>>8136
The upper limit on annual pension contribution is £40k per year.

>>8139

Divorces, kids, and drugs habits are hell on your finances.

>>8141
Only if you can't carry forward.

>>8138

Depending on the interest rate of your savings account, Premium Bonds may be better - currently 1% equivalent interest. Though it is not quite instant access - it takes a few days I think to get your money, it is zero risk (and it is nice to get an email saying you have won).

>>8144

Premium Bonds! I was trying to remember the name last night and all I could come up with was "National Bonds" which didn't sound right at all. Googling for "like the national lottery but government bonds" was surprisingly unhelpful too.

My savings account is currently at a measly 0.25% interest. I'm sure if I went down to the local branch (if and when it's ever open, are physical banks essential in the age of cash machines and online banking? My mum's in her 70s and knows how to use a cash machine) I could get some kind of upgrade to another type of savings account but those bonus deals usually only last a year before they revert to the standard rate.

Cheers lad, you've not only fixed my tip-of-my-tongue issue from last night you've also given me a decent idea to investigate. Thanks lad!

>>8144
>>8145

I've also noticed that NS&I do a nice little Junior ISA that I can throw up to £9000 a year in tax-free for the nipper to blow through when he either goes on a gap yaah or gets his first ASBO.

>>8146
If you've the spare dosh put £240 a month into a pension for him. Tax relief would gross it up to £300.

>>8144
>>8145
Do you really think a fucking lottery is the sign of a good deal?

>>8148

It's a lottery where you get all your money back if you lose, guaranteed by the government. With interest rates at record lows, it's not the worst option for ultra-safe savings. You'll probably win nothing, but if the alternative is getting 0.01% APR...

>>8148

It's significantly better than the bedrock low rates you'll get anywhere else at the moment if you don't have huge amounts to invest.

My grandad had premium bonds, and going through his finances when he died they did perform better than his ISA over about 30 years, that always stuck out to me as we always made fun of him for getting excited when he got a letter saying he won two quid or whatever.

>>8147

I'm going to shock everyone here by admitting I don't have a pension myself (I'm incredibly pessimistic about the mid future and I'm absolutely certain almost no one under 40 is going to live long enough to receive the state pension if it even exists in 45 years time) so I'd never considered that you could start building a pension pot for a kid, an interesting idea.

That said, assuming the entire world doesn't end within the next 15 years or so he could at least cash out a Junior ISA at 18 and go scuba diving around Venice while Rome burns, or something.

>>8152

Get a fucking pension lad. The best time to start a pension is ten years ago, but the second best time is now. If you don't trust the state to provide for you in old age, then that's all the more reason to provide for yourself.

>>8152
A little exercise in compounding, ladm8. If an investment grows by 6.5% annually it would double every 11 years. Let's say you put £3,600 into a pension for a newborn sprog. Tax relief means your initial outlay is £2,880.

At age 11 it's doubled to £7,200.
At age 22 it's doubled to £14,400.
At age 33 it's doubled to £28,800.
At age 44 it's doubled to £57,600.
At age 55 it's doubled to £115,200.
At age 66 it's doubled to £230,400.

If you were in a position to do this for a few years then you would be setting your kid up for life with a comfortable retirement. There's a reason the wealthy tend to do this for their grandchildren, in part because it's also taking funds out of their estate for IHT.

>>8154

While I doubt I'll ever be wealthy enough to ever need to worry about inheritance tax, 6.5% APR is very, very nice indeed. Cheers lad, I'll look into it.

You lot are talking about complicated stuff, but I would like your thoughts on something. I have about £18,000 just resting in a savings account. I have been meaning to stick it in a stocks & shares ISA to buy into a index tracker of sorts. Is that advisable?

Please no lifetime ISAs or anything that will penalise me for withdrawing my money early.

>>8154
Meanwhile, inflation is 5%. Oh look, that compounds too.
Management fees and the occasional Woodford 'nah, no money for you' also make me an unenthusiastic investor. I do have a pension (company matches, so good), but my pension statements over the years really don't show the magic of compounding leading to a rosy future. Those pounds I spent as a fresh graduate 30 years ago, have led to a pot I can earn in a few days. I could really have done with that money back then.
Small scale investing just feels like a waste of time, compared to using that time to earn more or do interesting things (like buying slightly nicer houses and riding that insane train, has worked for me at a level I've never even seen suggested for other investments).
_Saving_, though, makes sense, since at some point I'd like to stop work or ease off, but I'm just not seeing my saving pot actually growing much. Can it really and should I put the effort in?
Wish I'd mined bitcoin back in the day and kept it, but who doesn't...

