Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

1

General Discussion Area / Re: Taxes

« on: 01 March 2021, 00:37:57 »

We'll come to a point, in the near future, where there will be too many pensioners and too few people of working age to pay for them.

In the old days pensioners had the good manners to either die early or receive the state pension for just a couple of months  before dropping off the perch.

With pensioners selfishly living so long these days the looming pension crisis is inevitable.

As illustrated by the Covid Vax figures. They're saying that 20 Million (not far off one third of the total population) have had their first jab, yet they're only on the 65 and older AFAIK. Ok there are some queue jumpers in that 20 million, but really?

2

General Discussion Area / Re: Euro Lottery - If you won it

« on: 24 February 2021, 14:16:00 »

Second purchase would be the retainer of a very good accountant

Third purchase would be the retainer of a very good solicitor.

That's one way of wasting your money. Me - I prefer the George Best approach.

3

General Discussion Area / Re: Shares

« on: 16 February 2021, 16:06:43 »

Back to shares for a second.... the shares I mention earlier have more than doubled 😁😁😁

Time to sell then 

4

General Discussion Area / Re: More bat-flu news

« on: 15 February 2021, 09:38:23 »

How can you include the 20,000 that haven’t died?

They have died, just not of flu. You expect an average of (say) 500K people to die every year, 20K of which die from flu. However, for some reason no-one actually dies of flu yet 125K more than expected do die (625K in total).

So those 20K, plus another 125K did die of something, just not flu. So what did they all die of?

5

General Discussion Area / Re: More bat-flu news

« on: 15 February 2021, 00:28:23 »

we're thrashing them on deaths per million though 

I've aid it before, and I'll say it again..... the truth will come out sooner or later.

Very few people seem to have died of Influenza.
Very few people seem to have died from Pneumonia.
Very few people seem to have died from ANOther illness.

COVID COVID COVID.

Assuming that is true, what explains the Excess deaths figures?

If 20K people haven't died from Flu over the last year, but 125K people more than expected have died, then there are actually 145K unexplained deaths to account for.

6

General Discussion Area / Re: Clearout time (PC bits)

« on: 14 February 2021, 17:38:51 »

HM50256P-15 are 256K * 1 bit 150nS devices, so nine on a board is probably a 256K*9bit SIMM/DIMM. I'm guessing original PC XT/AT type era?

Shame they're not the faster -12 (120nS) devices :-)

7

General Discussion Area / Re: Shares

« on: 13 February 2021, 18:19:12 »

Gone up to 139. 14 they were 123.00 when I posted However they have gone nuts 45% in America. I will be investing a few bob on Monday as apparently once they go over 2.00 there it’s very good news.

Careful. Buy the troughs and sell the peaks.  You're verging on day trading territory, which is gambling not investing. You should be thinking about what the value might be in 5 or 10 years time, not tomorrow!

8

General Discussion Area / Re: Shares

« on: 13 February 2021, 18:16:08 »

Platform costs depend on what your holdings are (Individual Shares, ETF's, OEIC's, Unit Trusts etc), how there are held (Unwrapped, SSISA, Pension), the total value of your funds, and how much you trade/churn/buy/sell per week/month/year. So there is no single answer that applies to everyone. I do remember there was a niche where HL could work out cheapest, but I can't remember what that niche was - all I knew is it didn't work for me. I transferred to Interactive Investor, but I don't hold any individual shares so they may not be cheapest for anyone else.

There is a spreadsheet run by "Snowman" over on the MoneySavingExpert website/forum. It allows you to enter everything you hold, and it shows you what the current charges are for a multitude of Platforms. There will be differences often running into hundreds of pounds per year between the providers.

Just be aware that sometimes things are cheapest for a reason. HL do have a reputation for good customer support and a flashy modern website, whereas II is very much a DYOR and DIY platform with a clunky old website. Clunky old works for me. I drive an Omega :-)

9

General Discussion Area / Re: Shares

« on: 13 February 2021, 15:49:07 »

Anybody into them on here at the moment.... Argo blockchain seem to be looking good.

Never really been a share buyer or trader, although I have had some as a result of windfall type shares in demutualised companies.

However, last I year I became aware of the stock market dropping and in particular that J D Wetherspoon had halved in price. With interest rates at zilch, I went for it and bought some via Hargreave Lansdown. I then looked at others, looked at what the share price had been, what it was at the time, and whether I felt that the company would survive and thrive. At present I have shares in 13 companies, I hasten to add that total cost is not vast. I am not simply interested in if the share price goes up or down, equally interested in the possibility of dividends etc. So, medium - long term.

Some shares have been amazing in particular Reach(.62p up to to £3). Some just pretty good, Nat West, Wetherspoons, Carrs. Others ok-ish Marstons, N Brown, Aston Martin (It is lovely to say you have shares in AML). And others are quite recent so way too early to tell. At present I'm showing about £2,800 gain before tax on total spend just over £5k. I do not have these in a stocks & shares ISA. My wife is deeply suspicious of all this, sees it as just plain gambling. I try very hard to be sensible, but I am a bit cross that I did not invest quite a lot more.

I avoid trendy investments. As they say, if it sounds too good to be true . .

I don't see myself as a seasoned or experienced investor, but so far so good. Besides, I'm retired and in lockdown it gives me something to do.

Get them in a SSISA pronto. That absolves you of any tax implications. However, you'll need to do some research into which is the cheapest SSISA provider. I doubt it's HL - I left them 6 or 7 years ago because they were waaaaayyyyy too expensive.

