Like these links? Subscribe to get them every Friday. Note this article includes affiliate links, such as from Amazon and Interactive Investor.
‘Sorry for the downbeat note, which is hopefully over-pessimistic.’
Take that sentence out. Don’t end on an apology. The points are all fair.
What am I missing? Less cost disclosures makes me more suspicious of investment trusts.
@PC The cost disclosures for Investment Trusts under the previous rules were unfair, there was an element of double counting.
I would not be suspicious of Investment Trusts but do you need to use them ?
I am very grateful to investment trusts, they allowed me to retire in my late 40’s, there were few passive funds available to private investors at that time.
I have a copy of the July 2007 Association of Investment Trusts data and it shows we have more Investment Trusts now than then, by about 50% and the market cap has grown substantially as well, by a factor of about 4.
Yet looking at F & C Investment Trust for example, a bellwether Trust, the trust has shrunk the number of shares by about 25%. ( It performed in line with the World Equity Index after charges)
We seem to have a lot more specialist trusts, VCTs etc and glancing down the Ongoing Charges figures, some are reasonable F&C is 0.49% but there is an awful lot in the 1% to 3% range, the average is 1.2%
Monevators advice that most investors would be better off in a Passive Index fund has much merit. I note my own costs are .1 % on my largely passive portfolio.
That 1% difference is significant over the longer term.
Is that exemption from European financial regulations a Brexit benefit?
It is noticeable that Continental Europeans are very much more protection oriented in so many ways and not in just in financial areas
No doubt a reaction to their long history of their nations being continually overrun by various autocratic neighbours for long periods unlike their British and American counterparts
We seem to have a much more bent to less regulation,free trade in our psyche
Another accident of our shared history ?
xxd09
The FT article was excellent, if a bit concerning for males (and parents).
Part of me would like university to renamed as “7th form” and “university proper” – it’s not sensible to compare university when 15-20% of the population attended versus 40-50%.
Some countries have over 50% which must mean students with IQ of 100 or below attend. In the mid 80’s we had CSEs and O levels – a CSE grade 4 was the assumed level for IQ 100, and a CSE grade 1 was deemed equivalent to an O level grade C.
I’m all for education and training but something needs to change.
Finally, how great are women – more education, more earnings, less unemployment etc etc. perhaps boys/men need a alternative path, 4 years in the forces or voluntary service to grow up and fix some of their flaws/genetic predisposition
Thanks for the ‘Take Something Away’ article from Collab Fund. I’m sometimes tempted to add more complexity to my DC pot but when I step back and consider DB+DC, it would probably be a waste of time and attention.
+1 for Jonooooo – TI you’re self-employed in other aspects of life, so you must know the downsides of undervaluing what you do for others.
People used to bitch about the faceless gatekeepers of the analogue world, the broadcasters, the publishing houses, the news desks. Well, you got what you wanted, a zillion channels of shit and discovery getting harder and harder in the face of AI filtering and dreaming up ‘content’, what used to be known as plagiarism.
AI seems terrific at raising the noise level in the information space. What used to be known as intelligence, not so much. It’s slightly dispiriting that so many so-called intelligent tech bros either can’t tell plagiarism/parroting apart from intelligence or are fundamentally sociopathic in an ends justifies the means way.
You can stop Google AI (and other AI) from scraping your website for content by amending your robots.txt file
I don’t get member emails (I do get the free ones). May I be subscribed to all please. Thank you
To disable Google AI within Google search see https://www.androidauthority.com/how-to-turn-off-ai-overviews-google-3445771/
The ‘Why Britain has stagnated’ article was excellent. Thanks for sharing.
Maybe an option would be more content behind the member wall – the draw-down portfolio series being a good example here – but keep this weekly news letter and some of the more widely applicable content – like the accumulation portfolio series, broker table, ISA vs SIPP, &c. – freely available as the shop window? (And accept feeding these to the AIs as a cost of doing business in this day and age.)
