Financial Notes

EDITORS NOTE 👋

Welcome to the first edition of Financial Notes, the place where you’ll receive Market Moves & Money Insights delivered weekly to your inbox! I’d love for this to be a place where I can connect easier with you all, so please feel free to reply to this email with any questions or topics you’d like covered!

MARKETS 📈

5-Day Performance Breakdown:

With the markets having a little wobble in the past few days, the “market crash” headlines are starting to float around again.

Now the pretence of this article is on the basis that the US stock market has reached dot com bubble level valuations again. Quoting the Shiller PE Ratio (which is the inflationary adjusted PE of the S&P500), is currently 39.56 at the time of writing.

The only time in history US market valuations have been higher was the Dot Com bubble where it topped 43x earnings on an inflationary adjusted basis.

But it’s not just valuations that are a risk factor, there are a few others to consider.

As an investor is a difficult time, keep calm and carry on, or sit on the sidelines and wait for something to happen?

Well research from JP Morgan has shown its historically better to stay invested in the market, because missing just a handful of the best trading days (most of which happen during a bear market), will adversely affect the performance of a portfolio over a multi-decade period, and none of us want that!

Past performance isn’t necessarily indicative of future results and all that, but as data and research is the only thing I can go off, thats what I try and base my decisions off.

PERSONAL FINANCE 💷

Cash ISA reform is back on the cards again!

Yep, you did read that right, in the run up to the Autumn Budget which takes place on the 26th November, a story broke earlier this week from the Financial Times stating and I quote “a person close to the process said the Treasury was considering a £10,000 annual Cash ISA limit”

I don’t know about you guys, but I just don’t understand why the government would do this…

They say its to encourage savers to start investing in the Stocks & Shares ISA, but in my mind (do let me know if you disagree), I don’t think you can just change a savings culture, into an investment culture, just by reducing the tax free savings allowance in a Cash ISA.

From the governments perspective I understand why it needs to happen, UK capital markets are unattractive with low valuations, and new IPO’s on the London Stock Exchange are drying up like a puddle in the Sahara.

BUT, if people don’t understand investing, or if people perhaps don’t want to invest as they approach retirement / are in retirement, or if people just prefer to have their cash held in a stable interest bearing account, then its difficult to change that. Cash ISA’s have their place.

Instead what the government can do is perhaps focus on teaching the next generation how to invest, through proper education in schools, and get some of the big banks and financial institutions to start putting some budget behind this financial education piece. Gosh, do I dare say even use some of the top rated finance content creators to help, there are plenty of them out there!

It's a bit of a frustration of mine, and something I’m passionate about, hence the YouTube channel, I just think there are better ways to go about changing the financial behaviours of the masses than cutting a cash ISA allowance.

A SMALL FAVOUR ❤️

I’ve been nominated for a Financial Influencer of the Year Award under the investment category. If you have a spare moment, it would be fantastic if you could cast your vote using the link below, you can vote across many categories, or just mine if you want to show your support by clicking here.

Thanks so much for you for any votes, it really does mean a lot!

A COOL MOMENT ✨

Being a content creator, if i’m honest, I don’t get out much, but last week I was invited to the London Stock Exchange (big pinch me moment) to "Ring The Bell For Financial Literacy”.

It was great to meet up with some fellow finance creators like Ian Dempsey, Neil Invests, Abs Mechial, Cazza Time, Mark On The Money, Abigail Foster and many others!

Shoutout to Ramin from PensionCraft who also took this picture of me, its tradition that anybody who is at the closing ceremony of the LSE, gets to sign their name in the book which is held in the countries national archives, pretty cool, right!

BONUS STUFF ⭐️

VIDEO OF THE WEEK 🎬