General News

Can you make money in the FTSE100?

Can you make money by investing in the FTSE100? This thought came to mind when looking at some of the recent market statistics. It's quite an important question because most stock market investors are heavily biased to that segment of the market (as opposed to FTSE250, small cap or AIM stocks) simply because the market cap of the FTSE100 is a very high proportion of the overall UK market. For example, it's about 80% of the FTSE AllShare. So if you ...

Private Individuals Own More of the Stock Market

The Office of National Statistics (ONS) have published their latest survey of share ownership in UK companies. Historically there has been a long term trend for individuals to own less as a proportion of the overall market. But the latest figures tell a different story. From historic lows of 10% in 2010 and 2012, the figures for 2014 show an increase to 12%. The proportion owned by the "Rest of the World" (which might also include some individuals) remains the highest at ...

Coping with Panics, and is the Market Cheap Enough?

I may be a day late to comment on stock market panics as the UK market bounced back today (25/8/2015) after sharp falls in the previous few days. But I had the chance to reflect on recent events after a trip to the somewhat stormy Rensburg AIM VCT AGM. It seemed pretty obvious to me that the markets worldwide were being driven by fear and emotion on the whole. Explanations given were both numerous and dubious such as the collapse of ...

ShareSoc Deplores Withdrawal of Personal Crest Membership by Brokers

ShareSoc has issued the following Press Release: Following the takeover of Stocktrade by Alliance Trust Savings (ATS), the latter have decided to withdraw support for Personal Crest Membership from their clients. Clients will either have to transfer into the ATS nominee service, turn their holdings into paper share certificates (a truly archaic form nowadays which are soon to be outlawed by an EU Directive), move to another broker or liquidate their holdings. This continues a recent trend for stockbrokers to terminate the ...

Undisclosed Fees and AGMs

It's interesting what you can learn at Annual General Meetings, or from ShareSoc reports on them, even if you don't attend in person. One of the recent news items in the financial press was about the disclosure of what private equity fund managers have received in "carried interest". It transpired that two very large US pension funds, Calpers and Calstrs, had no idea how much their fund managers had earned in this way over many years on top of their normal fees. ...

Markets in Freefall, Chinese shares and VCT Issues

While the world seems to be collapsing around us - with sharp falls in the price of most commodities including the critical ones of oil and gold - this writer took the time to attend the Annual General Meeting of Downing ONE VCT this morning. Forget also the fact that the Chinese stock market plummeted yesterday. The more I read about the dynamics of that market the more it looks similar to the US market in the 1920s where manipulation was ...

VCT/EIS Changes and Rensburg AIM VCT

The Summer Budget announced changes to the qualifying investments for Venture Capital Trusts (VCTs) and EIS investments. Some of changes and their impact were not immediately apparent but have come to light since. The rules will effectively be tightened to keep them focussed on early stage companies. For example for VCTs the investee companies will need to have been trading less than 10 years (or 7 years if they are not "knowledge intensive" businesses) and management buy-outs will be discouraged. The details ...

The Budget – How Will It Affect Private Investors?

George Osborne announced the Government's Budget yesterday (8/7/2015). These were the main changes that might affect individual investors: - Personal income tax allowance will rise from £10,600 to £11,000 in 2016-17. The Higher Rate Threshold will increase to £42,385 in 2015-16 with further increases in subsequent years. - Dividend taxation will be substantially changed. Dividend tax credits will be abolished and be replaced by a new Dividend Tax Allowance of £5,000 with tax rates on dividend income above that at 7.5% for basic ...

Greek Financial Crisis and Globo – it’s a Big Day

What better day to go to the Annual General Meeting of a Greek company (Globo Plc - GBO) than the day that Greece closed its banks and stock exchange for as long as a week? At least it used to be a Greek company and although it still has a lot of software development staff in Greece most of its operations are now in the rest of the world. Indeed it has ambitions to be a major global business based on ...

A Dream Become a Nightmare – And a Plug for ShareSoc

There was a good article in the Daily Telegraph on Sunday (17/5/2015) explaining how Thatcher's dream of a share owning population has become a nightmare. She tried to create a nation of investors by privatisations and regulatory changes to improve business competition but instead many companies have ended up being sold to foreign buyers. Even worse there has been a collapse in private share ownership. The reported proportion of UK shares held by individuals has collapsed from 20% in 1994 to 11% ...

Who are the Election Winners and Losers?

Who are the General Election winners and losers? Well most investors have benefited because the market as a whole has risen today after the election results gave the Conservatives an unexpected victory. Specific sectors that benefited were house builders and utility companies. House builders were generally up at the time of writing this note, with Berkeley Group in particular up 10% - no doubt investors being relieved there would be no mansion tax affecting expensive properties in London.  Utility companies were ...

Why Share Certificates are Dangerous and We Need a New System

The national press have covered the story of Deryn and Derek Hemment who face a demand for £25,000 from Capita to replace lost share certificates. They held shares in Compass Group worth £1.5 million and Capita posted them new certificates via second class post. But they never arrived and cannot be traced. Capita says it's not their problem because their terms and conditions make it clear that certificates are sent at the recipients risk. Capita appear to have been acting as ...