The Notebook: Want a good night’s sleep? Forget sheep, count your piggy banks

Where the City’s movers and shakers have their say. Today, Susannah Streeter, head of money and markets at Hargreaves Lansdown, takes the notebook pen to talk retail investors, the travel market and how to get a good night’s sleep

Retail investors need focus in listings shakeup

There are hopes that the shake-up of the listing rules will spark investor interest in UK assets and encourage more firms to launch on the London market. The London Stock Exchange has been on the back foot, losing out on new listings to New York and European bourses. But now red tape is slashed, and the rules loosened, with the ‘standard’ and more onerous ‘premium’ listing requirements set for the scrap heap. In their place will be a single ‘commercial companies’ category. 

Clearly, a successful listings regime which supports the UK market is essential. But making the UK an attractive place to list must be balanced with rights for shareholders and in making sure that the quality of the market is not diluted. It is also vital that retail access to IPOs and secondary capital raising rounds are at the heart of further regulatory changes. The current regime is a barrier to retail investment. 

The recent Raspberry Pi IPO was significantly oversubscribed, showing the demand from retail investors to buy into the equities market is high, and regulatory change should support this trend. It would provide more depth and liquidity, as well as boosting interest in investment with the wider public, unlocking further capital for UK-listed companies. 

Political turmoil hits confidence 

The extent to which political uncertainty can rattle financial markets has been laid bare in the latest Hargreaves Lansdown investor survey. Confidence in the European sector in the first week of July fell 21 per cent, which is unsurprising given the rise of extreme parties in France. Optimism also dipped for the UK market by four per cent as the general election approached, while uncertainty about what may lie ahead for the US presidential elections might partly account for the two per cent drop in confidence there. In contrast, investors appear more optimistic about the Asia Pacific, Global Emerging and Japanese sectors. There may be some hopes that uncertainty will settle down now some election results are in, but while the UK looks set to enjoy a period of financial stability, political turmoil in France looks set to be bedding in.

Sleep, sheep and savings

Forget counting sheep, counting our piles of savings can help you get a good night’s sleep, according to new research. Bristol University academics have found that even savers with super-small pots can feel as satisfied with life as richer non savers. It’s a perfect time to start with a saving habit at the moment, with inflation having fallen and savings rates treading higher in recent weeks. Both easy access rates and fixed terms have started to creep up in July, driven by intense competition at the top of the market. This means savers are consistently getting above double the rate of inflation returns, which increases the attractiveness of holding cash in your portfolio. There’s no time like the present to build up that emergency pot of savings and sleep all the better for it.

Weather obsessions

Us Brits don’t just talk obsessively about the weather; our obsession translates firmly into spending behaviour and business activity. Latest GDP data surprised on the upside with sunnier skies in May, boosting retail and construction sites. As we seek the sun it’s also helped drive the pent-up demand for travel. Many travellers have been happy to splash the cash to seize space on a sunbed, even at the height of the cost of living crisis. But now, more consumers are baulking at the latest round of hikes, airlines have attempted to impose. 

Travel guru Simon Calder told us on the Hargreaves Lansdown Switch Your Money On Podcast that a lot of people have already made up for lost sunshine and lost adventures and aren’t putting up with increasing fares. If there’s enough of a break in the clouds, the UK holiday industry might get more of a look in this year, especially with European hotspots becoming hotbeds of anti-tourism sentiment.

Quote of the week:

We have now made up for lost sunshine and lost adventures and we’re now getting a bit fed up with the prices being charged. Simon Calder, travel journalist on the Switch Your Money On Podcast

Deep fake avatars

There is disruption of a more ominous kind coming for senior leaders of major companies. The news that fraudsters are using deep fake technology to impersonate executives and dupe them into transferring vast sums of money sounds like the storyline of a streaming hit, but it’s becoming the scary reality. As technology becomes even more complex, creative, and creepy, we look set to end up shifting away from digital conversations and back to face-to face meetings not just for transactional operations but any kind of confidential briefings. At the last global conference I chaired, I took part in a skit, with an avatar essentially taking over my hosting role. But the way tech winds are blowing, it seems like in-person conversations will instead become even more valuable and virtual interactions surrounded by more mistrust.