Lloyds Banking Group Live Discussion

adrian.pollard 25 Feb 2020

LLOYDS is going to FLY What was it George Best said, ‘I spent most of my money on Beer, women and cars, the rest i just wasted!’

PrefInvestor1 25 Feb 2020

LLOYDS is going to FLY Hi Again @Eadwig, Eadwig: Very difficult not to be. It was an unauthorised Windows 10 update that failed, involving a firefox update too, that lost my bookmarks. At least it now asks if you want to postpone or not. Well with Windows 10 Pro (which I have) you can defer updates for 7 days now, and do that repeatedly a couple of times before it insists on doing them. I never do that though. Before Microsoft Updates day I clone my system partition (I have 3 bootable images on each of my PCs plus a data partition that any image can use) do the update and if all is well thats fine, if anything has gone wrong I still have the old image that I can boot and work with. I find it a simple and easy solution. Eadwig: All my portfolio is laid out in ii and updated about 20 minutes delayed, by the way. Hence no need for additional spreadsheets etc. I do take a copy of totals every month for my own purposes of measuring progress, or lack thereof. Well yes I could login to my broker to check my portfolio too if I wanted to do that, though actually some of their pricing data is at best questionable ?. Certainly their pref prices are “unhelpful” being the bottom of the official spread. Also if my broker ever went bust I have detailed record of everything. When that happens you tend to be unable to login to your broker. I trust that you have copies of everything ?. I also use my investment spreadsheet for lots of other things:- Purchase planning (I hold a list of all of the stocks, ITs and ETFs that I might ever want to hold, download the prices for them all at each portfolio update) and can set up a purchase plan comprising any number of holdings, buying a given number or total price, at XD, current price or nominated price, it adds up all of the costs compares it with my account balances, tells me the income and yield - stuff like that. Portfolio Analysis - Allowing me to see ow my assets are distributed within portfolio groupings (including the effect of my purchase plan). Historical Data - My spreadsheet contains weekly data going back to about 2011 detailing what the portfolio was worth and any cash injections, removals etc. Dividend Planning - My spreadsheet holds the XD dates, payment dates and amounts of all dividends due in the next 12 months. When any go XD I can see the amount of all dividends due and on any payment date I am advised of the amount being paid that day. Thats in addition to the simple display of the portfolio, with current values, yields, daily change, total return etc. etc. I have spent many years developing this functionality. I would not want to be without it !. ATB Pref

Eadwig 25 Feb 2020

LLOYDS is going to FLY PrefInvestor1: I trust that your Windows 10 is fully up to date with all Windows Updates ?. Very difficult not to be. It was an unauthorised Windows 10 update that failed, involving a firefox update too, that lost my bookmarks. At least it now asks if you want to postpone or not. They were supposedly backed up, but by the time all updates had finally completed, much of my data (anything in ‘libraries’ had disappeared. I retrieved from old fashioned backup disk with files coped manually, the Windows retrieve function wouldn’t go back far enough, but firefox never recognised/couldn’t find any bookmark backup file. I should have copied it separately, but i never imagined that it could be lost like that. I still don’t know if it was Windows or Firefox that conspired to lose it. I didn’t realise the first Win 10 update had failed, had allowed a Firefox update to get underway. When asked to restart after the Firefox update, win 10 through itself into another update attempt. The outcome is I tend to use chrome more now, especially as it seems to be the only browser ii guarantee working with. All my portfolio is laid out in ii and updated about 20 minutes delayed, by the way. Hence no need for additional spreadsheets etc. I do take a copy of totals every month for my own purposes of measuring progress, or lack thereof.

