Newbear

(Coinciding with moving to a new job) I sold my house in 2006 and have rented ever since. But I have now bought again. I don't regret the time renting at all but I do have reasons for buying now:

a) prices have fallen substantially in the north of England in both nominal and real terms - 20 to 25% nominal, more in real terms;

the money made on selling in 2005 has been invested and has been increased significantly - quite a lot of luck involved there admittedly;

c)although there may be further house price falls to come, now I have retired cash flow is more important. By buying now (in the north where i have always wanted to return) I can be rent and debt free.

For many STRs (remember them?) it will still not be the best time to buy. I certainly wouldn't buy as an investment. But as a residence, that depends on a lot of circumstances and for me the buying decision adds up well enough right now. My sense having spent the last few months on the housing market is that there has been a bit of a wave of renters/STRs back into buying.

This headline looks a bit silly. The big names get it spectacularly wrong all the time. to think of a couple; the "bond king" turns bearish on US bonds, Rick [from Rick's Picks] jumps from deflation to hyper-inflation.

 

What's needed is rational analysis as opposed to knee-jerk reactions. Gold being down $400 [after a super quick run-up] is not really that big a deal; in real terms the correction is simliar to 2008... and we all know how quickly gold bounced back.

 

I can't post my usual chart now.... but the long term log shows gold correcting to the long term trend line. Doesn't look like the end of a bull market to me.

Yes I agree. The 144/150 day MA is important here. Currently around 1580, which it dipped below yesterday very briefly then shot back off like a scalded cat. I think we will see a few weeks of base-building now, maybe retesting the 144/150 day MA along the way. I hope so as I hate these spikes and am much happier with the more orderly progress we usually see.

Ross Clark has support at around 1547:

http://howestreet.com/2011/09/precious-metals-body-evidence-parameters-monitor/

Was that a new GBP high in gold today?

 

Is that not worth a rocket ?

 

Regards

 

ML

I don't think it was - though close it was £1 off the previous high.

Neither has gold in $ touched its 150 day ma, which has been a reliable place for a new leg up to start since the start of the gold bull.

I thought this was a great video, showing a majority if clueless joe publc.

Yes it shows the general public as clueless about gold as real money or gold as a hedge against the depreciation of fiat money. But still significant in my view as an indication of a changing tide that will see more and more people work out what governments and the central banks are trying to do. But by the time the majority work it out it will probably be too late for them and they will wish they bought that little gold bar instead of the perfume they chose at the time.

Ian Cowie in the Sunday Telegraph reports that the last UK budget contained an obscure change to UK Stamp Duty legislation that will allow reduced payments on bulk purchases of BTL properties. Aviva and others are saying that they intend to become big time BTL landlords to take advantage of this, he says.

Three thoughts:

i) is this yet another attempt to put a floor under house prices;

ii) will it work;

iii) if it doesn't and prices continue to fall what will the likes of Aviva do?

Sorry I don't have a link to the story yet.

Haha. Quite right.

 

And I hadn't noticed the 42 thing. Good observation.

 

Thanks for the comments, everyone. I wasn't sure if it work as a podcast, but I think it does.

 

I should be able to read well - it's what I do for a living after all.

I've just listened and thought it was really enjoyable - a big success and much appreciated.

It got me much more interested in the the Idler too. I thought you made intriguing connections between monetary policy and the Idler's ideals, which I begin to see in a new light.

It made me remember Marshall Sahlin's book "Stone Age Economics", which among many other points argues that prehistoric people did not have to work too hard to meet their needs - in fact they could get work out of the way fairly quickly and devote themselves mostly to ritual. Also connects with your theatrical interests perhaps?

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=_qPSLy9...lt&resnum=4

Gold hit a new all time record in £ today:

http://goldnews.bullionvault.com/gold_reco...rates_100820082

Apologies if someone has posted this already.

I've been away and have not had time to catch up on the whole thread so forgive me if this has been mentioned before but...

Bob Hoye in a CW radio interview on 6th Feb suggested a gold price retracement to $750-775 (the bad news) followed by the good news (though I don't think he says when) - a new and powerful up-leg. He's also bullish on juniors when this occurs.

http://commoditywatch.podbean.com/

I didn't blieve it at the time of first listening but in hindsight it appears powerfully argued.

He is, however, sceptical of the Puplava/Turk/Schiff hyper-inflation prognosis - arguing that the German-style hyperinflation will be prevented by the large bond and money markets.

Worth a listen.

Can't believe crude oil down by $10 !

 

Gold bitchslapped but wasn't a surprise . . .

 

Gotta time . . . this . . . just . . . right . . .

Maybe but why not just relax and accumulate. By the end of this mess micro-second timing will look irrelevant.

those PPT guys are really pushing the buttons, aren't they?

EDIT Nymex showing LightSweet down USD2.42 at 142.76

Gold was Fed-whacked too in the last 30 minutes of London trading.

Sossi, I'd recommend reading this thread to get you started

 

http://www.greenenergyinvestors.com/index.php?showtopic=2981

For a fund you might like to look at Ruffer Baker Steel Gold Fund. It's quite heavy with juniors compared with, say, Blackrock Gold and General. For this reason it has not done so well over the past year - but of course that could change.

Silver just lost the best part of a buck/Oz.

It coincided exactly with the opening of the New York market. But the $ is mostly down today.

I don't know much about gold.

Would you say now would be a good moment to buy and hold till july/august at least,

or is it better to wait till june/july/august?

How about buy and hold until july/august 2012 at least?

Otherwise I think CIGA's point about cost averaging is spot on.

Does anyone know the volume on this uptrend - strong or weak?

PennWest is my largest single stock holding. Buy it and forget it.

