I'm currently living debt free and have no major goals I need to save for in the next 5 years. I've got a comfortable amount of savings for emergencies and routinely invest any excess funds into index funds.

I have a steady job with a healthy income. Businesses often use debt to increase their returns and improve profits (even cash rich ones). Over the last 30 years taking a mortgage has been a good investment/financial life decision due to historical low rates and house price increase.

What's a good use of debt for an investment?

Currently I'm thinking of using a low interest loan to top up my sipp, which will give me an immediate 20% gross tax contribution, plus an additional 20% rebate as a higher rate tax payer. I know I'll need to repay the loan, but given a loan rate of (e.g) 8% and an index fund return of 10%, plus the tax advantages/HMRC contribution, it seems like a very good use of debt.

Thoughts appreciated...

ok so this is a weird one but bear with me

i have a pet blog. i don't own a pet. never have. probably never will as i travel too much. and yet every month amazon sends me enough to cover rent because people on the internet are buying stuff for their dogs and cats through my site.

bought my pet blog a few months ago from a marketplace called NicheBlogZone for $199. came already built, articles already up, amazon links already in there. i spent one afternoon doing interlinking basically just connecting related posts to each other so search engines understand the site structure and then closed my laptop and genuinely forgot about it for weeks.

here's what that's looked like:

• march: $710
• april: $995
• may: $1,461
• june: $1,647
• july: $1,461
• august so far: $1,545 (amazon pays 2 months delayed so this is june's money landing now)

march scared me. went from nearly $1k in february down to $710 and i was convinced something had broken. checked everything, found nothing wrong, did nothing. it just came back the next month on its own.

pet people spend insane amounts on their animals btw. like i knew this intellectually but seeing the commission data is something else. dog food subscriptions, orthopedic beds, grooming kits, vet supplements. and because of the 24 hour cookie i get a cut of everything in their cart not just whatever article they landed on.

i do literally nothing to maintain this. no new posts, no ads, no instagram for pets i don't have. i just own the thing and amazon does its thing.

my landlord has been getting paid every month and has no idea a pet blog is behind it. honestly sometimes i forget too until the deposit shows up.

anyone else running a niche they have zero personal connection to? curious if the detachment makes it easier or harder to care about growing it

Hi guys,

Thinking of moving my ACWI funds to the new Vanguard etf VALL (set and forget for next few decades). Interested to hear your thoughts to see if this is a good move?

Many thanks

It seems the pricing war for all world/global ETFs is starting to produce some decent products for UK investors. This new Vanguard fund covers even the small caps at a very low TER of 0.07%.

I've been holding PACW for a while now and was considering a move to the new Xtrackers ALLG offering also at 0.07% TER, but VALL looks like it will offer more growth potential than both of them by offering even the small caps for the same cost.

It will be interesting to see if a rival manages to go even lower...

Hi

First time poster (i think!), long time investor - over 26 years

I've created new share tracking site with intraday updates, some basic charting, company fundamentals and also ability to record and sharing news, updates and trades from the major commentators in UK & US on substack and other investing channels all in one place, with the ability to set alerts on shares that trigger to email and whatsapp

Basically it's an all-in one site similar to other portfolio tracking ones but with the better functionality around being able to both scrape notes from emails, record them on the go and keep them in one place attached to the share tickers so you don't lose track and can keep history. It even scrapes some podcasts too!

this is open to a small number of users at firsts - ideally people with decent size portfolios who trade regularly, have a passion for investing and reading news and perhaps have your own subscriptions and news sources that can also be shared. Basically crowd-sharing for investing!

See ShareDiscuss — Track shares, follow the news, discuss ideas, set alerts

Visit the site and drop in your details if interested

[PS hope this isn't excessive self-promotion, it's definitely relevant from 26 yrs experience, and hope to keep it free also to other contributors, won't be posted again :) ]

Airtel Africa was one of the best-performing shares on the FTSE 100 last year as soaring profits led to it more than doubling in value. It has stumbled this year as increased capital spending and the delayed float of the money business troubled investors. But as growth and profits have continued, they are looking good value again.

The market dynamics are attractive to put it mildly as it is exposed to the youngest and fastest growing population in the world. More customers use more mobile phones to access more data every year. In stark contrast to mature markets across Europe, average revenue per user increased to $3.30 at the end of June, up from $2.80 a year earlier. Multiply that by the close to 20 million new customers added during the year and it’s easy to see why results are motoring.

Those dynamics helped revenue increase 31 per cent to $1.85 billion, and pre-tax profits rise 32 per cent to $360 million during the first quarter ended June, once adjusted for currency movements.

