What to buy after the stockmarket swoon?

After the falls in the stockmarkets, it’s time to look for stable, low-debt stocks at reasonable prices, says Merryn Somerset Webb. That is more easily said than done, however.

Wondering what caused the stock-market swoon earlier this week? The clues are on almost every page of the newspapers and have been for months. In the UK, the minimum wage and auto-enrolment pension contributions made by employers go up in April. And a review of employment practices may award holiday and sickness pay to millions of workers in the gig economy.

In Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is demanding that employers offer 3% pay rises across the board. In Germany IG Metall, the country's most powerful union, has just won a 4.3% wage rise for 900,000 members and the right for all to demand a 28-hour working week (no, you aren't alone in wishing you were a metal worker in Baden-Wrttemberg). In the US, millions of employees are getting one-off bonuses, staff benefits are on the up (staff at Walmart are to get maternity leave for the first time) and in January average wages rose 2.9% on the year (a number so unexpected that mainstream economists insist it is suspect).

Subscribe to MoneyWeek

Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE

Get 6 issues free
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/mw70aro6gl1676370748.jpg

Sign up to Money Morning

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Sign up
Explore More
Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.