@TI @David Saunders: once subscription came in my concern was that @TI was too generous with what’s available for free and, given the ever worsening copyright theft in training LLMs and the use of so call ‘AI’ (i.e. Machine Learning) tools, it’s not sustainable (at least anymore) to try to keep 98% of the 2,000+ articles free on the open web (and 1% each for Mavens and Moguls behind a paywall).
I realise that there’s an advertising hit to begin with; but Google, Meta and co-conspirators are the main culprits in the “enshitification” of the internet (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Tick Tok).
In the face of both that and the assualt on content creators by the likes of OpenAI, it’s time to face up to the reality that the barbarian bot horde is at the digital gates and is ready to plunder and loot the citadel at will.
An ironclad paywall may be the only option left.
I’d humbly suggest for ~20% to be left on the open internet (in particular the broker table and cheapest tracker pieces) and the remaining ~80% to be locked up behind the paywall for Mavens and Moguls.
You can then lock comments on the (~20% of) free articles in order to prevent the spam tsanumi, and keep the comments open on the expanded body of articles behind the paywall.
I’m an investor from the EU, investing in UK investment trust.
As it seems UK trusts will not be required anymore to follow EU legislation, I wonder whether EU investors will still be able to invest in UK trusts?
Does anyone has something to share about this?
Thanks!
@platformer, Grumpy Old Paul
Sadly, that’s no guarantee. Very far from it – see, for example, this: https://adactio.com/journal/20515
Remember when Google’s corporate mantra was “don’t be evil”?
“don’t be evil” is so terse that at least it couldn’t have been written by AI.
@Curlew, @platformer, @Grumpy Old Paul, @Vilehackwriter and @deariemie: on the adactio.com piece there’s a link to another piece (“Disclosure”) on chat bots’ training using the adaptation of the Voight-Kampff test from Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep / Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner: “You’re in a desert, you see a tortoise lying on its back, and your call is very important to us”.
This sums up how I feel about Google’s “Don’t Be Evil”. Up there with IngSoc’s “War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, Ignorance Is Strength”.
We’re living in PKD’s, Ridley Scott’s and William Gibson’s worlds now. I don’t think we need to look too far around us to see who the Tyrell Corporation and Weyland-Yutani Corporation are.
Thanks for the nice words about this weeks links — and double thanks to the half dozen new members who’ve signed up on the back of this post. 🙂
Just briefly, I am aware we can block AI robots from crawling our site though (a) who knows, honestly and (b) they’ve already crawled it.
More to the point, I’m not so egotistical to think information on this site can’t be found elsewhere.
I’d like to think we have an edge on clarity, personality, sense of humour, and editorial independence — as well as showing up week in week out for 17 years. At least for some people!
And in what passes for traditional publishing nowadays online, that can still get you a loyal audience because they value those traits, they will accept that not every article will be a banger, but lend their time and attention and overall get something wider and deeper out of the experience of consuming our content.
If you have a great community like we do in the comments then even better.
I have all that with certain other media properties and newsletters myself, so I know how it works.
But bottom line re: financial education itself is if AI doesn’t read us they will be trained elsewhere.
Perhaps we can bar them from copying our writing style? But they will soon be able to write in whatever style a reader wants.
So resisting training that way doesn’t amount to much. And breaking the relationship with Search is problematic because if new readers don’t find the site that way, how will they find it?
At that point you may as well have a paywall (and get new users by targeted paid-for marketing, for example) as you’ll have a de facto paywall, as no traffic is coming your way at that point.
That has already happened to much of the independent media sphere over the past 2-3 years. As I’ve revealed before we ourselves were hit by an algo ‘upgrade’ that reduced our traffic by 30-50% in a week, a couple of years ago.
At this point some of you — and certainly an AI evangalist — will say “ok, well if your content isn’t uniquely valuable and irreplaceable then that’s on you”.
To which I’d say, fair enough, but what an incredibly high bar. How many of us can honestly say what we do every day can pass that bar?
Stephen Hawking? Taylor Swift? Ronaldo?
