Other investments

The mainstream media haven't made that claim clear to us because it is not true. It's the sort of utter rubbish that gold bugs tend to use to try to magnify apparent risk by exploiting those who don't know the truth.

The proposed methods protect insured depositors. Insured deposits are all of those covered by the FSCS and include current and savings accounts of individuals and small businesses. So no, they won't just go and grab money from current and savings accounts as in the original Cyprus plan that wasn't carried out either. The final Cyprus plan protected most of the insured money. This one should protect both insured and uninsured money on deposit, including far beyond the FSCS limit.

Those at risk are the owners of the bank, including us if we own shares via funds or directly and those who hold corporate bonds of the bank.

'12 ... In all likelihood, shareholders would lose all value and unsecured creditors should thus expect that their claims would be written down to reflect any losses that shareholders did not cover. Under both the U.S. and U.K. approaches, legal safeguards ensure that creditors recover no less than they would under insolvency.'

'47 ... because the group remains solvent, retail or corporate depositors should not have an incentive to “run” from the firm under resolution insofar as their banking arrangements, transacted at the operating company level, remain unaffected. In order to achieve this, the authorities recognize the need for effective communication to depositors, making it clear that their deposits will be protected.'

So what happens is that the overall holding company shareholders first lose all of their money, then the corporate bond holders lose as much of theirs as necessary to make it solvent if that's needed. And there it stops because the reason a bank becomes insolvent is normally just a need to pay maturing bonds when it hasn't been able to issue replacements due to market disruption.

"Normally" because massive fraudulent transactions might also cause it, notably at Barings Bank where a trader in Singapore carried out massive unauthorised transactions. But Barings wasn't systematically important anyway. Fraud at French Société Générale could potentially have brought that one down because the value of trades was more than the value of the bank but the losses weren't close to that.

Not really.  After 6 months your balance might have built up to £7500 and interest earned £111.    From Ratesetter you would have £150-180 plus the flexibility to withdraw if needed.  And no ceiling.  But NBS could suit some.

Neil Woodford has a quite remarkable track record and so has Invesco.   Saying that, I had a fairly substantial (for me) sum invested with Invesco Property Income and it went niagra.    I noticed an article in the press regarding Neil Woodford in which it likened Fund Managers to Football Club Managers.   Some succeed, move and fail; some fail, move and succeed.

i do like the concept of helping British Science though as it has become, sadly, an overlooked important part of British success.   This is worth a good look at in my opinion.   Maybe even a strong punt. 

Looks potentially genuine to me as it matches the same offer on Hargreaves Lansdown:

www.hl.co.uk/funds/neil-woodford-new-fund

I don't know the outfit you've received that from though, so check them out first via the FCA and go direct to their website yourself rather than following any email links.

All depends on whether you want to invest in a Woodford fund. He has a good reputation, but it's equities only, which will not protect you when markets tank; even though Woodford normally seems to invest as defensively as he knows how.

There was a post re:this fund somewhere on her but cannot seem to find it anywhere, it was only a few days ago! I skimmed through the article & whilst it did praise him, it mentioned that all the noises made about his new fund seem to stem from self-promotion of it, not recommendation by any financial experts.

To gain diversification I invested in a number of recommended Equity Income Funds through HL. Analysis shows that they are nearly all invested in the same FTSE 100 stocks - Pharma, Oil etc. Woodfords new fund jumped to HL's highly most superior very very very good, really, list even before launch. I ignore all fund launches since the funds will always be valued at asset value whenever they are purchased.

Unfortunately my market crystal ball is under repair. Although the market is close to its 1999 peak. Very roughly Inflation  appears to have added 50% since then. Now allowing for the fact that the peak value reflected a highly overheated market, a similar value today would be an index at 10500, so at around 7000 the market might still be fair value. Much depends on the efficient handling of the housing bubble, an early but modest interest rate rise and a careful unwinding of QE. None of this can be expected from the current masters at the BOE who are happy to promote the bubble to maintain a pre-election feelgood factor, and are too scared to raise rates for fear of bursting it.