>>8157
If we're talking proper actual returns over a 60 year timeframe then inflation between 1959 and 2019 averaged out at 5.4% annually.

I don't think a global stock market index has been running that long. The MSCI World Index is probably the furthest you can go back and between January 1975 and January 2021 it has returned 21415.40%, so that's a compound return of 12.39% p.a. if I've done my sums right.

>the occasional Woodford

If you're unhappy with active management then use an index tracker. Woodford is so noteworthy because what happened is so rare; it's certainly not an 'occasional' event.

>>8156
It depends on your appetite for risk. Market performance far outstrips the interest on savings accounts but it goes up and down so if there's a crisis and you need to withdraw in a 5 year timeframe then you can lose money (common wisdom is that you will have made money by year 5). To address this risk people usually maintain a portfolio that includes bonds and what-not in fractions that vary by age - bonds are safer but the return reflects that so are better for old people's pension savings.

There's lots of stuff you can read online about this. As before think about what you're doing.

With that out the way; I'll say that I remain confident and even though I'm planning to buy a house this year I condensed everything in December into three low-cost trackers covering Japan, US and UK which I consider safe as a chav in a box. That's cocky by common wisdom but I'm confident for reasons and if 1 and/or all shit the bed then I'll just spend a few more years putting money in before I buy a place which will end up considerably better than what I can afford now. Also I'm a lazy fucker.

Bonds are still a joke of an investment in terms of returns. Hence Premium Bond lads gambling on a 1% return.

>ISA

Why bother? You're not going to exceed £12.3k in profits to be eligible for capital gains tax. If you do then, fuck me, I'll pay your CGT if you tell me what it is you're doing.

You're not losing anything by opening a fund and share account as an ISA, maybe compare platform fees but I doubt it'll change. What you will do though is lose the chance to pay into another ISA that year - should that ever be something you want to do.

>>8159
> Why bother? You're not going to exceed £12.3k in profits to be eligible for capital gains tax. If you do then, fuck me, I'll pay your CGT if you tell me what it is you're doing.

I thought interest from bank accounts was treated as income for the purposes of income tax. Have I missed something or are you suggesting setting up a limited company with a business account so that interest counts towards capital gains and not personal income?

>>8159
Thanks mate. I will read up some more on it.

>three low-cost trackers covering Japan, US and UK
Could you share what trackers that might be and what platform you would recommend? I have been eyeing HL for a bit now.

>>8161
HL is great.

I have a couple of Legal & General Funds which are doing great, the one HSBC tracker I have is doing shit.

>>8160
What?

>>8161
This is a HL website!

That said you pay more in platform fees on HL which add up (my tips will cost you £7~ a month on your amount) so if you just want to plop some money down then Vanguard is almost certainly a better deal on platform fees and probably others too. The main advantage of HL is apps, charts, selection etc. and like me you'll probably be too lazy to change once you're in.

Anyway:
HSBC FTSE 250 INDEX
ISHARES JAPAN EQUITY INDEX
LEGAL & GENERAL US INDEX

1. I'd be tempted to switch out FTSE 250 for 100 or, if you hate Britain, pick something else. It's underperformed for obvious reasons in recent years and your bet will be that the vaccine programme continues to lead on Europe and possibly even the US meaning we can be normal-ish sooner.

2. Japan is a good bet for long-term stability and Abe-Suga have been doing things Japan has needed for a long-time in opening up trade. It's also in good proximity to the rest of Asia without so much obvious problems.

3. The US just grows and this has beaten all my other bets. It has a little star next to it and is cheap so it makes me feel special. Throw all your money here if you want, fuck it all.

Previously I looked into South Korea but things have been booming for too long imo and I expect it'll drop like a stone as people cash out like happened with tech. I did a jolly with Italy recently but it just pissed me off by doing nothing and a specialist fund is expensive.

>>8163
>LEGAL & GENERAL US INDEX

I've got some of the L&G Global Tech Index one which is doing well for me. ALSO you need some Fundsmith in your life, they're doing the best out of all my funds.

If you're going to pick funds then the key thing is to understand what you're actually investing in rather and why you've chosen those funds than following what everyone else seems to be doing. Otherwise when things get choppy you'll start to panic.

I would pick a global equity fund for the core of your holdings that you can set and forget about. Most people when they're investing look to manage risk and they try to do that through spreading their investment around; investing across the globe would provide better diversification than investing in one geographic region. This does depend on your attitude to risk; you could diversify further by investing across other asset classes but there is the trade-off between risk and reward so it'd be at the expense of potentially lower returns; if you're investing over the long-term then the shorter term peaks and troughs of the markets get smoothed out anyway.