I agree...and enjoy your regular dividends whilst the natural gas price waits to rise.

Has anyone mentioned the effect of naked shorting on juniors? That must also be part of the picture when considering their underperformance last year, especially those on TSX.

But relax guys. This is a bull market with a long way to go. The best is yet to come and the juniors will come good with patience. My approach: buy companies with rising resources, hold them, enjoy the roller coaster, wait - and sleep at night.

Interesting article in today's Telegraph suggesting China may have big problems in a few years because of the demographic ticking time bomb.

 

---------------

Japan leads world in demographic decline

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Tokyo

Last Updated: 12:12am BST 01/06/2007

 

Japan is slowly shrinking. Last year it became the first nation in modern history to tip over into outright demographic contraction, pioneering a path that will soon be followed by Italy, Germany, Spain, and most of Eastern Europe, with China close behind.

 

The population peaked at 128m in 2005 and is expected to fall below 100m by the middle of the century, when 36pc will be 65 or older. The dynamics of decline are already contaminating every aspect of the economy. The trend rate of growth has dropped to 1.5pc. The blistering 10pc pace of the early 1970s seems like a distant dream.

 

Wages have fallen for the last five months in a row, vastly complicating efforts to stave off deflation. Officials at the Bank of Japan blame the subtle effects of ageing. A bulge of baby-boomers is retiring at the top of the pay scale, to be replaced by younger workers - many on part-time contracts, at half the rate. Salaries have fallen 8pc over the past decade.

 

It will be much worse for China, where the workforce peaks in just eight years before plunging into the fastest downward spiral ever seen in peacetime. The one-child policy of 1980s and 1990s has already baked a population crunch into the pie, whatever is done now.

 

Dr Kwan Chi Hung, a fellow at the Nomura Institute and a top China expert, said the long-term prospects for China were "horrible".

 

advertisement"When Japan hit this problem it was already an advanced economy. China will still be poor. It only has 10 more years of strong economic growth and that is not enough," he said.

 

Mr Kwan estimates that China's development is 40 years behind Japan on most indicators, and its return on investment (incremental capital output ratio) is a dismal 4.4, far worse than those of Japan (3.2), South Korea (3.2), and Taiwan (2.7) during their growth spurts. "China is extremely inefficient because of the large state-owned sector," he said.

 

When the crunch comes around 2015, China's per capita income will be a sixth of Japanese and western levels. The society will turn grey before it escapes poverty.

 

This is small comfort for Japan, where a sense of foreboding about the demographic crisis colours all political discourse.

 

Prof Mariko Bando, the former chief of Japan's gender equality bureau, said the fertility rate had crashed to 1.26 from a stable level near 2 in the 1980s, far below the minimum reproduction rate. She said the plunge has been more extreme than in Europe (though Latvia and Estonia are comparable) because Japan had been so slow to embrace feminism.

 

"They never listened to the voice of women before, but the shock is now forcing Japan to respond," she said.

 

Women are silently protesting through refusal to have children under the existing social contract. "The ancien regime makes it very hard to have both a career and a family so women are putting off marriage. They are no longer willing to accept a double shift where they come home from work and have to do all the household chores," she said. Over 17pc in their 40s remain single.

 

"It's not so bad in the civil service, but business remains the last stand culturally for the Japanese man," she said.

 

The country faces a sort of fertility paralysis as men cling to the Confucian tradition that wives must serve their husbands, while women rebel. Parts of the ruling LDP (all male) party is having great difficulty coming to terms with this.

 

"Women have their proper place: they should be womanly," said LDP policy chairman Syoichi Nakagawa, right-hand man to premier Shinzo Abe.

 

"They have their own abilities and these should be fully exercised, for example in flower arranging, sewing, or cooking. It's not a matter of good or bad, but we need to accept reality that men and women are genetically different, " he said over breakfast in Tokyo.

 

Other parts of the Japanese government take a starkly different view, believing that the only way to prevent economic atrophy is to unlock female talent.

 

The cabinet office has pushed though affirmative action quotas designed to raise the number of women in public sector management jobs from 10pc to 30pc by 2020.

 

Maternity (or paternity) pay has been lifted from 25pc to 50pc of income, and leave has been extended from one year to 18 months. The waiting list for nurseries is being slashed.

 

The number of immigrants is creeping up too as the authorities quietly waive restrictions. Some 300,000 Brazilians of mixed Japanese ancestry have come, mostly to work in the Toyota factories of Nagoya. Phillipino migrants now tend the rice paddies and orchards, supposedly as student "trainees".

 

But they are not enough. "We need three million," said Fukunari Kimura, a professor at Keio University.

 

The once vast trade surplus has shrunk to 1.9pc of GDP as the economy matures. It will soon turn to deficit. For the next 30 years, Japan will slowly draw down its $1,800bn (£909bn) of net foreign assets, mankind's greatest stash of offshore wealth.

 

Decline may be unavoidable, but at least it will be graceful.

Here are the latest UN world population forecasts:

http://www.un.org/esa/population/publicati...006/wpp2006.htm

The interesting thing for me is that Asia (mostly, Japan is different) and Latin America are both now into the economically benign phase of th third demographic transition. But the time window is relatively short. By 2040 they are estimated to start the process of an ageing population.

So investing in Uranium is green energy investing?

James Lovelock seems to think so:

http://www.ecolo.org/media/articles/articl...ep-24-05-04.htm

Any opinions about a uranium junior called Uramin? I've been having a look but am a beginner.

The pros seem to be an experienced, well-respected and well-connected mangement and roving brief to find previously explored properties that fell out of favour when

The con seems to be that their main property was left undeveloped for years because the grade is low and they are in a race with three other companies, one a major player, in Namibia.