PrefInvestor1 25 Feb 2020

LLOYDS is going to FLY trader_jack: I do use Amazon, it took a bit of getting used to and I still make mistakes, I mainly use it to buy books and inks fo my printer, I am a prime member and in clicking the button for prime delivery I still managed to buy an ink that would take 3 weeks to arrive a couple of weeks ago! I went through the Amazon link you provided for Office Home & Student 2016 and my attention was drawn to a small window towards the bottom of page offering a newer version Home & Student 2019. Yes, it is about £26 more but it has the wording you mention “Fulfilled by Amazon” It seems that it might be the better option to get the latest version although I do not understand the statement "Microsoft support included for 60 days at no extra cost. " Hi @trader_jack, Good news about Amazon, makes it easy to buy and get a good price. trader_jack: I went through the Amazon link you provided for Office Home & Student 2016 and my attention was drawn to a small window towards the bottom of page offering a newer version Home & Student 2019. Yes, it is about £26 more but it has the wording you mention “Fulfilled by Amazon” What that means is that Amazon hold the product on the sellers behalf and they (Amazon) deliver it to you. This is a pretty good guarantee that you will get what you ordered. And of course with Amazon its easy to send stuff back. As a Prime member you will get next day delivery too I think. Originally I ruled out the 2019 version because I thought it was a lot more expensive. But having looked at the pricing I can now see that it isnt. Yes I think that 2019 should be a good buy, might be worth searching explicitly for “Office 2019 Home & Student” just in case there are even better prices available ?. trader_jack: It seems that it might be the better option to get the latest version although I do not understand the statement "Microsoft support included for 60 days at no extra cost. " That seems odd given that all other MS products offer support for some years or am I misunderstanding something? I think that what they are saying there is that for 60 days you will get the full Microsoft support service, which you could use if for example you had problems with the installation. I dont think you will end up using this though. With 2019 you will get functionality updates and security patches for longer than with 2016. Refer to that table I sent you previously. trader_jack: I am not sure whether I prefer the one price version or the monthly / annual subscription model. I suppose that if I elected for the subscription model (Office 365?) there might be fairly regular updates to the software capability rather than just fixing the occasional snag. Well the full Office 365 costs £80 per year every year, which is expensive compared to a one time purchase. It also includes a lot of web functionality which you will never use and probably would prefer not to be there. They issue updates EVERY SINGLE MONTH which will happen completely invisibly to you, this can cause things that were working to NOT work. I have had that happen, but I know how to fix such things. Not sure its a great idea for you…?. I think 2019 (or 2016) is your best bet. ATB Pref

trader_jack 25 Feb 2020

LLOYDS is going to FLY PrefInvestor1: Hi Again @trader_jack, Its only just occurred to me but you probably have never bought anything from Amazon have you ? - so you wont have an account. You will need to create one if you are going to order from them. Good morning Prefinvestor, The sun is shining at last! I do use Amazon, it took a bit of getting used to and I still make mistakes, I mainly use it to buy books and inks fo my printer, I am a prime member and in clicking the button for prime delivery I still managed to buy an ink that would take 3 weeks to arrive a couple of weeks ago! I went through the Amazon link you provided for Office Home & Student 2016 and my attention was drawn to a small window towards the bottom of page offering a newer version Home & Student 2019. Yes, it is about £26 more but it has the wording you mention “Fulfilled by Amazon” It seems that it might be the better option to get the latest version although I do not understand the statement "Microsoft support included for 60 days at no extra cost. " That seems odd given that all other MS products offer support for some years or am I misunderstanding something? I am not sure whether I prefer the one price version or the monthly / annual subscription model. I suppose that if I elected for the subscription model (Office 365?) there might be fairly regular updates to the software capability rather than just fixing the occasional snag. As I have said the one thing that might sway me to any particular Excel package would be the ability for someone as thick as myself to understand is to be able to get the prices in my spreadsheets to update themselves automatically on a daily basis as a minimum. Somehow I am not sure that Excel will help me in that respect. I must say that personally I have found this “LLOYDS is going to FLY” board much more readable this week especially given the state of the markets. I notice that the FTSE100 is heading down again already. I must away and stock the larder up from my favourite supermarket. Catch up later, thanks again for your help. Best regards TJ

BrownAdder 25 Feb 2020

Commodities Crypto ETFs FX Indices. inc VIX I still maintain - cause of Brexit GBP has to be 1:1 with EUR and near to that Housing Crisis to get worse and Prices will go up So I agree but it will hurt us all lol