It’s a short list.
Members-only subscription turns media into a sort of club. We’d have a self-curated group of more enthusiastic followers, who are probably quite like us, and who we can write for. A community.
We’d lose advertising and affiliate revenue, which isn’t nothing these days, but still we’d frankly also lose a lot of hassle (spam, hacking, endless marketing outreach and emails, random comment moderation, general security issues) so it might be a wash.
At the end of the day we will all get what we all decide to pay for. Perhaps people don’t want a vibrant media scene.
I’d say be careful what you wish for, but to be honest who can already say that things are better now media-wise than a decade ago, let alone two to three decades ago?
I’d suggest it’s a lot worse.
Yes we’ve had the welcome explosion of newsletters, but they’ve really just replaced blogs which we had before.
Most of the fairly well-resourced second and third tier media has been wiped out. Most magazines are pamphlets compared to the old days. Only a few newspapers are still really organs of record. We’re blessed in the UK with the BBC (despite all the crap flung at it) but who knows for how long.
And people won’t miss what they don’t know.
Sometimes I like to point out to young people who are not curious what the bandstands in London’s parks are/were for.
“They are bandstands” I say (because they don’t know). Bands used to play live music every Sunday and thousands would come out to walk and mingle. A local Glastonbury every weekend!
Instead we have Spotify and the YouTube comments section.
I’m not actually saying here that one is better than the other here. I’m just saying the world can change a lot.
A high falutin’ way to ask for £3 a month maybe but that’s the bigger picture. 🙂
@Luci — Thanks for your note and for signing up!
I believe your email address was missing an ‘l’ and have edited both your free subscription and your member log-in. I will send you an email to the correct address to confirm.
@Boltt #5
What remains irrefutable, is the consistent gender majority for males in STEM subjects; the things versus people divide. It is surely genetic predisposition, and I assert that it will continue to exist unless and until human evolution decrees otherwise.
No amount of well-intentioned but misguided social engineering will change it.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268122003201
https://www.stemwomen.com/women-in-stem-statistics-progress-and-challenges
The Acadian and Foundations pieces in the links are outstanding. The latter (“Why Britain Has Stagnated”) should be read right through to the end by every single UK politician in central and local government, by every senior civil servant, regulator and council planning officer, and by every CEO and CFO of all UK listed companies.
@Factor #21
> No amount of well-intentioned but misguided social engineering will change it.
Certainly was my experience, both at Imperial Physics in the left-hand end of the FT’s chart, and as an engineer. However, a data point countering the presumption of the innate nature of this gender bias is that the erstwhile Soviet Union was more balanced in their science and engineering, so this very distinct imbalance in the West could be a product of culture and history. The Soviet Union’s science/technology was on a par though different in the 1950s and 1960s. They did after all get the first satellite into space.
@Bert: I’m in the same position as you and that was also my first thought! I’ve already had problems with brokers classifiying certain ITs as complex and/or leveraged products and blocking buy orders. I’m worried that investors in the EU might soon experience a blanket block on all of these trusts, if they don’t comply with PRIIP regulations.
@ermine #23
Yes but where the Soviet Union was concerned propaganda and misinformation were never far away, and I suspect also that the lack of freedom of choice for its citizens in other spheres would have extended into their careers.
I think the issue of currency in the digital economy as well as how generative AI will affect creation and consumption are very interesting from a philosophical and cultural perspective.
As I perceive it we are overloaded with information, education and entertainment. We pay with our attention. Consistent attention is the 10 dollar bill. Sharing with others is the 100 dollar bill. Active engagement is the 1000 dollar bill.
If I look at my own consumption I am very selective with my attention. There are a few sources that get my consistent attention. I rarely share, and almost never engage actively. The only sources that I actually pay for are Spotify and Monevator. I don’t think that I am alone in functioning like this.
When I look my now young adult children their attention span before discarding something is extremely short. We are talking about seconds. The long build-up in my greatest cultural experience ever – reading Lord of the Rings – just don’t stand a chance.
