Does anyone remember when the UK had an economy worth investing in?

thegentleway

Michael121 said:

thegentleway said:

Michael121 said:

thegentleway said:

Why is it “your” country? You didn’t chose to be born here...

What difference does it make. 

I think it makes a huge difference. You don’t think your life would have turned out differently if you were born in a developing country? 

If you’re born in the U.K., you’ve basically won the lottery of life. Seems strange to complain about being extremely lucky to live in the 6th largest economy in the world when most people alive today are nowhere near as fortunate...

I agree that's exactly why you should be proud to call it your country, but we can't call the UK our country because we won a lotto ticket to be born here? Can you tell that to the people that was tearing down statues. 

It’s a great country. Feel free to call it what you want. I just think it’s funny to be proud of where you were born when you had nothing to do with it. I also think it’s funny to call your country. It doesn’t belong to you. If anything, you belong to the country (British citizens have been conscripted, you can have your liberty taken away, etc...). But I guess the people who start on Bond Street/Park Lane are going to be pretty keen to argue they own it.

Sebo027

bowlhead99 said:

CreditCardChris said:
Banks will be probably be around forever but they're slowly being phased out by the likes of Revolut, Starling etc which are disrupting those old grandpa banks.

Revolut has been running more than five years now. Last year they made £160m in revenue, strong growth over previous year. Well, it's easy to get revenue growth if you buy it: after their £270m of operating expenses, they lost over £100m for the year.

Starling is another darling of the millennials as they give you what you want for free. They have over a billion of customer deposits and as of two months ago had lent almost £900 million through BBLS and CBILS (the government schemes for covid support where the govt pays the customer's interest bill for a while), and they have a hundred million grant from the Capability and Innovation Fund where they basically get free money for being a challenger bank. Despite being on a run-rate of £80m revenue a year, they spend more than that in operational expenses so haven't ever been able to report making a profit.

To build on this, Monzo was another one and they attracted people in their droves on the back of free international cash withdrawals and the dynamic, nimble nature of their app. I picked up a card in Q4-2016 or possibly Q1-2017 and treat it largely as my "might get defrauded" cash card for use abroad or online from smaller retailers. However, it's a play to grab customers and some degree of market share and over time the fees have increased. I agree that they have "disrupted" established banks to get some fresh thinking into how people control their accounts and finances. They brought in a number of refreshing features - you can block / unblock your card from the app. You can chat via messenger instantly (would this scale up well?). You can view spending habits, graphs, plots etc all automatically. You can see on google maps exactly where a transaction or cash withdrawal was made a second after it has been completed. You get a notification every time money is withdrawn from your account. However, I do not think these companies will ultimately be able to take on the established banks, the "old guard" or "grandpa companies" as @CreditCardChris calls them. They will either be bought out or the banks will implement the "cool" features into their apps that people like. They have already started and while big corporations pay a huge inefficiency tax (it's a bit like turning the titanic) I would not under estimate the strength of position they maintain in the market. 

CreditCardChris said:

Yeah, I can't wait to invest in these companies... Banks have zero growth opportunity, offer zero innovation and are generally a disliked industry as they make virtually all their profits from interest which requires literally no input from the company except time and the initial capital they lend you, which is lent out in fractional reserves so you're probably actually borrowing 5x more than the bank physically lends you.

Banks will be probably be around forever but they're slowly being phased out by the likes of Revolut, Starling etc which are disrupting those old grandpa banks.
Green energies will disrupt oil. Insurance companies build on technology like Lemonade will disrupt traditional paper insurance companies. Mining will still be around but earth is quickly running out of resources so they best start investing in space mining or they too will perish to the up and coming Elons of the world.

Green energies won't provide you plastics, lubricants, paints, solvents, synthetic rubbers, jet fuel, bitumen and hundreds of other deratives that are literally in or used to make thousands of every day products. 
As for mining, the raw materials to "fund" the electrification of the transport network, assuming of course there is enough minerals on earth to make enough batteries to displace every hydrocarbon car currently on earth. That's not to say we should not try, that we should not innovate, but the point is that none of this is a foregone conclusion and all of this stuff is firmly in the "higher risk" category than the status quo and is far from a definite future.  

Edit to add: Another thing that crossed my mind with Facebook - they might have experienced a recent resurgence as a result of the lockdowns and more people turning to online communications as a result, but again the future is far from certain that they have "plenty of potential" for growth. They have 2.7 billion monthly active users at the moment, roughly 1/3 of the world's population and this number has been increasing linearly since 2008. However, it's banned in China, Iran, Syria, and North Korea. There are already growing concerns around data privacy, the mental health effects of social media and the increasing "politicizing" of the platform. Citing aneqdotal evidence, my Facebook feed is mostly devoid of actual content from my Facebook friends, who were extremely active in 2009, 2010 etc. I'm not convinced there won't be more and more people turning their backs on Facebook as time goes forward. They make money from ads and this relies on frequent use from their user base. Eventually their "active users" will plateau - possibly decrease - and then how will they make money? Personally I don't even use it to "keep in contact" anymore and would much rather refer to the "old fashioned" emails, which are by nature a much more thoughtful and insightful way to communicate. All of this and I haven't even mentioned the environmental impact - the power and materials required to run and maintain their servers and network. The computing industry contributes 2 percent of global carbon emissions, similar to the global aviation industry - read here. 