PrefInvestor1 25 Feb 2020

LLOYDS is going to FLY Hi @Eadwig, Yes the old google finance was great. Real-time updates, fantastic charts, lots of good data. The new one is a poor replacement I no longer use it all. My portfolio updating solution isnt real-time of course, that’s not achievable unless you have a live feed of prices. But what I get is the ability to update my whole portfolio in a single click (via an Excel data query if I use investing.com data) or a copy and paste operation (if I use sharesmagazine data). The result is accurate to a few seconds ago and that’s good enough for me. No manual entry anyway – well except for prefs where I have to do dummy trades to get live prices. All browsers provide the facility to backup your bookmarks to a file (at least these days, but for some years previously too as I recall). Sounds like you weren’t doing that – hopefully you are now. My wife and I use Office a lot (Word, Excel & Outlook mainly). We are very happy with Office 365 which is a rolls-royce solution but then it doesnt cost us much. It fits well with our PCs with Apple mobile devices. In practice I already pay for cloud storage as part of my Office 365 subscription. As Ive said in other posts I don’t put any personal or financial information there. Mainly I use it as a means of sharing data between my mobile devices and my PCs as I don’t permit any mobile devices to directly access my PCs via wifi. Yes Windows 7 was good, but I have no problems with Windows 10. I certainly would not use Windows 7 or 8 now they are no longer supported. Yes Microsoft put out patches for the Spectre and Meltdown chip flaws. Most modern PCs will have had a BIOS upgrade that actually fixes the problem at the firmware level but my PCS are too old for that so thank goodness for the Microsoft patches, though they did cause a performance hit at the time. I think it unlikely that legislation will be brought in to cover retrospective operating system patches, should vendors have to go back and fix MSDOS vintage stuff – seems a bit unreasonable. Well off to update the portfolio now – bad day yesterday. Anyway the sun is shining and it looks like a decent day here. Grandkids coming later after school / nursery. ATB Pref

Eadwig 25 Feb 2020

LLOYDS is going to FLY PrefInvestor1: I did consider making the switch to make use of the real time stock quotes functionality @PrefInvestor1 It isn’t as real time as it once was, and they removed the portfolio function from Google finance. I’d come to rely on it fairly heavily for trading and I still haven’t fully recovered my working environment since the changes, because I lost about a decades-worth of bookmarks in one of the Windows upgrades around the same time. I used to use Yahoo finance for tracking my portfolio, especially when I had many more USA companies. I can’t remember what happened now, but changes to Yahoo meant that was abandoned. The only portfolio I ever had that allowed allocation of a sale of stock to specific previous buys. The likes of ii (and all others I have used) just end up giving you an incorrect holding average (not to mention misleading CGT data). I have no confidence that ‘cloud-based’ storage wont end up being charged for or access restricted in some way designed to get more data off you or just basically be hacked. I’m really not interested in using such things because it seems once you start, things tend to get dumped there automatically and you soon lose track of where you own data is stored. No thanks! Windows 7 was an excellent version of Windows, the best for many years, and I would have been happy to stick with that but you get no choice when buy a new laptop. Also because of security errors that MSFT do tend to actually put out updates for, but don’t guarantee, so you have to go with the updates. One of them was at chip level and went back maybe 2 decades. I think they should be obliged to patch such errors on ALL versions of operating systems by law. Fat chance of any politician actually understanding the issues enough to write such laws. It may actually come to pass one day if these rules being aimed at social media platforms come into being. That dumps the whole onus on the provider, it seems, to set our social morals and norms, something someone like Zuckerburg was determined never to end up policing. Seems like he wont have any choice (except he will, he’ll just leave eventually, especially when some country makes him criminally responsible for user’s content, as is currently on the table in the UK). Unbelievable really. Will Royal Mail ever be held responsible for the contents of letters or parcels that people send to each other? What about the millions of tons of junk mail they’ve profited from over the years and which contained invites to get involved in more than a few scams?