This site has passed an extremely high bar for me and for many others. And I am extremely grateful.
But I think it is hard to sell something for money when everything else is for free. Still, bottled water is big business even in countries where tap water is of better quality. People pay a lot for a glass of wine in a nice location, instead of staying at home.
You have created a very valuable, constructive environment and built an enormous amount of trust with many succesful and wealthy people. What would they be prepared to pay for? The Monevator Dinner with a few selected guests? An in-depth second opinion on a complex business topic? A physical book with the Best-of posts and what actually happened? At a restaurant you don’t pay to sit. You pay some for the food. But the profit is in selling the wine.
@my #25
I might also ask, re Sputnik, to what extent was the necessary technology of the Soviets’ own making and to what extent was it “borrowed”?
@ermine, factor
Multiple large scale population studies have shown that gender differences increase as gender equality increases. The more free people are to make their own choices, the more likely they are to choose traditional gender roles (which also explains the Soviet Union as Factor points out). We will not have a 50/50 gender split in engineers if women have free choice.
It also puts paid to the idea that gender is predominately a social construct but that’s a whole other debate.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aas9899
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ijop.12529
I noticed just this week that when I searched for Monevator you are now the 5/6th entry or even on page 2, sponsored sites have all popped up above. So I’ve joined up, thank you for a very useful blog.
The FT article made some interesting points. It’s concerning, though, if we are actually starting to worry about men and their position in society. I’m seeing too many articles on the subject of “young men finding it hard to find their place in society”. What tosh. Men still occupy a majority of the positions of power, earn more (once normalized for skills) etc.
Women may have ever so slightly edged past them in terms of numbers going to uni or average salary. Zoom out on those charts and look at the differential 50-100 years ago. The current female advantage is a rounding error. We are in a much better place based on those charts. In particular, the fact that “female graduates … have less need than ever to pair up with a man for financial support” should be cheered.
The playing field is being made more level. Good. Men have nothing to complain about.
I hardly think we should be celebrating that ITs no longer have to disclose pricing. What do they have to hide? How expensive they are! No wonder they are celebrating.
@ZXSpectrum48k It seems fair to question the impact of a narrative that says we live in a patriarchal society where men have subjugated women for millennia and expressions of masculinity are readily defined as toxic. That is not a helpful narrative for men or women. You’ll see this sentiment is shared in the FT comments.
There could be a society with perfect gender equality (of opportunity) where there were more men in positions of power and who earn more. That would presumably still be a society to welcome as we should be solving for equality of opportunity and not equality of outcome.
On the point of why pay for what appears to be free elsewhere, this goes back to the dawn of the digital age, and maybe further back to introduction of radio or even public libraries. Stewart Brand and Steve Wosniak (the Apple founder) at the first hackers conference in 1984 said this:
“On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time.”
40 years on that’s still the dilemma. Free has consequences. Free has downsides. Free has limitations. To paraphrase, and generally speaking, if you’re not paying for something in a commercial setting then you’re the product, and if you do pay then you should be the customer.
Was it just me, or did everyone read the test or the article in Christopher Walken’s dulcit tones.
On ‘paid for content’ and the benefits of quality over free, generally sites should seek to emulate a ‘Swiss model’. Be the best. Not the cheapest nor the largest. Build the best site, provide the best info., and they will come. And they will pay.
https://youtu.be/TuadTdhmne0?feature=shared
On IT costs’ disclosures (@Warren #31), it doesn’t obviously seem great for investors that Trusts get to choose how to and how not to disclose fees. Give the investor all the info. and all the different presentations of fee data. Let the investor then make up their own mind on a fully informed basis.
@Factor #27 > to what extent was the necessary technology of the Soviets’ own making and to what extent was it “borrowed”?
Wernher von Braun ‘cough’. As Bob Hope quipped at the time ‘their Germans were better than our Germans’ 😉
Just a quick note to say “Thank You!” for all the work you’ve put in over the years. I only found Monevator a few years back, but thoroughly enjoy the quality and consistency of the articles!
