Tesco sales hit £1 billion a week.

Tesco weekly sales hit £1 billion
Thirty years after it first broke the £1 billion worth of sales a year mark, Tesco is reporting sales of £1 billion a week.
Its annual results show the company achieved sales of £53 billion and profits of £3 billion.

Seeing as how £1 in every £7 is spent by UK consumers in a Tesco, {probably nearer to £1 in every £6 by now} Why not just hand over the entire budget / Treasury to Tesco management.

There is nothing they don't know about cutting waste, getting the best deal,global markets
currency hedging, new technology, efficiency and turning a profit.
And the employees rate them highly too.

Trading the Budget

Fresh from my recent success of trading the G20 (still continuing, never sold LLOY stake and it has continued to fly in the face of reality). I have below my political based hunches for the Budget from a trading perspective.

As always, Cityunslicker is not a professional adviser and what my investments choices I make are purely for personal opinion and discussion and should not be followed as 'tips.'


Some of the ideas in the budget have been well trailed by now and so their announcement may in fact be a 'buy the rumour, sell the news moment.'

However, the budget this year has much more focus than in a typical year and I think the markets will watch it very closely. If the budget falls over very badly it is quite possible that it will begin the tipping point for the end of the current bear market rally. A 'good' budget will no doubt extend the rally until the annual 'sell in May and go away' phase.

Here are my four investments and the strike prices I received this morning:
PDG 16.75- Pendragon, a car retailer who will no doubt benefit from the now almost confirmed taxpayer giveaway to the motor industry. I nearly went with Inchape, but Pendragon has imminent loan talks with its banks - these are all going well at the moment so is adding bounce to share prices.
LBUL 33.31- I expect the budget to be a very sombre affair for UK plc, with awful numbers that will rock the markets. I have therefore closed my profitless short gold position and opened a long one for this week.
XUKS - (1290)This is a FTSE100 short tracker ETF, buying this as part of a pari with LBUL as I expec the FTSE to run on the back of the budget, even if not by much if the weekly 'up' momentum is strong.
PFC - (580.5)Petrofac is a north sea oil explorer, given trailing comments that Darling intends to cut exploration taxes then these should benefit. They go ex-dividend on Friday so that will give support all this week too.

Budget Week: Darling Facing up to Reality

I was actually quite pleased to see the No11 Spinners around today in the media and various 'Badger' quotes.

In it Darling has agreed that things are bad, the light has gone on and we need to make some urgent changes to the fiscal order of the UK:

- The economy is likely to shrink between 3-4% this year (which makes protestations that this is the worst quarter optimistic)
- Government Spending will hit 10% of GDP
- The tax base could shrink by over 8% - permanently downsizing the UK capacity for public expenditure.
- Unemployment will exceed 3 million

This is, quite simply, the worst position we have been in since WW2. The measures taken to address it need to be drastic and long-term. The people of the country need to know that 2009-2018 might well be diametrically opposite in experience to 2000-2008.

This period of time is two parliaments long. If Labour get it wrong they are very unlikely to be back in power during this period.

Tomorrow, what would Capitalists@Work do and Wednesday a quick reaction to the Budget. Thursday how it will fall apart (or not, if it is a shock budget!).

Badger has it all to do. I actually wish him luck, for all the sickness of Labour, Darling is all that stands between us and a call to the IMF in the next few months - a massive tax and spend expansionary Labour budget will sink the UK. No doubt No.10 is pushing, I hope Darling does not intend to follow-orders and stay loyal and in the bunker to the bitter end.

Exclusive: Sneak peak of 2009 Budget notes.

Found this envelope and post it note in the back of taxi. As I got in Angela Eagle was getting out.
The post it notes say

"Darling.
Here's a good tip that I used to use. Announce the 2p cut in the basic rate of income tax and while everyone's stunned, quickly and really, really quietly rush out the 245% increase in National Insurance contributions.
GB

PS. Say the word sustainable a lot. Its impossible to overuse that word.