Off Topic The Politics Thread

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Should the UK remain a part of the EU or leave?

  • Stay in

    Votes: 56 47.9%
  • Get out

    Votes: 61 52.1%

  • Total voters
    117
  • Poll closed .
I googled "how many people own shares in UK"
I just did the same and got '23% of people in the UK have invested in the stock market'. 'Own shares' and 'have owned shares' are two very different things. I've owned shares once, but only because the company I was working for operated a share option scheme. That's very different to being a speculative investor in a random company.

Oh, and I made a tidy profit on them. I was happy to pay 40% on it.
 
A lot of people might be given shares as part of their remuneration, including buying and selling them tax efficiently through employee share ownership schemes, or simply as part of their pay package. Others might have shares that they have just been given - I discovered that I had a few shares in Lloyds and Aviva simply because at some time in the deep past they had given customers shares for some reason. Easy to forget about. Plus anyone with a pension pot will have some, or most of it invested in stocks. Hopefully globally. It’s really fun monitoring the ebbs and flows of your pension pot on a daily basis. Not.

Other than these buying shares on a small scale not through an ISA seems nuts to me. In the last 18 months the return you can get on fixed term cash savings has been so good it would put me off the riskier share dealing and even buy to let options to play with savings.

Of course, if you have a mortgage, some of these arguments might seem rather heartless.

Interest on cash savings is nothing compared to the profits investing on the stock can bring. It's necessary to take a daily interest in the FTSE and beyond, and have reasonable commercial judgement. It can be fun.
 
I just did the same and got '23% of people in the UK have invested in the stock market'. 'Own shares' and 'have owned shares' are two very different things. I've owned shares once, but only because the company I was working for operated a share option scheme. That's very different to being a speculative investor in a random company.

Oh, and I made a tidy profit on them. I was happy to pay 40% on it.

It can be read both ways, but the "had owned" refers back to shareholders in 2017, rather than historic ownership.
 
Interest on cash savings is nothing compared to the profits investing on the stock can bring. It's necessary to take a daily interest in the FTSE and beyond, and have reasonable commercial judgement. It can be fun.
Yeah, you can make a lot if you bet well. You can also lose a lot, including your capital. Depends on your personality. My Dad didn’t have a formal pension and was very good at investing for himself. It’s not for me, but that’s just personal choice and I have plenty of other things to keep me busy.

I don’t believe that 23% of the British population are actively managing a share portfolio. I’ll try and research more some time.
 
No cgt here
Talk of labour bringing in an envy tax when they next get in
My shares are currently down about 23%
Sold a load last year,<ale>:emoticon-0148-yes:<bubbly>
ETFs are up
Although I shouldn't be allowed to pick my own
Would there be a refund from the taxman to cover my losses
 
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A lot of people might be given shares as part of their remuneration, including buying and selling them tax efficiently through employee share ownership schemes, or simply as part of their pay package. Others might have shares that they have just been given - I discovered that I had a few shares in Lloyds and Aviva simply because at some time in the deep past they had given customers shares for some reason. Easy to forget about. Plus anyone with a pension pot will have some, or most of it invested in stocks. Hopefully globally. It’s really fun monitoring the ebbs and flows of your pension pot on a daily basis. Not.

Other than these buying shares on a small scale not through an ISA seems nuts to me. In the last 18 months the return you can get on fixed term cash savings has been so good it would put me off the riskier share dealing and even buy to let options to play with savings.

Of course, if you have a mortgage, some of these arguments might seem rather heartless.

I'm assuming people who are small scale invest in tracker funds count as shareholders, which is the low(er) risk way to do it.
 
Interest on cash savings is nothing compared to the profits investing on the stock can bring. It's necessary to take a daily interest in the FTSE and beyond, and have reasonable commercial judgement. It can be fun.
Do you consider that your playing around with stocks and shares constitutes a significant contribution to the health of the economy?
 
Do you consider that your playing around with stocks and shares constitutes a significant contribution to the health of the economy?

If it's UK shares, it must do. I help to put the share price up, With a higher share price, the public company can borrow against value for investment. They can also fend off takeovers
 
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bloody beneficiaries

For context, the total amount of new Benefit fraud, which arguably gets more attention from politicians, totalled $2.7 million in the last financial year. $2.7m compared to about a billion dollars in tax discrepancies.

As for how much the government is being defrauded in total.

A Serious Fraud Office report estimated fraud loss for the public sector in 2020 was between $601 million and $7.5 billion per year.


If lost tax revenue was included, the total cost of fraud and associated errors to the public sector could reach $13 billion per year.