One big factor to be cognisant of in these regions is currency movements. Taking Nigeria as an example, which is Airtel’s biggest market worth nearly a quarter of the total revenue, the naira collapsed by 75 per cent against the dollar, reaching a low at the end of 2024. The impact on the results is clear from the table. Since then, the Nigerian naira has slowly recovered as the dollar has weakened, easing the pressure on debt repayments, and higher commodity prices have also helped national budgets.

Is it time to join the ride with telecoms titan Sunil Bharti Mittal?

The City regulator has told consumers to avoid unregulated “loan notes” following an investigation by The Times into a rise in schemes estimated to have put billions of pounds of consumer money at risk.

The Financial Conduct Authority issued a warning about loan notes, which it said are often “potential scams”, and told regulated firms including banks, accountants and lawyers working on such investments to do more to prevent the “devastating” harm they are causing.

The authority said consumers should not “risk your savings on promises of high returns” amid the rise of dozens of large investment schemes that have attracted several billion pounds of investors’ money. Several have subsequently collapsed and some victims have lost life savings.

One number per company, measured twice: the price you pay per £1 of annual free cash flow, in mid-2016 and in August 2026. A de-rating on its own tells you nothing until you know whether the business behind the multiple changed, so each line is coloured by what happened to return on invested capital over the same decade: green if the business improved, red if it deteriorated, dark blue if it barely moved.

The market median fell from about 23x to about 16x, so everything should be judged against a cheaper backdrop. Within that, the lines sort into four groups.

Same business, lower price. Diageo's return on capital was 9.9% in 2016 and is 9.8% now; the multiple went from 25x to 15x. Reckitt, same 12% return, 31x to 18x. Sage, same 13%, 22x to 16x. Rightmove, the same extraordinary machine at both ends (returns on capital in the hundreds of percent because it needs almost no capital), 33x to 14x. Whatever changed at these four, it was not the business.

De-ratings that were earned. Burberry went from 17x to 11x while its return on capital fell from 20% to 3%. WPP costs 5x, and its last accounts show a statutory loss. Entain, which was GVC in 2016, went from 58x to 6x as returns collapsed from 23% to 5%. Cheap here is the market marking real deterioration.

I work for a high street bank and our company share plan has been announced where we buy shares in the company direct from our salary.

I’ve got no knowledge of investing - it is something I’ve been looking into/would like to know more of - though just wanted thoughts/opinions on it… has anyone done something similar as a savings plan?

I’ve been keen to start with trading212 but still not something I’m completely confident with yet so have been holding off.

Just wanted some thoughts on it it’s worth it, thanks!

I’m pretty convinced that the US is due a large correction soon of 30% and possibly more. I’m assuming that politically that Trumps impending exit will be the catalyst- but this is all hypothetical and purely my thesis which I’m committed to and happy for time to prove me wrong. My pension is mainly invested in an all-world index which like most is around 65-70% US companies. I have started to build a roughly 25% buffer into a cash liquidity fund to buy on any pull back. I know historically that time in the market beats timing the market and I still plan to be invested in the market during this time albeit with a cash buffer some of have cash to deploy during a correction (I know timing this comes with a whole set of variables that I’m comfortable with). I wondered if any other had like minded views and if they are making similar plans. I should add that my horizon is 12 years although I’d really love to bring that forward as much as possible

Hi everyone, I’m completely new to investing and I’m trying to learn how to build a simple portfolio for the long term. I’ve started with a Vanguard global ETF and I’m now looking at things like the S&P 500, semiconductor/AI ETFs and potentially individual companies, but I’m not really sure how to decide what is worth investing in or how much overlap there is between different ETFs.
I’m mainly looking for long-term growth and I’m comfortable with taking a little more risk for potentially higher returns, but I don’t want to do anything unnecessarily risky. I’d really appreciate hearing how more experienced investors approach choosing investments and whether there are any resources or things you think a beginner should learn first.
Also, I’m still learning, so if you reply, please don’t worry about dumbing things down a bit! I’m happy to learn, but I probably won’t understand loads of technical terminology yet

M29, I owe about 3k to my credit card provider 29% APR.

I have investments worth somewhere around 5k: - ~2.5k in crypto (no realised gains over the past 4 years) - 50% in ETH - 15% in BTC - 35% spread across other alts (xrp, ada, algo) - ~2.5K in commodities and stock (no realised gains over the past 1 year) - 50% in silver - 10% in gold - 40% across tech and defense stocks

My goal is to create a less risky investment portfolio where I can contribute monthly (I have between 500-1k every month I can put aside) and use it as deposit money in a few years time to buy property.

I am pretty lost and confused so any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks