AROUND 760,000 pensioners are at risk of missing out on this loophole that could snag a £150 deduction on their energy bills.

The deadline for the discount is fast approaching to get The Warm Home Discount (WHD) which is a scheme for those receiving specific benefits.

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According to gov.uk, The WHD is currently closed but is set to reopen this month for those who need to apply.

The program offers a one-off payment of £150 to struggling with winter bills – including the thousands on the Guarantee Credit element of Pension Credit.

This will be taken directly off you energy bill and not arrive as lump sum and in most cases you will receive the discount automatically.

Those eligible also include people who receive Universal Credit, income support and Housing Benefit.

There are a few requirements needed to apply for the scheme.

These specifications are from 2023, so if you tick these boxes for 2024 unfortunately cannot apply for the discount this winter.

If these requirements apply to you it means you are in ‘core group 2’ meaning you should be eligible to receive the £150 discount this Christmas.

When will I receive my discount?

If you are eligible, the Warm Home Discount will be applied between October and March.

Traditional prepayment meter customers are sent vouchers by post, email, text or cheque.

Once you’ve got hold of you £150 voucher youve got 90 days to redeem it at your nearest Post Office or PayPoint shop.

It will be deducted from you electricity bill but you are able to get a discount on your gas bill if your supplier provides you with both gas and electricity.

The best way to check ask about whether you can get a discount on your gas bill is by contacting your energy supplier.

What is pension credit?

Pension credit is a system created to assist with those over the state pension age, 66, with low earnings.

The benefit adds a certain amount of money each week to help pensioners who are in need of financial help.

If you are an individual receiving pension credit, the Guarantee Credit will increase your weekly income to £218.15.

If you have a partner, the benefit will be joint and it will bump up your weekly income to £332.95.

There is an additional pension credit benefit called savings credit, which, if you have savings or your income is above the basic full state pension amount.

The WHD doesn’t just apply to those on pension credit but to those receiving a range of means-tested-benefit.

To see if you are currently claiming means-tested benefits, check if your benefit is on the list below.

AS the temperature cools down the deals heat up with Aldi’s cosy winter gadgets set to hit the shelves in days.

The Ambiano Heated Throw is heading to be one of the famed Aldi specialbuys on Thursday 17 October for just £29.99.

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With heating costs being a hot topic of conversation this year, these blankets could be a solution to keeping those bills down.

Many homes are set to be subjected a detrimental change in their energy bill as the cold snap approaches, with some set to rise by £149 each year.

Preparing yourself for the chill can be one way to save money this season.

Running at a remarkable cost of 4p an hour, this electric blanket may be the key to keeping cool about energy bills this Christmas.

The electric blanket comes in snowy white, cool grey, and toasty charcoal and is even machine washable.

Despite being 160 watts and providing 230 volts of warmth, the cosy throw has a detachable lead that allows it to be popped in the wash with your other winter warmers.

The nine adjustable temperature levels allow you to tailor your blanket to your taste – providing the perfect measure of comfort for you.

To warm up your bed before getting cosy for the frosty nights to come, Aldi recommends using a higher setting to preheat your bed.

This can create the ultimate comfort for when you’re ready to drift off.

When using it as a throw blanket its recommended to use it at a lower heat.

How does it compare

A quick Google brings up a range of heated blankets that can go from £84.99 at Lakeland to £150 at The White Company.

Not all heated throws will break the bank though with Asda offering an electric teddy fleece for £30.00.

Argos is also selling a heated blanket in the £35 range.

If you’re looking to cut costs as much as possible, Amazon offers a variety of heated blankets with one going at a spectacular £18.99.

However this doesn’t come with Ambiano Heated Throw’s nine settings.

How much does it cost to run a heated throw?

Aldi claims it costs an extraordinary 4p an hour to run the Ambiano Heated Throw.

If you want get your bed toasty for a couple hours a night, this would tot up to 56p a week.

For a whole year of using the blankets for two hours you would be spending under £30 in total.

How to save money at Aldi

Aldi doesn’t have a membership program or a point system which offer deals on specific items.

However they offer the Aldi specialbuys in which there are a range of new deals that drop each week, with the winter gadget speical buys coming in on 17 October.

These deals are specific to Aldi can can be found on their website and in-store as well.

On Sunday 13 October there are a collection of laundry and cleaning deals set to hit the shelves.

Super Micro Computer (NASDAQ: SMCI) split its shares this month and now they are trading at one-tenth of what they were before the split. For investors, that means a lower share price, and perhaps the ability to own more full shares. Stock splits can sometimes have positive effects on the share price even though they don’t fundamentally change anything about a company’s prospects or improve its earnings numbers.