Once you've got your core established you could look to have satellite holdings in whatever takes your fancy. Biotech. Health. Gold. Individual stocks. Anything you have a particular interest in or passion about helps on this front.

Lastly, whichever platform is best for you will depend upon how much you're investing and how frequently you trade. In my shoes AJ Bell shit all over HL but it's not best for everyone.

>>8165

Is it possible to get enough of an insight in a particular industry that you invest and make money from that specific area?

I've worked in biotech and health for the past couple of years and would have loved to have thrown money towards a few companies during that time, but never had the money to be able to do it.

>>8168
I'll give you a few examples. My friend is a vegan and he's quite passionate about the environment, so he's invested in companies that he feels will do well in those areas like Beyond Meat and funds like Baillie Gifford Positive Change; the latter was absolutely ridiculous last year because its largest holdings include Tesla and Moderna. I have a friend who works in food technology, or something like that, so he's bought into Agilent Technologies because he's been impressed with them through his dealings in that industry and they've been steadily going up.

I work in financial advice and the only company I've invested in related to that is AJ Bell, so please use their platform, because I like them as a company and I knew when they floated at the end of December 2018 their price would go up considerably. Everything beyond that is taking a punt on a fund like Smith & Williamson Artificial Intelligence that is in sectors I have a hunch will do well at the time.

>>8168
>>8169
I reckon the right kind of advice is to invest in the companies you like. If you think killing crabs is great and there's a certain business who provides a quality service then you do a little further research (e.g. ESG) and invest. Obviously they're doing something right by the consumer and by raising demand for shares you offer them greater potential to raise capital for improvements that, by extension, help you have better crab killing products. Then when they fuck up by doing a new crab saving product line you'll hopefully be ahead of the curve enough to get out.

It's an idealist outlook and there's other ways to invest but you ought to be cynical of getting in early on the next big thing or even beating the market. Also if you're investing in anything related to your profession then seriously sit down and ask if you could defend it in a tribunal - that goes double if you're an NHS-lad as even the whiff of being bent will leave a mark.

In b4 it's in the news that millions gets pumped into Games Workshop because you nerds decide to invest in your hobbies.

>>8171
Games Workshop performed better than the market last year if I'm not mistaken.

I want to buy some Abcam shares because they just went public last year but they're not listed on eToro.

I bought Thermofisher Scientic because I recognized it from working in Mol Bio labs and it's looking pretty healthy so far with a presentation to be made this week.

I have no idea what I'm doing.

>>8172
About five years ago the Games Workshop share price was about £5.50. It's currently at about £117.

>>8171
That already happened in 2016. Have a look at a chart that covers Games Workshop's entire history.

>>8175
That was you lads behind it?

>>8176

People have theorised about what caused it, from the release of the Primaris range introducing new blood to the 8th edition of 40K and renewed interest image of Sigmar riding the wave of popularity "nerd stuff" in general is enjoying recently (thanks to the likes of TV shows such as Stranger Things featuring DnD).

However personally I think it's just a complete stroke of luck for them, they had new management take over and released a refresh of much of their product range [i:]just[/i] in time for the lads who were kids in the 90s and early 00s, during GW's last major peak in popularity, to start reaching the stage in the life they can afford to spend a fuckload of money on plastic soldiers they wish they'd had as a kid.

>>8177
I would also ay a part of it there's a lot of bored people with time on their hands spending it painting up models.

>>8178

Yeah, they've no doubt done very well out of the pandemic, but they were already on the upward trajectory before it.

I wouldn't consider them a safe investment though, I forsee it going the same way as before where they eventually get a bit too greedy and alienate a lot of customers. The non-grognard normies won't stick around when the nerd culture fad ends in another few years.

>>8176

Like everything else, Tonty Blair was behind it.

>>8179

They've been putting out video games pretty consistently in recent years which have been pretty well received.

Whilst I don't like the business model of the Necromunda re-release it seems to be the TG equivalent of doing DLC which has been very profitable for the video gaming industry.

If GW allows somebody to do serious TV/Movie adaptations of their IP I could see them increasing sales further still.

>>8181

I'm a bit miffed at the number of supplements in the new Necromunda but a full range of gangs and rules are, afaik, available through one book now. You just need to hold on and not buy things as soon as they're released as they seem to consolidate them later much of the time.

Of course you can just use the minis for vintage necromunda, the new gang kits are very nice.

