id5

Oh, look, a discussion about house prices in the UK.....

Okay back to house prices. I was just going through the local area using Rightmove with Property Bee and noticed that asking price on rentals are falling as well. Been a while since I have seen that happen in their area?

As an anecdote, in the last 5-6 years we have been renting we have never had the rent put up.

Perhaps because Samhain (Halloween) celebrations were being heavily repressed by the church at the time.

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Understand where you are coming from Iggle but you are 6 days out and the repression of the pagan festivals of the beginning of winter occurred in the Roman times across the whole of the Empire of Rome as Christianity took over, the festival was replaced with a Christian festival sometime before the 4th century. Rome was very good at hearts and minds and rather than forcing change they took the longer term view of adopting the festivals and changing the practices, something the US and UK need to relearn in their various conflicts.

Bonfire night didn’t start until 1606 and wasn’t a religious festival, pagan or otherwise but was a festival by Parliamentary Act that went on until the mid 1800’s. I wonder if the common people in 1606 celebrated it with joy or sorrow?

Yes. But then there are cups and pints and quarts and gallons and barrels. In the metric system there is just the meter - everything else follows naturally, at least from a mathematical perspective.

What the ell.

It gets worse than that wren. When I started my surveyor training we still had to deal with furlongs, chains, links, rods, poles, perches, roods, acres, hides, fathoms, shackles and cables. If you did not understand fractional math you were well and truly f^&ked. The math surrounding length, area and depth are so much easier with the metric system.

People don't prefer rational things here in the UK. Just take the metric system.

Yes, rational thought is hard to find in the UK, for example, why on Nov 5th do we celebrate the failure of someone to blow up politicians.

Some small crumb of comfort for those who have sold to rent present in the above piece:

 

 

 

Surely: Higher rates = lower house prices

With inflation picking up prices will go down. I still think that the only reason that prices have gone up is due buyers being offered a better house for their money. I wish that UK houses were sold on sq ft rather than just flat, terrace, semi, det, etc

I'm no chartist, but my primitive understanding tells me that, with all those supports converging, we'll either (i) bounce belligerently or (ii) plummet precipitously. Has anyone had experience of using a combination of a short (with a stop loss) and a long (with a stop loss) to play this situation so that you win either way once a trend becomes clear?

The US banned performing this on the same FX account in the US. I have never been able to successfully get a strategy using this method working for many different reasons but many claim that they have. I prefer to use an order to buy or sell when the price hits a certain point. Like all trading trying to perfect a new strategy can be difficult.

I don't think you want a multi-page slanging match any more than I do. I'll end by putting forward my own view from the other side:

 

Working class people are happiest when they are able to take home an honest days pay for an honest days work. [insert house price / salaries ratio comment to keep post on topic]

You are correct, I also have no wish to for a slanging match and I understand your honesty statement and will end with this thought “Offered money for nothing would the majority of people take it”

Why are you bashing your peers?

 

Maybe I am miss reading your post. This is how I am interpreting your post

The All is your inflection and not mine.

I wasn't bashing, I was stating how situations are perceived by others especially the situation Riggers was discussing, and I was trying to put forward the view from the other side.

The banker at the upper end of the scale sees the right to a bonus, the cleaner at the bottom sees the right to cream the system at the other end using invalidity benefit. Bizarrely, both now seem to be funded by the tax system

You should start a 'Bash the working classes' thread.

Why bash my peers

How much gold can you carry on you when you move from one continent to another? Is there any restriction?

It depends where you are going from and to and what type of gold it is, have a quick look at this post as it may help you. If not tell me where from, where to, how much, when, a picture of what you look like and I will mug help you

It's not just an housing prop i'm angry about and it's been said on other threads, but the whole friggin benefit system needs looking at!

 

Today I watched Mr Invalid running up and down a hill in our village with his 4 kids, he could have practically entered the winter olympics with his performances. Must be all the free drugs he gets that enhanced his performance. Who knows he might even come off benefits and go back to work, then again.

Mr Invalid maybe one of the latest ‘stressers’ or just one of the others that have won the ‘mini-lottery’ ticket to invalidity benefits because that is how the working class see them. Luck put them in a situation where they can claim invalidity such as a minor injury at work or a car crash. A back injury is the best because that one can be dragged on for ever. We had a woman near where we used to live who had whiplash from a minor shunt. You could always tell when she was off to the doctors because the neck brace and crutch came out.