With shares of Super Micro Computer, also known as just Supermicro, down more than 50% in just the past six months, could the recent split provide the stock a boost, and potentially help stop its tailspin?

Why a stock split may not help Supermicro

A stock split doesn’t solve any problems for a business. Regardless of whether Supermicro stock is trading at $450 or $45, investors can buy fractional shares if they want to invest in it but don’t have the funds necessary to acquire entire shares of the company. And that’s why stock splits normally shouldn’t lead to a rally in the share price; they don’t change valuation multiples to make the stock a better buy.

Some investors may believe that because a stock is priced lower, it’s cheaper and a better buy, but that is a mistake. When talking about valuation, you should always look at per-share earnings and revenue multiples, which take into context the share price. And stock splits don’t change those multiples.

Stock splits can become positive catalysts if a stock rises significantly in value and then a company opts to do a split. In Supermicro’s case, however, the stock has been crashing of late, and its stock split comes at a time when there’s a lot of negativity and bearishness around the business, which is why a split may not have a positive effect on its share price.

Supermicro’s problems have nothing to do with its share price

For Supermicro, there are much larger concerns for investors than its share price being too high. The company’s margins have been under pressure and the Department of Justice (DOJ) is reportedly looking into the company after a short report in August alleged the company was involved in questionable accounting practices. Management has denied any wrongdoing and the DOJ investigation may not necessarily lead to anything substantive and consequential for the business and its investors.

The bigger issue, however, is that the company’s earnings may not grow at a high rate if Supermicro’s margins don’t improve. In its most recent earnings report, for the quarter ended June 30, the company’s gross margin was just 11%, down from an already fairly low rate of 17% a year ago. Low margins can negate much of the benefit the tech company will get from generating strong server sales and growing its operations, and that’s the biggest reason I’d be concerned about the stock right now.

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Is Supermicro stock a buy?

I don’t believe a stock split is going to save Supermicro stock nor do I think the DOJ probe is going to cripple it. Short reports are often biased and meritless and while they can temporarily send a stock lower, they rarely uncover disastrous findings auditors, analysts, and investors have all missed.

The company can put a lot of concerns to rest by simply posting strong earnings numbers and showing that it can grow both its top and bottom lines at high rates. But it still has to prove that it can do that.

Unless you’re comfortable with the risk that comes with owning Supermicro stock today, the safest option is to take a wait-and-see approach right now. The biggest question mark around the business remains its ability to grow its earnings, because if it can’t do that, it’s going to be hard to justify buying the AI stock.

Don’t miss this second chance at a potentially lucrative opportunity

Ever feel like you missed the boat in buying the most successful stocks? Then you’ll want to hear this.

On rare occasions, our expert team of analysts issues a “Double Down” stock recommendation for companies that they think are about to pop. If you’re worried you’ve already missed your chance to invest, now is the best time to buy before it’s too late. And the numbers speak for themselves:

• Amazon: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2010, you’d have $21,266!*

• Apple: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2008, you’d have $43,047!*

• Netflix: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2004, you’d have $389,794!*

Right now, we’re issuing “Double Down” alerts for three incredible companies, and there may not be another chance like this anytime soon.

See 3 “Double Down” stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of October 7, 2024

David Jagielski has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Will Super Micro Computer’s Stock Split Help Rally Its Shares? was originally published by The Motley Fool

An HBO documentary says Peter Todd is the Bitcoin creator known as Satoshi Nakamoto. He denies it

Who created Bitcoin? Is it finally known? Perhaps not.

“Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery,” a new HBO (WBD) documentary that premiered on Tuesday, claims that former Bitcoin developer Peter Todd is Satoshi Nakamoto, who created Bitcoin. Hours before the documentary’s release, the 39-year-old Canadian software designer involved in the early years of developing Bitcoin denied the claim, saying that he was not the creator of Bitcoin.

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Tesla stock sinks 7% after Elon Musk’s robotaxi reveal disappoints investors

Tesla (TSLA) stock fell during morning trading on Friday, after its highly-anticipated robotaxi reveal failed to impress investors.

The electric vehicle maker’s shares were down around 7.5% on Friday morning after being down about 6% during pre-market trading. Its shares closed down almost 1% Thursday before the event. Read More

The CEO of disgraced crypto firm FTX actually announced his prison stint on LinkedIn

Ryan Salame, the former co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets, has been seeking a two-month delay for the start of his prison sentence due to alleged injuries from a dog. However, it appears he has come to terms with his situation. In a recent LinkedIn post, he announced his new role as an inmate at FCI Cumberland.

