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dietcolaaddict

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Posts posted by dietcolaaddict

  1.  

    Just bought more silver. Seems as good a dip as any to increase my exposure.

     

    People seem more likely to buy a house when the sun is shining. I hope my trip out the office this afternoon in the beautiful spring sunshine hasn't induced the same effect on me!

     

     

     

  2. Can someone explain the technicalities why the gold and silver prices on KITCO drop sharply at the same time? The two markets are independent arn't they?

     

    Good question. My guess is that:

     

    - both are similarly susceptible to dollar fluctuation

    - both have a very similar market sentiment at a given point in time

     

    Happy to learn from others with a fuller answer......

     

  3. I'm hoping for and to some extent expecting a further decent correction between now and the summer and plan to take advantage of it.

     

    I'm much less clear about my plan for silver purchases. Should I average in? and if so over what time-scale? Or should I wait for price targets as I'm doing with gold? I still haven't decided.

    Snap, same here Wren!

     

    I'm building a cash reserve in GM at the moment, probably to invest in a few months time.

     

    I'm also keeping a close eye on Oil and quite fancy a bit of exposure to that should it fall again to the $30's in the summer.

  4. The Evening Standard is a truly hateful rag. I remember occasionally reading a discarded copy (I'd never pay for it) during the years of the last crash and seeing all the pages upon pages of adverts featuring an artist's impression of the utopia that would be the latest nasty development to be sold to suckers out in Zone 27b ("Only 55 minutes from St. Pancras!" - well so is bloody Charles De Gaul Airport). All pictures of happy couples eating at al fresco cafes and mothers pushing buggies and the sun is always shining.

    I agree but The Evening Standard has an influence on public sentiment, for sure. Every street and railway station vendor, with their red, rusty, portable sales counter thingy, had one of those fake-handwritten banners yesterday proclaiming to Londoners : "House prices rise at last". There are still plenty of suckers, provided they can raise a deposit, who will walk into this 2009 bull-trap.

     

    Here's the latest house prices graph (from HPC stalwart Little Professor). The rate of house price decline looks to have peaked now in my eyes, and further falls will, in my opinion, result from a pattern of 2 months of falls, one month of gains etc. Month-upon-month of falls may be over and instead we may have a sort of two-steps-forward-one-step-back type of price decline for the next year or two ot three until we get to the bottom.

     

    I guess a bottom may only occur once The Evening Standard no longer dare print "House prices rise at last" banners.

     

     

     

  5. Here's some ammunition for the "Might as well buy now, my (sterling) savings are earning no interest" brigade.

     

    Shame it wasn't published on April fool's day to make them think twice.

     

    Evening Standard

    2 April 2009

    http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/art...ices/article.do

     

    House prices rose for the first time in 16 months during March as buyers continued to return to the market, figures showed.

     

    The cost of a home in the UK increased by 0.9% during the month, pushing average values back up above the £150,000 threshold to £150,946, according to Nationwide.

     

    The surprise increase also led to a reduction in the annual rate at which house prices are falling, with this easing from a record 17.6% in February to 15.7% in March.

     

    But the group cautioned against reading too much into the monthly price rise, saying that it was "far too soon" to see it as evidence that the trough in the market had been reached.

     

    Fionnuala Earley, Nationwide's chief economist, said: "The Bank of England has already taken strong measures to ease the tensions in economic and financial markets by cutting rates and commencing quantitative easing. However it will take time for these to work through into the housing market before we can expect a sustained recovery in house prices."

     

    The figures add to the recent positive news on the housing market, coming just days after the Bank of England said the number of mortgages approved for house purchase jumped by 19% during February.

     

    The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors also said that interest from potential buyers rose for the fourth month in a row during February, while property intelligence group Hometrack reported a slowing in the rate of house price falls during March alongside a rise in sales.

     

    Economists have greeted the recent run of good news cautiously, warning that, although the housing market may have turned a corner, a sustained recovery in prices was still likely to be some way off with the economy in recession and unemployment rising.

     

    Ms Earley said: "It is still too soon to say that this will be the beginning of sustained house price rises and a reflection of a wholesale return of confidence to the market."

     

    She added that the current upturn in activity was likely to reflect the return of buyers who had delayed purchasing a home during the worst of the financial turbulence at the end of last year.

  6. I bet they don't do a follow up article on this 'lucky' couple................

     

    http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?C...p;in_page_id=34

     

    Couple celebrate 1p-a-month mortgage

     

    Sinking interest rates have left one couple paying just 1p a month in mortgage repayments on their £400,000 London home, it emerged today.

     

    Ben Cameron and his pregnant wife Nicola have seen their monthly bill slashed by £1,500 as the Bank of England repeatedly cut the base rate in recent months.

     

    Their exceptional payments come as the result of signing a two-year-tracker deal back in 2007 which guaranteed their repayments would be 1.01 per cent below the base rate.

     

    And as interest rates have tumbled, so have the payments on their four-bedroom Victorian home in Hampton – with the fact that they are even 1p only down to a computer glitch.

