Marginal economic growth. #financefriday

Apparently, the UK economy grew by 0.1% in November, all because a few football fans went to the pub to watch the World Cup. Maybe they removed a few gifts from their Christmas list so they could afford it or turned their heating down 1 degree? Many people saved through the pandemic and still have spare cash to spend. Many companies have spare cash too and they have been doing share buybacks. That is a safe way to reward shareholders but many shareholders want companies to grow and if that money was used to grow those companies, we might see the economy grow.

Thrifty and frugal

I tend to be thrifty and frugal as a matter of course. Even when I’m food shopping I look for bargains. I like good food and I look for something different to eat to vary my diet. I don’t just look to save money I try to get value for money. DIY skills can also save money. Last week, I fitted a 2 Tb SSD in my laptop, giving me plenty of room for all my photographs and documents. This week, I upgraded it again by increasing the memory from 8Gb to 16 Gb. It now runs faster and I have more storage. I shopped around for the parts and the SSD was on special offer on Amazon.

The markets

The UK stock market has been doing well all this week. With the GBP high against the USD maybe some Americans are taking an interest in the London market. Lloyd’s Banking Group is up and is potentially giving me a 4% return. Natwest has been doing well too but out of all the banks Standard Chartered is the one making me a few quid. There have been gains across the market. Growth stocks are now more popular and there has been a definite shift from defensive stocks. A balanced portfolio of both seems to be the way to go right now. Gold has been going up in price recently too driven by fears of a recession and by inflation. With cybercrime in the news, analysts are favouring Beazley who insure against such risks. BAE Systems is also a favourite amongst analysts.

Marginal economic growth

So we have marginal economic growth but inflation also affects share prices. Those companies who can easily put up their prices are the ones to watch in 2023.

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