Stress is fast becoming the in vogue form of invalidity benefit in very large companies. If you have been in the company for a couple of years, are not in the flush of youth and trying to climb the greasy pole, and are lucky enough to get promoted to a team leader or above then you are in with a chance. The next stage is to go to stress counselling, paid for by your large employer, and as time goes by you do enough work to keep the pretence of being a worthy team lead but slowly increase the amount of days off that you have sick from stress until you get to working only a few days a week. The company cannot get rid of you easily as you have followed all of their policies and your job is even more stress as you can no longer get it done in the time that you are at work. You can continue this on full pay for doing half the job for nearly ever or if your lifestyle allows you to live on less money you can then drop the job and live off invalidity.

I do find these stories amazing but try and take them with a pinch of salt when nationalities are also quoted. I think I try to forget them as really, who in there right mind would authorise those sort of rents when you could move them 1 mile out and pay rent a third lower.

I would not forget them as someone in their wrong mind has obviously authorised them, I would follow the money.

Since some of them are not really mansions but are large houses the amount of rent becomes extortionate and paid for by the tax payer. I suspect that the owner of the property is in league with someone in the council to provide rental properties at a high rental value for a backhander. The owner gets the mortgage on the property paid for and cash, the official in the council gets a backhanded and no one dare complain or the racist remarks start to flow.

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I agree, IRS, those housing benefit payments are truly absurd:

The year-on-year rise, of almost 15 per cent, is the steepest for more than 15 years. In 2010/11 the bill is expected to rise still further, to £20.8 billion.

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Why not limit the benefit to what it would cost to rent a below average home

Notice that the stories are also about immigrants receiving the benefit rather than those who were born here.

There are a few things at work here such as the slow increase in public perception that there has now been too much immigration and the system is weighed too heavily in the immigrants favour. Before it was only the red top newspapers that would bring up the race of the people involved, now it is the broadsheets. As the Telegraph has stated the race of those involved then immigration is now a subject that those in the UK will soon be politically allowed to discuss in public again whereas it was not politically correct to do so under Labour.

This makes me think as there is an election coming and immigration controls will be one of the items heavily discussed. To me this shows that my post about the rise of the power of minority parties in the UK is having an effect as it helps to make sure that main stream political parties begin to add the minorities concerns into their own agendas or lose votes.

As I said in that post,

Like the financial crash, it takes time and in our high speed society we think it will all be over in a few weeks, there might be quick shocks such as the collapse of Lehman’s but it is going to take years to get to the bottom or for the political pendulum to swing.

Does anyone know where one can get (free) historical charts of the price of gold in a variety of currencies.

 

I've been using kitco which seems to be overly dollar centric.

Click on a currency on the main kitco page at the bottom and it opens up a separate graph then just click on the currency you require.

It is very nearly the end of the year and about time that I updated my charts. Here is the Price of Silver in GBP as a %

It is very nearly the end of the year and about time that I updated my charts. Here is the Price of Gold in GBP as a %

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On the other hand, if they're legal tender, you generally don't really own the metal - the government owns it, and you are not allowed to melt them down. In other words, the government still has a say in it.

If you are that concerned about breaking the law then take your countries coins to another country and swap them, bring back the foreign coins and melt them. If you are not worried about breaking the law then just melt them.

The reality is that if the coin contains precious metal then the government does not own it, you do, that's one of the reasons that they wanted them out of circulation. If the government collapses then you still have precious metal unlike the remaining steel coins which would be currently valued at about £200 per tonne.

When assets are cheaper, I doubt many will be wanting to put all there capital into property. If some are so willing to jump to property this might reflect both the idea that gold could get in a bubble where a quick exit might be required,and a residual lingering over-valuation of [desire for] property.. we are after all creatures of habit. The thing is, the investor once they buy property, that is if they want to own it, has to be left asking in which currency to park his "excess" capital. What the hyper-inflationists miss, in their rush out of paper to real assets and commodities is that a premium could well be put on liquidity above all else in the near future.

