Steve D’s avoiding crashes and Paul’s going straight down. Welcome to the PlayingFTSE Show!

The Autumn Statement is this week’s big news and there’s a lot in it. Up go taxes (for higher earners anyway) and down goes the Dividend Allowance. There’s more money for the NHS and less tax free money for dividend investors. Will it stabilise the UK markets? Is it a good budget? Should we be worried? There’s a lot to talk about and the three of us have a lot of different ideas.

After that, it’s the comparatively trivial matter of $32bn of scandal going on in crypto. We’ve been staying away from the FTX story so far while it unwinds, but we can ignore the matter no longer. What lessons can we learn from the shambles? And what happens next for Sam Bankman-Fried?

In happier news, it’s 13F season again. Warren Buffett’s been to the shops and bought himself a decent piece of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company which both is and isn’t on-brand for the Oracle of Omaha. Something else has been catching Steve W’s eye, though, as everyone ponders the semiconductor manufacturing play…

Lastly, there’s the UK’s Warren Buffett. He’s been buying a lot of things. None of them is Meta Platforms, despite its share price being down significantly. One of them, though, is Apple, which Fundsmith has been staying away from fairly carefully. Is this change of heart welcome?

Find out on this week’s PlayingFTSE podcast!