Rosco

Anyone have opinion on DML ? The 3 year chart seems to suggest we are at a trendline and 252 MA

This probably contributed http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/01b5f82a-1ef5-11...?nclick_check=1

When you say most of the action is behind us it really depends on how you expect the two markets to move. Moves since ratio at high in 2000, Gold $250 / Dow 10000 (not sure if these are exact?) , this represents a 277% increase in Gold and only a 34% decrease in Dow to todays levels ie a net profit of 243% if you were long equal amounts of both Let's say you expect the Gold/Dow ratio to move to 1:1 at some point. From todays two levels that ratio can be acheived with many permutations, but jsu looking at two; Gold $5000 / Dow 5000 , this represents a 432% increase in Gold and a 23% decrease in Dow ie a net profit of 409% if you were long equal amounts of both Gold $2500 / Dow 2500 , this represents a 166% increase in Gold and a 62% decrease in Dow ie a net profit of 104% if you were long equal amounts of both.

Friend of mine runs PM option trading for one of the bigger bullion banks in the city. I asked him his opinion on gold.. "as for gold...it's had a good run up for sure, longs got excited and addded to positions thru 931 and 950, so there is where the puke will happen. personally i gonna get myself lined up with some gamma puts with 4-6wks maturity...that where the risk lies at the moment..too many retail people gettign excited and buying it now at 975-980....all traders i know are saying that we need to consolidate so very hard to see it rage too much higher too soon, but i not gonna go short as there is just fresh air between here and the mar08 high at 1032!!!!" Only thing I'm sure about is that whichever way it goes, its gonna be volatile......

GM charge 2.7% for buying between £6k-£60k , but remember you also are crossing approx 1.5% spread versus spot. Thats why I said you are down 4.2% on the trade

I have a Goldmoney account but am now baulking at the cost involved of buying digital gold. Looks like to buy between £6k - £60k worth I have to pay approx 4.2% (fees and spread combined) or approx 3.7% if I pay in Usd. Typically how much over spot would you pay to buy physical bars?

Interesting FT article http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a39f68a6-ddf0-11...?nclick_check=1

Whats a good page for long term charts GbpXau and JpyXau ?

Soros article in todays FT http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5dbd0ffe-30ef-11...0077b07658.html

Yeah, you may be right but I think there is a case for a bounce here ; - 1995 and 1999 lows were around these levels - PE of 2.3% to June 2008 (lowest in FTSE 250) - Doom and gloom (housing sales, potential debt downgrade / rights issue etc ) all well known now. Undecided but I may pick some up below 200

Looking at the UK builders here versus what happened to US builders. US peaked around Aug 2005 and bottomed Jan 2008 ~ 29 mth decline. Pulte dropped around 83% and DR Horton about 74% high to low. UK peaked Jan/Feb 2007 ~ 16 mth decline so far Persimmon has dropped ~ 67%, Taylor Wimpey around 82% and Barratts around 84% so far.. Any thoughts ?

Sunday & Tuesday they cut the Discount rate by 0.25 & 0.50% respectively Tuesday the cut the Fed Funds by 0.75%

Aarghh ! this kinda news hitting the broadsheets is bad timing for me as am still waiting to exchange contracts on the sale of my flat..... hopefully the buyer is out of the country for a few weeks !!

I did also mention that fact in my post but my point is that the Land Registry report for say November/December is not going to show London prices down 15% against this Septemebr survey.

Interesting to see the latest Land Registry report for September (released yesterday). http://www.landreg.gov.uk/houseprices/ States that London prices rose 1.3% last month with 32 of the 33 boroughs increasing. Kensington & Chelsea higher by 1.7% and 30.5% mtd & ytd respectively. These numbers are on actual completed sales so lag the market by a few months but even so hard to reconcile with 'Toby Serter ' article above.

Ego is a very powerful force. These guys are not buying investments , they are buying lifestyle, and at the moment in many cases their personal wealth is growing at a much faster rate than London property. A London residence is a must have these days for a lot of wealthy people and consequently there is still a shortage of very high quality places in the "right" areas. In many cases the odd 10-20% in price is a rounding error. Interestingly we have seen a similar (though less extreme) example of this in NewYork where top Manhattan real estate is still up year to date, even though other urban areas are crushed. I'm not saying I disagree wth you just that I think the spreads between prime areas and some regional UK markets will widen considerably.

I tend to agree with you that in aggregate UK property will follow the builders lower. There can be no mistaking the clear signs that demand will be weak in Q4 and during 2008 and we are starting to see that now with the HPI's tailing off a good nine months after the peaks of the UK builders. What I would say though is that the correlations are breaking down more than usual between various regions of the country ie the lead times (versus the UK builders) vary considerably depending on which part of the country you live in. I live in central London (Mayfair) and I can tell you that £ persqft levels are still rising for prime residences. Personnaly I think this is suprising, and indeed I am in the process of tryng to offload my place to try and lock in these prices, but for sure the market in my neck of the woods is still extremely well bid. It's worth remembering that something like 50% of real top end property in London is purchased by non residents ( Middle East, Russian, Far East etc) and these guys are all doing very nicely thank you ytd.