Are you going to pay? 🚧

This is The Hedge, the weekly email that's like your friend that recommends new TV series for you to binge, and they're actually good. Mr Inbetween. Disney+. Thank me later.

Reading Time: 4m 22sec

• Prices accurate as of approximately Wednesday 8PM BST.

🚧 Don't Pay Campaign

Ok, we all know that energy prices are going nuts. It is actually a joke and it's going to cause households some real problems when winter rolls around. One solution doing the rounds is the 'Don't Pay' campaign, which aims to get 1 million people to agree to cancel their energy direct debits in October.

The idea isn't to not pay the bill at all, but rather to cause some major headaches for the energy providers. If their cashflow plunges in a given month, they'd struggle to pay their staff wages and their own costs, which would make them put pressure on the government to intervene.

That's the thinking anyway.

I feel like this is the same as when you're trying to organise a holiday with your mates. Everyone blows up the group chat and sounds super keen, until the time comes to get the wallet out and pay the deposit. I can't see enough people doing this to make a difference. So far they've not yet cracked 100,000 signups on the website.

As always, I could be wrong! If you're thinking of doing this, just be careful with the timing of it. If you fall behind on your bills it might get reported to credit agencies which could cause problems for you later.

You don't want to end up being the one screwed rather than the energy companies

🤑 Crypto Boy

This is the funniest shit I have seen in a long time, and it's a banger to boot! It's a mashup from Tik Tok of Crypto Boy by salem ilese and it's amazing. Enjoy.

When bootleg Post Malone comes towards the end 🤣 so good. This kind of thing makes me feel weirdly optimistic. The creativity that people have and the way strangers can work together on something as silly and pointless as this and yet execute it so well. It's fuckin' impressive.

🌏 The Hedge is Brought to You With the Help of...

Sign up for a free account and receive a £10 top up and a free month of Revolut Premium. Benefits on Premium include unlimited fee free foreign exchange, 10% cashback on accommodation bookings, travel insurance and full purchase protection.

If you're heading abroad for some sun or a few bevvies, or if you just want £10 for free, check out the guys at Revolut. They've got a sick app too.

The above are affiliate links, which means that if you sign up we'll receive a referral commission. It doesn't cost you anything and it helps keep The Hedge free. It might even cover 14 seconds of this month's energy bill.

🎒 Mixed Bag for UK Company Earnings

Just like much of the economic data going around right now, the latest earnings reports for UK listed companies has been a real mixed bag. There have been some big beats as well as some big misses with inflation driving record profits for some sectors and punishing others.

Basically, we're all spending so much on essentials like fuel and groceries that we're bailing on the cheeky Nando's delivery and the new trainers.

Deliveroo

The hungover or busy parent's best friend Deliveroo is a great example. The company did better than expected, in that they only lost £147 billion in the first half of 2022. Bloody hell. I thought it was already getting expensive, but looks like we might see those service charges going up a bit!

That's a whopper of a loss, but it wasn't as bad as analysts expected, so the stock is up over 7% since the announcement. The stock market's weird hey.

Tui

Airline and travel operator Tui is another company that's struggling, with the mass flight cancellations and airport chaos costing them serious coin. They've stated that the whole shit show has cost them £63 million.

They're expecting better things ahead though, with bookings back to pre-pandemic levels and compensation being sought from the airports for their part in the mess. Again, investors feel it could have been worse, with the stock up over 5% over the past 5 days.

Aviva

On the other side, Aviva has killed it so far this year, with profits up 14%, beating estimates by almost £90 million. The stock has cranked off the news, up over 15% from 5 days ago.

Shareholders chasing income will be pretty happy, with Aviva announcing a 40% increase to their dividend payment for the year.

Energy Companies

I mean, we know they're making bank don't we. We're all paying through the nose for our energy and fuel right now, and producers are fuckin' loving it. Here's a snapshot of the recent profit announcements.

The takeaway? The market's not all bad. Plenty of sectors of the economy are actually doing alright. That doesn't really help us with our day to day budgets, but it does make it clear that how important it is to have a long term view with your investments and to stay invested through the ups and downs.

It's time in the market not timing the market.

🌏 Snippets

• Wildcat strikes (unofficial walkouts) are gathering steam with many workers protesting over wages not keeping up with the rising cost of living.

• Elon Musk has dumped almost $7 billion in Tesla stock to help defend the lawsuit from Twitter. It brings his total sales to over $32 billion in the last 12 months.

• Domino's Pizza is leaving Italy after trying for 7 years (and failing) to crack the home of pizza.

• Crypto exchange Coinbase announced a huge earnings miss, with revenue, profit and trading volume down significantly. Maybe the Crypto Boy song will help turn things around 🤷‍♂️

• Head of John Lewis Dame Sharon White wants Boomers to get back to work in order to fix the labour shortage.

See you next week 🚀

Jason