Eadwig 25 Feb 2020

LLOYDS is going to FLY mememe: @ Eadwig, what open-source software do you use? I have Office 2000 mainly for excel never had any problems but as Pref1 says I’m putting myself at risk. sorry this wont be very helpful. I haven’t got any Office stuff currently installed. I use Windows only firewall and security now having paid for years to third party vendors I’ve found were worse than useless. I do use the free version of malwarebytes. I DO NOT use any of the ‘cloud-based’ storage. If I absolutely must use a spreadsheet that someone has sent me in xls format I download a package, but I can’t recall the name right now, The open source software that I find invaluable is VLC player, a media player. I also use a few file editors for mp3 splitting or conversions on sound files. A bit rough and ready but they do the trick. I write code sometimes which I type directly into notepad (that comes with windows) and if I absolutely must write a letter I type it in WordPad, which also comes with windows. Neither of these text editors have changed since, oooh, probably Windows 95. As I said, why keep re-inventing the wheel? Unfortunately Windows keeps losing functionality (unbelievable in an operating system so sprawling and inefficient). Once upon a time MSFT used to buy up any useful add-on apps and incorporate it into their next O/S version. Now they’re dropping things which can be vital if you need them, E.g. like searching for a specific line of text occurring in any file on your HD. I could write such a search program myself, but of course the Visual Basic Pro versions I’ve paid hundreds of pounds on in the past are no longer ‘supported’ when it comes to Windows 10. They may work if I could install them, but other languages that I’ve paid for in the past certainly wont. Basically, I use whatever comes ‘free’ with Windows or if Windows can’t cut it, I search for free apps that do. I’m rarely disappointed. The only software I have paid for in recent times is my VPN (Identity Cloaker) which pays for itself many times over.

swamp_rat 25 Feb 2020

Commodities Crypto ETFs FX Indices. inc VIX Surely this puts us back to the pre 12 December GBP. Boris bounce is done now in my opinion. Any thoughts on this? The Independent – 24 Feb 20 No-deal Brexit threat returns as UK and EU harden up positions on future trade... Diplomats in Brussels agree mandate for talks due to start next week

J_Westlock 25 Feb 2020

LLOYDS is going to FLY PrefInvestor1: So I sold a few holdings that I figure are likely to take the biggest hit today with a view to building a cash holding to spend at lower levels. Of course if it all bounces back tomorrow I will have done the wrong thing (again !). I find it hard to predict what will happen I have noticed in last week or so that a down day was usually followed by an up day so my guess is that some of the losses will be reduced tomorrow. I did notice that RSAB allowed my limit order to be executed which was a surprise. I think there’s lots of assumptions and guesses out there at the moment and until earnings reports start coming in then it’s difficult to know what to make of it. Some sectors I can’t understand why they are being equally hit as others… and therefore there are probably opportunities too. Can’t help feeling there’s a self fulfilling prophecy with the free excuses companies are being given to disguise poor performance / earnings and then be seen to storm back later. I’d have come out of it badly last few days. I didn’t even check today as was too late to do anything at w/e and tonight I’m not sure what will happen tomorrow. Yes, a late one tonight as have to be security at Centre as some funny people in area… otherwise I can usually monitor/be alerted remotely.

J_Westlock 25 Feb 2020

LLOYDS is going to FLY mememe: @J_Westlock, I copy the container onto two external drives but what if Veracrypt suddenly disappears. Strangely, I never thought about just copying the container… I always copied the files to another container. I plan to use AEScrypt on the other external drive and just periodically copy the contents from one to the other.

mememe 24 Feb 2020

LLOYDS is going to FLY @J_Westlock, I copy the container onto two external drives but what if Veracrypt suddenly disappears.

swamp_rat 24 Feb 2020

LLOYDS is going to FLY PrefInvestor1: Seems like I made an error with the pricing of Office 2016 Home & Student I cant find it anywhere for less than £72 and full price looks like ~£120 - which is a lot. So much in fact that Office 2019 Home & Student can be bought more cheaply @PrefInvestor try searching again whilst using your google incognito mode and let us know how much you can buy Office Home and Student 2019 for if you get a chance. I didn’t research the outlets I found but under £30 was possible. If I was buying I’d need to verify reviews accordingly.

PrefInvestor1 24 Feb 2020

LLOYDS is going to FLY BrownAdder: almost everything Microsoft Office does for a fee - Google made it available on its drive for free From Word to Excel sheets all available without a single penny. havent used Ms Office in last 5 years or so. Google Excel has built in Share PL templates as well Indeed that’s true @brownadder, provided you are prepared to adopt the whole google infrastructure including chrome, google drive, google account etc. I did consider making the switch to make use of the real time stock quotes functionality but I have many years of effort built into my investment spreadsheet which now relies on many Office 365 features. The thought of getting that working again on a google based infrastructure put me off the idea. Also my mobile devices are all Apple rather than Android based and I can use office apps on those, but I couldn’t use google apps - at least as far as I know. ATB Pref