[ad_1] Image source: Getty Images Changes to the Individual Savings Account (ISA) seem imminent as the government tries to get the country investing. Rumour has it that the Chancellor will halve annual allowances on the Cash ISA to £10,000 at the Budget on 26 November. It’s a strategy some believe could supercharge individuals’ long-term returns. Slashing allowances aren’t a plan I’m especially impressed by. I think a carrot rather than a stick approach is better on matters of personal finances. That said, if it helps people make substantially more cash for retirement, that may not be a bad thing. Fresh…
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[ad_1] Image source: Getty Images. Can artificial intelligence (AI) offerings like ChatGPT help us choose stocks and shares for our passive income ISAs? I asked it to generate a few ideas for me. And it came up with a set of UK dividend stocks to consider choosing from. I stress the ‘consider choosing’ part. As my AI helper said, it’s “a shortlist of UK stocks to investigate further (not recommendations!)“. What did it say it’s looking for? A good dividend yield made the number one spot — but a very high yield might signal a risk of cuts ahead. Next…
[ad_1] The Old Smoke looks brand new.“Low-traffic neighborhoods,” as the Brits call them, deploy low-cost interventions to steer traffic away from certain streets to make space for pedestrians and cyclists. In this week’s Friday video,UN-award-winning Streetfilms auteur Clarence Eckerson Jr.’s travels around leafy Londonwith urban planner Solomon Green-Eames. Their sunny jaunt should inspire deep envy in every New York urbanist.The key to these neighborhoods, which have no exact equivalent in America’s biggest city, are “modal filters” that divert car traffic while allowing bicycles and pedestrians to roll and walk freely. Green-Eames shows off two types: The first employs bollards to physically block automobiles, and…
[ad_1] Image source: Getty Images Value shares are becoming a rare breed these days as rallying prices send valuations skyrocketing. But among all the high-flying FTSE 100 stocks, a few small-cap companies still look cheap. One of them is Foxtons Group (LSE: FOXT), a familiar name in London real estate. Despite being a fixture on most high streets, the company has a fairly small £160m market-cap, with shares trading at just 53p each. And it’s not just cheap on the wallet. Considering its recent earnings growth, it looks significantly undervalued, with a price-to-earnings growth (PEG) ratio of just 0.09. Foxton’s…
[ad_1] Image source: Getty Images After falling 85% from its all-time high, WPP (LSE: WPP) now looks like a key contender to join the FTSE 250 in the next index reshuffle. In fact, there are now no fewer than 20 stocks on the mid-cap index with larger market-caps than it has. The worst of those losses occurred in just the past 11 months. The price is down 70% since 13 December 2024, when the shares cost 893p. Now trading at around 273p, they’re at their lowest level since October 1998 — before the dotcom crash! And the FTSE 100‘s up…
[ad_1] Image source: Getty Images More than half of Britons now use ChatGPT to help them with financial and investing guidance. I’ve decided to follow the herd and ask the artificial intelligence (AI) system for five FTSE 250 growth shares for me to buy in my portfolio. I have no plans to put any actual money on the line. But my exercise will provide a valuable insight into just how well AI can identify credible growth opportunities. As someone who’s still sceptical about the accuracy and rationale of such systems, I’m curious to see whether ChatGPT’s logic holds up in…
[ad_1] Image source: Getty Images Diageo (LSE:DGE) investors are experiencing little respite as the FTSE 100 company’s share price continues sliding. At 17.40 per share, it declined again on Thursday (6 November) after a cut to full-year sales and profit forecasts. Diageo shares are now down 25% over the past 12 months. Over a three-year horizon they’ve halved in value, shredding the firm’s reputation as a safe-as-houses defensive play. As an investor, I’m considering how much worse things can get for the Smirnoff and Guinness manufacturer. Yet at the same time, I’m also thinking about whether its share price slump…
[ad_1] Image source: Getty Images The Jet2 (LSE:JET2) share price has slumped. In fact, it’s been fairly volatile this year, coming near £20 a share in the early summer before falling to around £13.30 today. There’s a lot to unpack here. So let’s start by exploring why the stock has fallen? Well, it’s got a lot to do with a late booking pattern. This isn’t to say demand’s falling, but simply that holiday makers are booking later than normal. In turn, this reduces Jet2’s visibility on revenues. This can make it hard to allocate resources to ensure demand’s met, but…
[ad_1] Image source: Getty Images Rolls-Royce (LSE:RR) shares have pushed so high that the firm is nearly worth £100bn. That’s an incredible achievement for a company that was worth little more than £6bn three years ago. I remember the period when there were genuine concerns about the company’s future — I was on my honeymoon. Rolls had been losing cash, was heavily leveraged, and then Liz Truss’s government came in and made borrowing even more expensive. Little did we know, right then, at the end of 2022, the business was really beginning to improve. Operationally, it was turning a corner,…
[ad_1] Image source: Getty Images Ever thought of stuffing a Stocks and Shares ISA with dividend shares as a way to earn passive income? Lots of people do. Such an approach can be lucrative over the long term. It also means that passive income can hopefully be earned from proven blue-chip companies. That sounds genuinely passive to me, compared to some other approaches people use. Setting a goal and working towards it How much might such a plan earn? It is a bit like asking how long is a piece of string. The amount of passive income a Stocks and…