>>8182

If they'd just do a proper skirmish like Necromunda but with 40k minis/factions, I'd be all over it. Kill Team is shit.

My Stobart investment has roughly doubled in value. What stupid company should I reinvest the gains into?

>>8196
Weaponised Autism generated some remarkable movement in Gamestop Stock yesterday.

Those people reckon PLTR price is being suppressed until lockup is over and that the price should moon at the end of this month. Only 20% of stock is in circulation currently, with the 80% owned by insiders to potentially go on sale the first week of February. Citi just downgraded the stock this morning and so it's doing especially shitty today. This is a data analysis type company who has its fingers in a lot of State Surveillance type activity. Potentially could be a ten bagger if it goes the way of Tesla (Peter Thiel is in the Paypal mafia).

Blackberry has been doing poorly, but had a rebound after doing a deal with Amazon before being shorted into the dirt by Hedge Funds. They're getting involved in making software for EV so maybe could be on track for an uptrend.

I like the ARK ETFs for being able to invest in an area of tech without having to put too many eggs in a single basket (but for a couple of them the growth is driven mainly by TSLA).

finviz.com is a cool site to look at stock info
I don't know anything about investing except what I'm told to do by /r/wallstreetbets and /biz/ on the other place.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-13/heavily-shorted-gamestop-soars-most-ever-as-day-traders-circle

>>8200

BB had a good day today.

>>8200

The Wallstreetbets phenomenon is endlessly amusing, at least if you're someone that can afford to invest a few grand on something a meme post told you to buy. I keep seeing posts like "I found wsb yesterday and now I own 100 GME shares" which feels like a disaster waiting to happen, but then I suppose it's not really different to people watching youtube videos ten years ago about how to become your own boss via forex trading.

>>8214
It goes for all forms of investing really. UKPersonalFinance is full of people who don't know what they're doing and will invest in Vanguard because they've decided to follow what everyone else is doing without truly understanding why or what this actually means, so they'll they have to sell their investment and reinvest it every time it goes up to benefit from compounding or some dumb bollocks like that; it was fun watching them flap around when everything went tits up in March.

I was doing really well from my Blackberry trade then fucked it all up by buying Bionano Genomics high. I'm one of the poor retail meme investors that you richlads are being judgy about.

>>8216

No judgement, I'm in the dangerous position of knowing a little bit but not a lot. There's no doubt my portfolio would be better off had I just followed the top post on WSB every week. If their polls of holdings are to be believed, they're basically a decentralised hedge fund at this point, and playing their own game. I don't know what the industrylads think about it, but I like it, it feels new.

>>8217

My take is that most of the trading that happens is algorithmic (like in Flash Boys) and conforms to certain specific patterns based on stock movement with little consideration of things that are happening in the real world regarding companies.

Large hedge funds manipulate markets to suit themselves by throwing their weight behind trades. These people usually have boomer mindset and it's most apparent when shorting companies to try and acquire them at less than fair market value.

Trading has become more accessible to poor people via things like RobinHood and although individual behaviour isn't enough to move markets, collective behaviour can be influential.

Young professional traders are frustrated because they understand the flaws in the market and can see how the whales manipulate it, but are unable to do anything about it. see Byron the Bulb from Gravity's Rainbow If they post on the other place they can recruit sufficient numbers of people to achieve the kind of 'Open Source Hedge Fund' phenomenon you mention.

Most of the successful investment of recent decades has operated on a kind of Rentier Capitalism or Capturing Value kind of paradigm, whereas a lot of the tech stocks that have flourished recently are creating new tech and new markets creating a potential future space for growth.

I can't figure out how much of the current sitch is Speculative Bubble and how much is actual New Paradigm, but I will continue to gamble my beer money on markets for as long as Pubs, Restaurants and Cinemas are closed.

>>8152
>I'm going to shock everyone here by admitting I don't have a pension myself (I'm incredibly pessimistic about the mid future and I'm absolutely certain almost no one under 40 is going to live long enough to receive the state pension if it even exists in 45 years time)

...and? What's that got to do with building a personal pension? Surely that's an incentive to do more about it?

>>8215
>, so they'll they have to sell their investment and reinvest it every time it goes up to benefit from compounding

Pardon me?

>>8218
I've been having similar thoughts myself although I keep having a horrible pessimism from the potential for manipulation either deliberate or because of spectacle. That and the story of the senior Kennedy knowing a crash was imminent because a shoeshine boy tried giving him stock tips.

Oh well, may as well enjoy the roaring '20s while they're here. Maybe one day the whales in Forex will get a well deserved kicking.