Generally speaking, when it comes to the vocal troves of (let's call them) "millenials" and their commentary of most things in life, I can't help but think of this: 

quirkydeptless

Sebo027 said:

"No nothing" and they still got a Nobel Prize

Thrugelmir

Amazing that so much energy can wasted on a topic negatively by an investor.  You'd have thought that time would be better spent researching markets where they are invested. The detachment between the real economy and markets doesn't seem to have registered. 

bowlhead99

quirkydeptless said:

Sebo027 said:

"No nothing" and they still got a Nobel Prize

This particular version of the image has been circulating at least 7 years and that is indeed one of the comments that usually comes up each time it gets reposted on e.g. reddit

Mickey666

thegentleway said:

Michael121 said:

thegentleway said:

Michael121 said:

thegentleway said:

Why is it “your” country? You didn’t chose to be born here...

What difference does it make. 

I think it makes a huge difference. You don’t think your life would have turned out differently if you were born in a developing country? 

If you’re born in the U.K., you’ve basically won the lottery of life. Seems strange to complain about being extremely lucky to live in the 6th largest economy in the world when most people alive today are nowhere near as fortunate...

I agree that's exactly why you should be proud to call it your country, but we can't call the UK our country because we won a lotto ticket to be born here? Can you tell that to the people that was tearing down statues. 

It’s a great country. Feel free to call it what you want. I just think it’s funny to be proud of where you were born when you had nothing to do with it. I also think it’s funny to call your country. It doesn’t belong to you. If anything, you belong to the country (British citizens have been conscripted, you can have your liberty taken away, etc...). But I guess the people who start on Bond Street/Park Lane are going to be pretty keen to argue they own it.

My feelings exactly.

I'm immensely fortunate to have been born in this country, am very pleased about it and happy to recognise and acknowledge it, but 'proud' is not something that comes to mind.  'Proud', I think, is something that is achieved, not handed on a plate by an accident of where one's Mother happened to be when giving birth.  No great personal achievement in that, so what is there to be 'proud' about.

Eco_Miser

thegentleway said:

Michael121 said:

thegentleway said:

Michael121 said:

thegentleway said:

Why is it “your” country? You didn’t chose to be born here...

What difference does it make. 

I think it makes a huge difference. You don’t think your life would have turned out differently if you were born in a developing country? 

If you’re born in the U.K., you’ve basically won the lottery of life. Seems strange to complain about being extremely lucky to live in the 6th largest economy in the world when most people alive today are nowhere near as fortunate...

I agree that's exactly why you should be proud to call it your country, but we can't call the UK our country because we won a lotto ticket to be born here? Can you tell that to the people that was tearing down statues. 

It’s a great country. Feel free to call it what you want. I just think it’s funny to be proud of where you were born when you had nothing to do with it. I also think it’s funny to call your country. It doesn’t belong to you. If anything, you belong to the country (British citizens have been conscripted, you can have your liberty taken away, etc...). But I guess the people who start on Bond Street/Park Lane are going to be pretty keen to argue they own it.

For your information, use of a possessive pronoun does not imply ownership, merely some sort of relationship, in this case the country I was born in, and continue to live in.

An ultimate example of the non-ownership of the thing 'possessed' would be a slave saying "My owner".

thegentleway

Eco_Miser said:

thegentleway said:

Michael121 said:

thegentleway said:

Michael121 said:

thegentleway said:

Why is it “your” country? You didn’t chose to be born here...

What difference does it make. 

I think it makes a huge difference. You don’t think your life would have turned out differently if you were born in a developing country? 

If you’re born in the U.K., you’ve basically won the lottery of life. Seems strange to complain about being extremely lucky to live in the 6th largest economy in the world when most people alive today are nowhere near as fortunate...

I agree that's exactly why you should be proud to call it your country, but we can't call the UK our country because we won a lotto ticket to be born here? Can you tell that to the people that was tearing down statues. 

It’s a great country. Feel free to call it what you want. I just think it’s funny to be proud of where you were born when you had nothing to do with it. I also think it’s funny to call your country. It doesn’t belong to you. If anything, you belong to the country (British citizens have been conscripted, you can have your liberty taken away, etc...). But I guess the people who start on Bond Street/Park Lane are going to be pretty keen to argue they own it.

For your information, use of a possessive pronoun does not imply ownership, merely some sort of relationship, in this case the country I was born in, and continue to live in.

An ultimate example of the non-ownership of the thing 'possessed' would be a slave saying "My owner".

Thank you, that's a good point. I may have misunderstood but fairly sure CCChris was implying ownership/sense of belonging although I may have read too much into it!

wmb194

Who am I to argue with youthful omniscience but another thing that Chris misses is that there is usually more than one way to invest in a company e.g., one of the safer and more reliable ways to invest in a bank is to avoid its ordinary shares and instead invest in its preference shares and bonds. For as long as anyone can remember our great friends in Paris and Frankfurt have been itching to get their hands on the banking and insurance business that goes on in London, so just because it isn't the hot sector today it doesn't mean it isn't worthwhile and anyway someone has to do it.

IIRC the underlying design of the CPU and GPU of the iPad I'm using to write this comment were designed in Britain: Apple doesn't design every component from the ground up.

Diplodicus

Son is looking to sell ARM. That would be a great buy for the UK.