     

    The mortgage is a Cheltenham & Gloucester interest-only deal, with rates which observers suggest another 10,000 home-owners currently enjoy.

     

    Mr Cameron, a 37-year-old estate agent, told the Evening Standard: 'We feel incredibly lucky - we almost didn't go for it.

     

    'It was only the third broker we approached who flagged up this deal. We look at our mortgage statements now and they look ridiculous, it's fantastic.'

     

    He added that the mortgage provider was unable to process a monthly payment of zero, hence their 1p charge.

     

    'Cheltenham & Gloucester sent us a letter saying their admin system couldn't cope and they'd charge us a nominal rate of 0.001 per cent, then refund us,' he said.

     

    'We pay them 24p and they pay us back 23p - it seems very silly.'

     

    Nicola Cameron, 28, is expecting the couple's first child in June.

     

    So in summary:

    - £400,000 house to be worth half that soon

    - Interest only means no repayment mechanism

    - Just wait till they end up on SVR in a year or so

  7. Looks like the 'yanks' have just woken up to and realised what their constitution stipulates as money...

     

    Meanwhile, after QE (aka debasement of Sterling) the £ is up 0.7%...?????wtf?????

     

    I believe from old research I did, that gold has followed a seasonal pattern in 7 of the last 9 years.

     

    With all this money creation, I'm increasingly of the view that 2009 may not be seasonal at all. All conventions are out of the window, it seems.

  8. I believe 'TheGoldThread@GEI' is now one year old......

     

    As Quantitative Easing panic grips HPC, its pretty clear that banning gold discussion at HPC was a bad idea. Collectively, we had much to say*

     

     

     

     

     

    * - although lets not get complacent, lots of challenges and concerns still in the year ahead

     

     

     

     

  9. Can anyone help? I want to transfer my small personal pension, which I've had for 10 years now,out of stocks and shares and into precious metals (physical if poss). Can anyone point me in the direction of an investment co that will do this? I'm not having alot of luck on google.

     

    Hi Springer

     

    If you are UK-based, is now really the best time to do this WRT exchange rates? How about averaging in over the summer doldrums?

    Just my opinion, as always do you own research

     

     

     

     

  10. know where you're coming from - i once posted this and it didn't even raise so much as a titter

     

    Ronnie-O-Sullivan-masters-final-09_18014

     

    Like it, double-agent.

    In my personal opinion, I think we should avoid images of spaceship-shaped objects on launch pads for a while....Ides of March, and all that.

     

    On a bulletinboard full of contrarian thinkers (RBS tried to sell me a £ bond the other day while I was in branch at 1.4% pa - are the public really that dumb?), I think we can do some out of the box humour anyway.

  11. Dolllar was weak when gold hit 1030. Surely GOLD has long since tested the highs?

     

    Hi qwertyuiop

     

    Of course, I agree. But there is one month and two weeks left in the Oct-Mar 'summer season' for gold. If there is going to be a moment in this season yet where the market gets spooked and gets the Hee-Bee-Gee-Bees, its probably likely to be at the $1000 mark

     

     

     

  12.  

    Gold now at $979.

     

    It's been an 11 month wait but gold is very close now to a test on four-figures again, IMHO.

     

    If I remember last time correctly, it spiked through $1000 from about 20 dollars below. Well, we are now $20 below. Anything at all goes our way in the markets in the next 24h, then we may breakthrough.

     

     

  13. Yep its a weird situation, the way credit scoring works filters out people who are low debt/low risk, whereas morons who borrow to buy things are considered a good credit risk. The market signals are broken, hence the financial crisis.

     

    Its like if a religion were determining who is a sinner, if you have committed no sins then you do not need to confess, but because you have not confessed you are a sinner. If you go to confess on a regular basis you are considered absolved of your sins because you have asked for forgiveness.

     

    When I was a child I attended a catholic school, it was OK but there came a point where we had to go to confession, being only young and reasonably well behaved I had nothing to confess to, but I felt obliged to confess to something after being put in one of those confession boxes. I made some minor offenses up (stole a biscuit, swore, etc..) and then also confessed to lying, which I wouldn't have had to do if I had not been made to go to confession.

    Thanks for the insight everyone!

     

    This idea that 'debt is normal' is going to bring down the country. I'm off to become a better UK citizen by signing up to a 125% self-cert mortgage on a newbuild, and splashing out on a 4x4 chavmobile (on visa of course!):blink: .

  14. Does keeping your assets in PMs damage your credit rating?

     

    I'm currently taking advantage of a local rental market slump to move to a cheaper flat but the letting agents have said my credit rating has come back as poor :angry:. I've never missed a bill of any sort for years, always paid off credit cards pronto, earn (net) earning over 8x the annual rent, have a years rent in cash-ISAs (my only exposure to poisonous sterling) :blink: .

     

    Is it the untraceable sums disappearing from my current account to fund PMs that are denting my credit rating?

    (For the record I keep physical gold bullion and allocated silver through GM)

     

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