I think other fears, though, are overdone. We have a couple of house builders in the list. And that doesn’t surprise me at all. Property prices are dipping, and that drives investors away. I'm a freelance personal finance journalist who writes for the Daily and Sunday Express, Reader's Digest, The National newspaper and of course, Motley Fool UK. Right now, some Cash ISAs offer 4% on a fixed one-year term. So I can understand people taking a break from shares to stash cash there for a year. But I don’t want to do that.

Sumayya Mansoor has worked in the financial services industry for close to two decades across mortgages, financial advice, and pensions in a multitude of different roles. Away from work, Sumayya enjoys travelling and fine dining.My first loves were Maths and Physics. After studying Maths, Stats and Computer Science in the late 80s, I worked in the financial sector from 1987 to 2002. I then joined The Motley Fool's writing team in January 2003 and left in November 2005. Since then, I have been a freelance financial writer. My primary goal is to help people manage their money better by making sensible financial decisions! At scary times, investors tend to trade more often. Never mind just one trade per month, which is already scary, some do it multiple times every day.

Still, Lloyds did report a 6% rise in other income, which it said is a sign of continued recovery. But it’s seeing increases in competition for savers’ cash too. Deposits downBut forecasts put Rolls on a P/E of over 30 for this year. And it’s still above 20 in 2024. If we adjust those for debt, the equivalents come in at 38 and 25 respectively. That might be a bit too rich. That said, Owain is usually a buyer of equities, where he prefers lightly geared, modestly rated companies, and is increasingly on the lookout for Buffett-style intangible quality. He aspires to buy-and-hold: his best investment ideas are worth much more than he sold them for. Then again, his worst investment went bust due to management fraud! The firm will also combine some management areas, as a way to “ remove duplication and deliver cost efficiencies.” Of course, there’s also artificial intelligence (AI), which has received a lot of attention this year thanks to the success of ChatGPT. In the years ahead, this technology is set to have a big impact on every industry. Some experts believe that AI could be bigger than the internet. Over the long term, banks have been cash cows. So as long as the economy is going well, Lloyds should generate lots of it.

FTSE 100 heading for 8,000 points? I don’t care if it’s eight points, or eight million points. All that matters to me is the valuation of my shares. In recent times, there’s been a major push from Apple, which announced it was working on AI tools to challenge OpenAI’s services, including what some are calling its own ‘Apple GPT’. At the moment, it looks to me like there’s a fair bit of optimism already built into the valuation of Rolls-Royce shares. A forecast price-to-earnings ( P/E) ratio for the full year of 30 doesn’t look like a screaming buy to me. The whole FTSE 100 looks rough right now, but the banks are among the worst affected. That doesn’t surprise me, as the latest threat is all about finance. Financial crunch It’s all part of CEO Tufan Erginbilgic’s plans to “ build a high-performing, competitive, resilient and growing Rolls-Royce.”There’s a thing called net asset value (NAV). That tells me the value of the underlying assets that I own indirectly through my Scottish Mortgage shares. If the shares are above that value, we say they’re trading at a premium. Despite the big gains in the Marks & Spencer share price of the past year, we still see forecast price-to-earnings ( P/E) ratios of only around 10 or so in the next few years. It’s a bit early to judge the dividend yield yet. It’s the UK’s biggest mortgage lender too. So as long as the housing market is strong, Lloyds should coin it there. They might be wrong, the dividend might falter, and the share price might fall. But just think of the passive income I could build if I can snag yields like these, and keep them coming. What if?