On a warm Thursday last month, college students criss-crossed the St. Louis region in a unique bragging-rights competition that took place not in the classroom or the stadium, but on buses and trains.Now in its fourth iteration, advocates at Citizens for Modern Transit recently brought college campuses together to compete in the College Transit Challenge as part of the annual Week Without Driving. The competitors — students at Saint Louis University, Southwestern Illinois College, University of Missouri-St. Louis, and Washington University in St. Louis, also known as Wash U — were challenged to log as many rides as possible over the…
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Image source: Getty Images To supplement my pension, I hold a number of FTSE 100 stocks in an ISA. Whether I’m going to be able to meet my objective of retiring early remains to be seen. But for a bit of fun, I recently asked ChatGPT to identify a handful of Footsie stocks that it would choose to help me achieve my goal. Although the software did say “you should check your own timeframe”, I thought it was a bit odd that it didn’t want to know how old I was. However, leaving this to one side, the principles that…
Image source: Getty Images For much of the past two years, Barclays‘ (LSE: BARC) shares have outperformed other major UK banks. The recent dip may have scared some investors but, once again, they’re trading near a five-year high. This follows a similar trend with other major UK banks, all of which have rallied this month. While interest rates remain high, banks are cashing in on loans versus deposits. At the same time, global trade frictions and tariff risks weigh on their revenue growth — especially those with strong international operations. So where does Barclays stand in all this? No longer…
Image source: Getty Images The S&P 500 has bounced back and seems as strong as ever, despite last week’s weak results from Meta (NASDAQ: META). The Facebook owner’s shares collapsed 11.3% after its third-quarter results revealed a large tax charge and excessive R&D costs. Due to its significant size, the ripple affects sent shockwaves through the entire index. Yet despite the initial negative reaction, several brokers raised their ratings for Meta. With the stock down 20% in the past three months, it’s possible they see a value opportunity. But new and unrelated developments this week add to the US market’s…
Image source: Getty Images The FTSE 100 index is enjoying a hot streak at present. This year, the large-cap index has gained approximately 21% (not including dividends). While this is obviously great news for those in FTSE 100 tracker funds, it’s worth pointing out that this return is well above the average return from the Footsie over the last 20 calendar years. So, what does that mean for returns from here? Average FTSE 100 returns Historical FTSE 100 data isn’t that easy to find. However, I keep a spreadsheet with the total returns (gains plus dividends) for every year over…
Image source: Getty Images I love a generous dividend and this FTSE 250 stock certainly delivers that. The trailing yield’s a staggering 10.2%, one of the highest on the mid-cap index. That’s enough to double an investor’s money in less than eight years, even if the shares didn’t rise at all. The company is specialist emerging markets fund manager Ashmore Group (LSE: ASHM), and that’s another reason to be interested. Ashmore’s a tempting income play Emerging markets have struggled for 15 years now, and so has Ashmore. Its shares trade at similar levels to a decade ago. An investor who bought five…
Image source: Getty Images The FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 have enjoyed healthy gains so far in 2025, rising 20% and 7% respectively. And they could have much further to run in the months and years ahead. Yet, I believe there could be better UK stocks to buy outside London’s main two share indexes. Guessing near-term stock market movements is notoriously tricky. But City analysts expect the following UK shares to blast off during the next year. Here is why I think they demand consideration from short- and long-term investors. Going for gold At 271.4p per share, Serabi Gold (LSE:SRB)…
Image source: Getty Images An army of analysts and experts have been warning of a massive stock market crash for weeks. So what happens? The FTSE 100 hits an all-time high. That tells me pretty much everything I need to know about second-guessing stock market movements. It can’t be done reliably. The doom-mongers might still be right, of course. Global markets could crash. Artificial intelligence may have blown the biggest bubble since the dot-com boom of 1999. The $4.5trn US shadow banking system looks spooky. China’s economy is struggling. Voters are restless. These are strange times. The FTSE 100 could…
Image source: Getty Images I’m looking to generate passive incoming retirement from a portfolio of high-yielding FTSE 100 income stocks. I have a few in mind but decided to throw the question out to ChatGPT. I’ve learned from previous attempts that it’s unwise to use a chatbot to pick stocks, because they tend to hallucinate or deliver out-of-date information. So I was only doing this update to have a bit of fun. I asked it to pick five stocks – here’s what it came back with. Top of the list was one of my pesonal favourites, wealth manager M&G, which…
Image source: Getty Images The appointment of ex-Tesco CEO Sir Dave Lewis looks like good news for Diageo (LSE: DGE) investors who want to see their share price moving forward again. He comes with a cracking track record behind him. So what does he have to deal with? The following chart shows a dire five-year performance. The Diageo share price, though, is already up around 8% since the news broke. Analysts upbeat Analysts were already generally positive about Diageo, with a majority rating the stock a Buy. They also see a turnaround in earnings on the horizon. The year to…