At the moment I can see the argument for both the ownership in commodities/assets and also that of liquidity through currencies. I think that until the country in which you value your 'store of wealth' in slides fully into either inflation or deflation it is best to try and sit on the fence because in that position you can if needs be alter the mix between commodities/assets and currencies. Time and the actions of both a countries CB and its Executive will denote which way an economy will slide. At the moment the possibility of a premimum in commodities and liquidity still exists.

I am the laziest of investors so will hang on to my Yen and dollars for now and wait for the big one before buying bullion.

 

 

How about a "subjective" logic instead of an objective index?

 

A commonly accepted currency is required to measure value [all other "objective" measures/ indexes of value fail as value is essentially idiosyncratic... this is suggested by the fact assets can so quickly inflate/deflate in value].

 

Everything has become an asset today with currencies themselves freely floating and trading as commodities.

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With this logic in mind, my aim is to take profits by accumulating ounces at the most opportune times.

When I lose money I wish I was lazy as well but when I gain ;-)

An subjective logic index that equates to troy ounces, hmmm... no I would rather if I must take one, take that of GF's House Price in GBP even though I have no wish to own one especially as renting is so cheap.

Three quarters agree with that one.

 

It is an interesting one on how we should value currencies today. The investor in me does tend to put a higher value on gold than the market does... due obviously to my idea of where I think gold is heading. But then the hedger in me tries to value currencies as the market does... and looks to gain in the long term from this valuation [i would not be able to hold fiat for long if I thought it would be toilet paper shortly]. And after all, as you suggest, money is the most mundane and pragmatic of things.

 

I have found since starting to buy other currencies [Yen/ dollars] that I have come to value them more and am less hesitant to swap for gold on the slightest dip. One situation where familiarity doesn't breed contempt.

I sold my Yen on Wednesday at 142.75 hoping to buy back in the next few weeks at 148. I also sold some GM gold on Monday and will also sell in Jan and Feb as I expect that gold will follow its seasonal trend and I can buy back in May at a lower price. If I make a profit then a proportion of that will be spent on physical gold.

It is this value of the 'Store of Wealth' the 'how we should value currencies ' that we have discussed before and I am still looking for that elusive index value that one can use to compare all 'Stores of Wealth' against.

Half agree with that in so far as gold can be harnessed..... but then it can not be so easily manipulated as other currencies [once institutionalized]. I'd suggest that because gold is potentially of a "higher order" than the other currencies, it might make sense to make it your core currency. What I am getting at here is the free floating, increasingly unstable, system of currencies we currently have looks like it might have to be anchored in the near future to gold. Some of the problems it would solve:

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Your leaning on an open door here RH but until fiat collapses or is replaced with a commodity backed fiat then gold will not be used for living, so whilst I have a core of PM’s I still have to value them in the paper that I have to live with on a daily basis. Regardless of the ‘units’ that I use my end game is to increase my store of wealth.

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One thing that works for some, is to retain a core position (50%?) and then be prepared to trade in and out,

with another part of your portfolio. ...

I have been doing this for the last couple of years but using GBP pricing as it is my base currency rather than USD. Gold is a currency, the tools and prcesses that work on other currencies work on gold just as well.

gf, if people have different tactics, strategies to you, that does not necessarily make them "gamblers in the casino".

 

More likely it just means they have different convictions.

I agree with this as no matter what you invest in and regardless of the level, even if it is the change in your pocket you are suspectable to risk. At some point, one which is obviously different from person to person, that risk becomes a gamble.

I think that consolidation could come in the spring (April) with Gold taking a break and trading lower until next October/November.

I am going for early February as the top before the spring consolidation next year, just as it was in the spring of this year. Gold will still follow the seasonal pattern as the global fiat experiment is not yet about to collapse and there is still money to be made from the markets, bonds, FX, etc.

Is there a thread about selling gold on here? I can't find one. I'm starting to look at offloading a few coins but obviously looking to get the best bang for buck as possible.

 

Ebay & Paypal fees are astronomical!

I have been telling everyone on here for ages that you should always work out your exit strategy when you buy including the tax implications. FYI the best way to sell gold coin is to a bullion dealer unless it has numismatic value in which case then sell to a numismatic dealer. There are some bullion dealers that will buy at just under spot when the market is going up of course