Job security and spending decisions post-Brexit

mellowsun

Just a feeler question really. I'm interested to know who here as put off or postponed large-ish spending decisions since the referendum, and also, how people feel about job security.

'Talking ourselves into recession' is a risk, because business decisions are based both commercial analysis and confidence. Individual spending decisions are often more based on confidence.

Personally, I'm currently averse to taking on debt and have cut all spending (including guitar-related) apart from essentials as a result of concerns about job security.

But does this become self-fulfilling? It's an interesting question. Should we continue to spend as before, or is some caution required?

Chalky

I'm working with a FTSE250 company that has just approved a £19m spend that is essentially maintenance (no ROI) and one of the options was to defer it to next year. The corporate strategy has not changed and is not expected to for this FY.

CabbageCat

I work in the travel and leisure sector so most of our customers are likely to be hit pretty hard - and will no doubt pass that on to us. That said, my main customer (a well known, bum-fun related UK holiday village company) does especially well when people aren't travelling so they might get a bit more spendy.

Edit: In answer to the first question, I'm not going to make any big purchases but then I never really did anyway.

chillidoggy

CabbageCat said:

I work in the travel and leisure sector so most of our customers are likely to be hit pretty hard - and will no doubt pass that on to us. That said, my main customer (a well known, bum-fun related UK holiday village company) does especially well when people aren't travelling so they might get a bit more spendy.

Edit: In answer to the first question, I'm not going to make any big purchases but then I never really did anyway.

Eh?

CabbageCat

chillidoggy said:

CabbageCat said:

I work in the travel and leisure sector so most of our customers are likely to be hit pretty hard - and will no doubt pass that on to us. That said, my main customer (a well known, bum-fun related UK holiday village company) does especially well when people aren't travelling so they might get a bit more spendy.

Edit: In answer to the first question, I'm not going to make any big purchases but then I never really did anyway.

Eh?

Look it up on Mumsnet.

BigLicks67

I work for the NHS, so we are looking forward to the £350 mill a week that Michael "Night of the Long Knives" Gove promised us.

chillidoggy

CabbageCat said:

chillidoggy said:

CabbageCat said:

I work in the travel and leisure sector so most of our customers are likely to be hit pretty hard - and will no doubt pass that on to us. That said, my main customer (a well known, bum-fun related UK holiday village company) does especially well when people aren't travelling so they might get a bit more spendy.

Edit: In answer to the first question, I'm not going to make any big purchases but then I never really did anyway.

Eh?

Look it up on Mumsnet.

So, I simply type in "a well known, bum-fun related UK holiday village company"?

MrSwanson

Somewhere with parcs in the name ;-)

TTony

mellowsun said:

Just a feeler question really. I'm interested to know who here as put off or postponed large-ish spending decisions since the referendum, and also, how people feel about job security.

I'm looking at spending the largest amount I have ever spent.

By a factor of 3.5x.

And no, it's not a guitar.

I'm firmly of the opinion that a lot of the pre-referendum scare stories were just, errrr, scare stories.  I'm also fully aware that a lot of the pre-referendum promises were complete BS too.

Yes, there will be some ups & downs as everything adjusts (assuming that anything happens - I'm still not 100% that we'll leave), but the main damage will be to politician's careers rather than the overall economy.

The FTSE-100 seems to be happy enough.  Whatever happened to the day-after "billions wiped off the value of the UK / pensions" sensationalist news stories, and why has there been no "billions wiped back on to the value of the UK / pensions" follow-up stories??

The FTSE-250 has also bounced back

And even the French & German markets are recovering - they mirror the FTSE-250 rather than the FTSE-100.

octatonic

I pulled the plug on a a foreign property purchase.

Nothing else but we are going to be cautious about committing to anything with significant outlay.

chillidoggy

MrSwanson said:

Somewhere with parcs in the name ;-)

Really? I'm shocked!

mellowsun

Surely the FTSE-100 high because sterling is weak? To me it stands to reason that weak sterling would automatically lead to a rise in the FTSE, which is nominally priced in sterling. All things being equal, if a stock's 'real' value remains the same, if sterling falls, the stock price in pounds will rise.

Glad to hear that confidence among most FB posters (must be just me and @octatonic then!) has not been affected by events over the past week.

@TTony sounds like you are buying a new house?

Sporky

I work for the European arm of an American company; nothing's been said officially but the quiet message is that we have little if anything to worry about.