You don't have any CGT liability at present - even if you sold them all today for a £2800 profit that's well within your annual CGT allowance of £12300 this year. However, if their value increases significantly in the medium to long term CGT could become an issue when you go to sell them.

Also dividends above your allowance (£2000 p/a) outside an ISA count as income, so have to be declared on your tax return and you could end up paying tax on them.

Inside an SSISA there is no CGT or dividend tax.

10

General Discussion Area / Re: Shares

« on: 12 February 2021, 15:16:47 »

A hell of a lot of amateur investors lost their shirts. Serves them right, it might be fun to cost a hedge fund a fortune, but people's pensions are invested with them.

I've no problem with amateur/private investors loosing their shirts in this. Short selling is institutionalised gambling. If you play with Great White Sharks then sooner or late one of them is gong to bite your arm off. Managed UK pension funds should not be invested with companies that gamble more than a tiny amount of their clients money like that. The pensions regulator would come down on them like a ton of bricks.

11

General Discussion Area / Re: Shares

« on: 11 February 2021, 16:15:39 »

I don't own any individual shares, but I do hold lots of them indirectly in the form of OEIC in my pension and SSISA.

Single company shares are very high risk. It's classic all your eggs in one basket stuff. I think it was Bradford and Bingley members that were wiped out when they went belly up. Many of the share holders were employees in their company share scheme. Lloyds shares were similar - they weren't wiped out but their value was diluted enormously by the issue of new shares during the financial crash.

That's not to say you shouldn't join a company run share scheme. They're often very good, and a great way of saving for your future. However, you MUST be aware of the risks, and many IFA's will advise you to sell the shares/options as soon as possible, and re-invest the money in something else to make your overall portfolio a lot less risky. That might mean buying shares in other companies, or investing in unit trusts or OEIC's.

Basically it's about spreading your money evenly around a number of assets in a range of markets. For shares, that often means one tobacco company, one oil/gas company, one Utility company, one Supermarket, one Pharma company, one large manufacturer etc. That way if any one market, or any one company hits trouble you don't lose all your money.

It can be as risky as gambling if you get it wrong, but if you research it thoroughly enough you can make the risk/reward balance work in your favor.

12

General Discussion Area / Re: More bat-flu news

« on: 11 February 2021, 14:51:46 »

plus 
Lockdowns slow down the spread
less spread means less people being hospitalised (so less NHS overstretching )
BUT ALSO  ..  the less new cases, the less chance of mutation
every NEW case is a possible mutation !

I'm far from convinced this is true. It's not just the number of people infected that increases the chance of mutation. It's also the period over which the infections persists in the population. Lockdowns can never be 100% effective, and so do extend the period over which the virus is a problem. Try this thought experiment.

Suppose the Govt marched all of the 68 million UK population into a hangar, and deliberately sprayed them all with active CV19 virus. Within 4 weeks we'd all be either full of antibodies, or dead (probably around 2 Million dead). Either way there wouldn't be any active cases left in the UK, and the hospitals would be empty of CV19 patients. Within a 4 week period there wouldn't be enough time for a virus mutation to get hold, so CV19 would die out here.

The other extreme is to lock everyone down, and keep them locked away until everyone has been vaccinated. The problem with that approach is that it's going to take the best part of a year to vaccinate everyone, and as we are seeing that's plenty enough time for the remaining viruses to mutate and possibly become vaccine immune.

IMV It's simple Darwin vs Human Nature. Darwin says the virus will evolve such that some strains becomes resistant to the vaccine, and those mutations may be more or less harmful to their hosts. Those hosts (humans) that are better suited to fight off the virus will survive and prosper - Those that aren't won't.

Human Nature will be (is) to adopt a whack-a-mole approach trying to (and failing to) kill off any new mutations as and when they become a problem. There are very few instances of Humans actually managing to eliminate a Virus - we just learn to live with them. Spanish flu died out in less than 2 years having killed around 50 Million world wide.

In the UK we tolerate 20K flu deaths a year. We are currently at about 125K CV19 deaths and we're locked down.

13

General Discussion Area / Re: Are some big earners totally stupid ?

« on: 07 February 2021, 12:54:20 »

I know someone who bought an expensive house on an interest only mortgage, and remortgaged it through the early 90s as the value went.up, which supported his family's lifestyle..He's a financial.advisor. in 2008, he was paying £3k a month, in interest and had no income due to the financial.crash for 5 months.....Rather than a repayment mortgage, he has used the money for i"nvestments" ..
Good luck to.him.if you have the balls.....

This is called "leverage", or "gearing". You borrow money at a low interest rate (mortgage at 1/2/3%) and invest it in something that you expect to return more. Of course it can go wrong, but it's not uncommon for good IFA's to target 10% returns per year for their own investments. Paying £3K p/m in interest isn't much of a worry if you're getting £10k p/m in investment returns.

14

General Discussion Area / Re: Are some big earners totally stupid ?

« on: 01 February 2021, 13:49:34 »

The problem is how do you save the 10% deposit (which could be £25-50K for a one bedroom squat in the smoke) whilst still being able to afford Sky TV, the latest iPhone 12 and 2 holidays abroad per year?

15

General Discussion Area / Re: CV 19 vaccination

« on: 21 January 2021, 16:35:45 »

American statistics for allergic reactions to the Pfizer Vaccine :

https://www.acsh.org/news/2021/01/21/allergic-responses-covid-19-vaccination-15292

1.8 Million injections, no deaths, 83 reported allergic reactions of which 21 were serious enough to require hospital treatment (EpiPen).

In my book them's pretty good odds when you compare it with the risk of requiring hospital admission if you do catch CV19.

YMMV.