If you have an exciting IPO to market, don’t bother contacting Britain’s largest savings depository. If the Debt Management Office is not in touch with news of another truckload issue, they will not be interested.
Any investment strategy that relies entirely on the government’s ability to continue servicing its debt from future tax revenues may seem as risky as stock market fluctuations, if not more risky when the productive part of the economy dies from neglect. But that’s not how actuaries look at it.
If pension funds do not buy, it leaves only retail and foreign investors to provide support, but they also appear determined not to deal with UK-listed stocks.
Who can blame them, when there are much better performing indices out there to follow?
As a sweeping generalization, the same applies to foreign investors, many of whom are not yet convinced that Brexit was anything other than a deliberate act of economic self-harm. A vicious cycle of decline has been created, where selling leads to more selling.
To restore international confidence in the UK stock market, we must first help ourselves, and that means allocating a much larger proportion of GDP to saving and investment.
The transformation resulting from consumption requires a complete change in mentality and culture, for which there appears to be little or no desire among the political class, let alone the general population.
The public says they want honesty from their politicians. Experience indicates otherwise. A party that only promises “blood, toil, sweat and tears” is unlikely to prevail at the polls.
Tinkering with half measures like the idea of a British-only “Jesus” – already mired in infighting in Downing Street – won’t change things significantly.
What is needed is more radical action, such as making all UK investment capital gains tax-free, funded by eliminating elements of the entitlement budget.
It may be electoral suicide, but the way things are going, we won’t even have an economy to save, let alone a stock market.