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The next Nvidia? Data center stocks could be a goldmine, strategist says

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Tejas Dessai, director of research at Global X, breaks down what companies to invest in for the next phase of AI expansion

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For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) has been one of the best-performing stocks on the market over the past two years, and the catalysts that drove it higher are still present. But after its strong run-up, is Nvidia stock still a smart buy at its current level, or would those who hold shares be advised to sell and take some profits?

There are valid arguments for both views.

The sell argument: How long will this demand wave last?

Nvidia’s rise has been directly tied to the artificial intelligence (AI) arms race. Its primary products are graphics processing units (GPUs) — parallel processors that excel at handling large and complex computing tasks that are easily broken down into many smaller ones that can be handled independently and simultaneously. Connect GPUs in clusters and you end up with a computing platform that can process certain types of incredibly complex workloads at blistering speeds — and these are just the sorts of workloads that AI systems create.

As AI companies and cloud computing providers rushed to get in front of the emerging demand for processing power, Nvidia’s sales went through the roof. In the past couple of years, quarterly revenues have often tripled on a year-over-year basis. However, its stellar growth is starting to slow slightly due to tougher annualized comparisons. This growth slowdown makes sense, but the bigger question is, can Nvidia maintain its overall sales at these levels?

Because companies are buying these GPUs to rapidly build their AI computing capacity, there is going to be a time when the demand will be satisfied. At that point, Nvidia’s sales may crater, as companies will only be buying replacement GPUs or making gradual capacity increases. This could be a huge problem for Nvidia, as its revenue levels in its latest quarters are far above where they have been in the past.

This also highlights the cyclical nature of the chip business. Nvidia has gone through multiple boom-and-bust cycles in its life as a company. If AI-related demand wanes, investors could be in a rough spot.

But has Nvidia built up enough of a sales base to compensate for that cyclicality?

The buy argument: New technology will spur further demand past 2025

GPUs don’t last forever. They generally need to be replaced after about three to five years, which means that if the companies that have been building out their computing infrastructure recently want to maintain that processing power over the long term, they will have to regularly fork out massive chunks of money on new hardware.

We’re two years into the AI build-out already, and many companies are still scaling up their AI computing power, so 2025 will be another year of strong demand. That gets investors to 2026, at which point the natural replacement cycle starts for the GPUs that were purchased at the start of the generative AI era. But there could also be more reasons for companies to upgrade.

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First, the semiconductor chips within these Nvidia GPUs are produced by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (NYSE: TSM). Taiwan Semi is always innovating on the process node front, allowing chip designers like Nvidia to create denser, higher-performance chips.

TSMC expects that its chips built using its next-generation N2 process node will be 25% to 30% more power efficient than prior-generation chips when configured at the same speeds. Energy costs are a huge operating expense for server farms, so some customers may choose to upgrade for that reason, regardless of whether they need more computing power or not. The N2 manufacturing lines aren’t expected to start production until 2025, which likely means Nvidia GPUs built on them won’t make their way to its customers in quantity until 2026.

Meanwhile, Nvidia is just launching its Blackwell architecture GPUs, which will replace the Hopper architecture upon which it has built its current top-of-the-line chips, and the improvements are astounding. Blackwell’s architecture is four times faster than Hopper’s, allowing AI companies to create more complex models faster.

The combination of all these factors points to demand remaining strong well past 2026. In other words, the market probably isn’t peaking any time soon. This is key, as Nvidia’s forward price-to-earnings ratio has already reached levels that are starting to look reasonable, at least relative to how fast it’s growing.

Trading at 45 times forward earnings, Nvidia stock is far from cheap, but it’s putting up strong growth, so this valuation is acceptable.

Investors’ decisions about whether to buy or sell Nvidia stock today should be based on how they expect the company’s business to be faring in 2026 and beyond. There are enough catalysts out there that Nvidia’s growth should last far beyond 2026, and with the upgrade cycle, it should be able to maintain its newfound revenue levels.

As a result, I think Nvidia’s buy case is greater than its sell case today.

Don’t miss this second chance at a potentially lucrative opportunity

Ever feel like you missed the boat in buying the most successful stocks? Then you’ll want to hear this.

On rare occasions, our expert team of analysts issues a “Double Down” stock recommendation for companies that they think are about to pop. If you’re worried you’ve already missed your chance to invest, now is the best time to buy before it’s too late. And the numbers speak for themselves:

• Amazon: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2010, you’d have $21,266!*

• Apple: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2008, you’d have $43,047!*

• Netflix: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2004, you’d have $389,794!*

Right now, we’re issuing “Double Down” alerts for three incredible companies, and there may not be another chance like this anytime soon.

See 3 “Double Down” stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of October 7, 2024

Keithen Drury has positions in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Nvidia and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Should You Buy or Sell Nvidia Stock? was originally published by The Motley Fool