The real scandal wrt investment trusts is indeed the undisclosed fees in the form of monitoring and transaction fees from the underlying portfolio, which can at times rival the (disclosed) management fees they charge.
This double-dipping has long since disappeared in the private closed end market, but still persists in the listed scene.
@ the Investment Trusts critics
Clearly, ITs satisfy a need and they most certainly do in my case. Were they to be as inherently inferior as you imply, then I suggest that they would have long since left the investing landscape but they have not.
If you feel that this is due to my and others’ ignorance then so be it, I shall lose no sleep over that.
I really appreciate all the work that goes into Monevator – it’s such a great resource and I look forward to reading it every week.
The report on why Britain has stagnated is impressive and depressing in equal measure. That makes me want to emigrate not some potential hike in CGT!
@ermine (#23) – I was at Imperial College Physics too. It was definitely an extreme example of that. People knew how sad it was and they would even feel sorry for you. There was almost a total absence of women in the entire department. When I was there, I think the only girl in physics was an ex-girlfriend of mine!
On investment trusts, these seemed to be the best way for me to start investing with small sums in the 1990s/early 2000s, using the IT savings schemes which were zero charge for buys, and had low minimum purchases. The alternative was unit trusts with high initial and dealing charges.
The Foundations essay is worth reading, bearing in mind it comes from the world of right wing think tanks. Some of the examples of comparative costs are indeed eye opening. There is a major emphasis on planning and development control, as someone who has spent his working life dealing with the planning system I recognise the need for planning reform but I don’t think it is realistic to go back to some kind of pre-planning legislation free for all. Development control in Germany where I worked for a while is equally stringent, and is incredibly strict in US cities, and they seem to be doing just fine according to their essay. Also having recently gone through the Grenfell report I’m not sure we should be deregulating the construction industry any time soon.
@Larsen, I am glad I am not the only one who found the essay on Britain’s stagnation written as something of a political polemic – for all that it documented some thought-provoking comparisons.
As you say, the Grenfell inquiry shows the need for state regulation that is effective in protecting ordinary people whose lives are put at risk by unregulated profit making. However the time it is taking also shows the need for the system to be improved so that inquiries are fast enough for decisions to be made in a timely manner.
On the male-female thing, personally as on whose stake in the next generation is largely through girls I must applaud it. But in terms of a longer term outcome I would worry, lower education and aspiration of young males running into a brick wall of biological time outs and stresses for working mums who end up the major earner.
Guess for men who focus on the trades where AI overlords are least likely to make them redundant there is a path. But we’re probably always going to be short true engineers and I’m not sure that the science/engineering path is sexy enough for girls to keep the numbers up.
Neglecting and demonising males is not a sensible scenario and liable to end in tears
Males also unlike females generally externalise their angst usually in a violent manner which does not bode well for society
Interesting to note that the current 3 flashpoints where death and destruction are increasing ie Ukraine,Gaza and the Gulf are all instigated by alpha males
We would need to take a little more care with our young males or they will extract a heavy price from us all
xxd09
@xxd09
Exactly where I was thinking if they get too far “behind”. For every sensitive and creative/content Beta male there’s a frustrated Alpha fuelled by testosterone, peers on social media and patriarchal misogyny to make things go pear-shaped.
@TI, have you considered preventing the Google AI bot from summarising the contents on this site? You can add the two lines below to the robots.txt file to do that.
User-agent: Google-Extended
Disallow: /
Google says: Google-Extended is a standalone product token that web publishers can use to manage whether their sites help improve Gemini Apps and Vertex AI generative APIs, including future generations of models that power those products. Google-Extended does not impact a site’s inclusion or ranking in Google Search.
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/google-common-crawlers#google-extended
@Ben — Thanks, I have indeed had a scan of that. My concern is that whatever it says it would impact SEO results. At the moment my policy is to wait and see what some of the bigger guys do / try to implement the best practice of others…