In terms of purchases, I did by myself a swanky new cable, but have been somewhat disappointed by the lack of the promised property crash - I quite fancied trading up to a 4-bed detached house with half an acre of grounds for 50p extra.

Then again, my GAS has not been terribly active for a good while.

Fretwired

mellowsun said:

Surely the FTSE-100 high because sterling is weak? To me it stands to reason that weak sterling would automatically lead to a rise in the FTSE, which is nominally priced in sterling. All things being equal, if a stock's 'real' value remains the same, if sterling falls, the stock price in pounds will rise.

Glad to hear that confidence among most FB posters (must be just me and @octatonic then!) has not been affected by events over the past week.

@TTony sounds like you are buying a new house?

The FTSE-100 is affected by world markets rather than the UK. For example there are seven large mining companies listed. When commodity prices fall so does their stock price which has a knock on effect on the FTSE-100. You can often see the UK economy doing well but the FTSE-100 falling. The FTSE-250 is a better measure.

TTony

mellowsun said:

Surely the FTSE-100 high because sterling is weak?

Only if you think that all the buyers have been overseas buyers.  A stock price is certainly driven by investment returns, which means a combination of dividend yield (proxy for company performance) and movement in value of the share price.  So, if o/seas buyers have been buying in, it's partly because they anticipate a rebound in sterling's value too.

Whatever the cause, the end result is that all the UK investment (ISAs, pension funds, etc) that are in the FTSE-100 have been unaffected by Brexit which in turn means that the wider "consumer confidence" hasn't been adversely impacted.  If the FTSE-100 had fallen, then we'd have had the impact on confidence and the self-fulfilling expectation of doom & gloom.

mellowsun said:

@TTony sounds like you are buying a new house?

If we sell this one (hits the market on Thursday), then we'll have to buy another one.  The scary bit is that we'll probably take out a mortgage for what we want to buy, but with interest rates where they are, it'll cost c£1350/mth for 10 yrs (repayment), and I'd rather do that than put everything into the bricks & mortar.  Not least because one of the options doesn't have a lot of bricks!

(And scary because we've been mortgage-free for years and I like the absence of debt, rather than anything to do with Brexit).

paddyb

I work for a FTSE-250 company that is based in the UK but operates in several countries - CEO has said its business as usual.

The main challenge might be if it's harder to hire non UK people which impacts how fast we can change or react to competition. I have worked in several technology companies in London (im from Ireland) and each company had at least 50% non UK employees.

I know pretty much nothing about FTSE markets but a few articles I read say they are only doing well because of the weak sterling

quarky

I work for a French company, and it is business as normal. Our margins are very tight anyway so little change in that regard.

Personally, we tend to be very thrifty anyway. My wage is pretty good but that means my wife can be a SAHM rather than out working to pay for childcare. So not a big change. Still going on our normal holiday in a few weeks, and still planning an additional bigger holiday next year.

FreddieVanHalen

A colleague has just had the news that £1M of equity funding for his tech start up has been pulled, with Brexit stated directly by the investor as the reason.

MrBump

TTony said:

mellowsun said:

Just a feeler question really. I'm interested to know who here as put off or postponed large-ish spending decisions since the referendum, and also, how people feel about job security.

I'm looking at spending the largest amount I have ever spent.

By a factor of 3.5x.

And no, it's not a guitar.

I'm firmly of the opinion that a lot of the pre-referendum scare stories were just, errrr, scare stories.  I'm also fully aware that a lot of the pre-referendum promises were complete BS too.

Yes, there will be some ups & downs as everything adjusts (assuming that anything happens - I'm still not 100% that we'll leave), but the main damage will be to politician's careers rather than the overall economy.

The FTSE-100 seems to be happy enough.  Whatever happened to the day-after "billions wiped off the value of the UK / pensions" sensationalist news stories, and why has there been no "billions wiped back on to the value of the UK / pensions" follow-up stories??

The FTSE-250 has also bounced back

And even the French & German markets are recovering - they mirror the FTSE-250 rather than the FTSE-100.

That's mostly not relevant though - either for or against.  Any financial impact will be medium to long term, not within the first fortnight of a referendum.

I work for a bank, and I've never worked as hard as I have this past couple of weeks.  The real impact for us will be the access we're allowed to European markets.  And I'm still pretty sure that will be dependent on us allowing the free movement of EU citizens (in one form or another).

Clarky

Clarky Shredding Inc just bought some new strings

professorben

Clarky;1137862" said:

Clarky Shredding Inc just bought some new strings

Up front or on the never never?