ziknik

Bank of England mortgage approvals (for new purchases) released this morning. 33k (SA). This is a new ‘worst ever’, beating the previous ‘worst ever’ (last month) by 2k. NSA is also the 'worst ever' at 38k. EDIT: Just noticed that the series only stars in 1993, so the ‘worst ever’ tag doesn’t mean all that much. EDIT2: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7591421.stm The number of new mortgages approved for home buyers fell in July to just 33,000 - down by 71% on a year ago.

It’s almost impossible to create a true affordability index. Your index is as good as anyone else’s, on the grounds that you have stated all your assumptions (and sources). There are other complications if you want to consider them: ** Average earnings index is growing faster than inflation ** MIRAS ** Number of people working per house hold ** (Higher) taxes

Nationwide and Fionula need to start thinking about their credibility. The more I hear their horse **** the less likely I am to trust them with my money. There’s a better version of the BBC chart at GHPC http://forum.globalhousepricecrash.com/ind...st&p=355891

Fionula was on BBC radio earlier. http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsi...000/7585465.stm

Green shoots of recovery? Once the job losses start, May 2008 will look like ‘the-good-old-days’. (Unfortunately, I’ll be unemployed, so I won’t be laughing when it happens).

I think this is the biggest monthly fall EVER* *(NSA, on the 1991 – present monthly spreadsheet)

Nationwide data released. -1.9% MoM edit: Link http://www.nationwide.co.uk/hpi/historical/Aug_2008.pdf

The Liberals have come up with a plan of their own. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7583934.stm ** to buy empty properties and developers' land-banks to increase the amount of social housing. ** Mr Cable also called for lenders to go through the full and proper court process to repossess homes. ** A proposal for a new, regulated mortgage rescue plan would allow those who were unable to make repayments on their home loan to stay in their property as tenants.

Save a copy before you start. 1. Copy and paste the data from the linked spreadsheet in to your spreadsheet. Date (quarters) and Price 2. Press CTRL and H 3. Type ‘Q1 ‘ in the first box and ‘01/01/’ into the second box. Then click ‘Replace All’ (note, there is a space after Q1) 4. Do the same for the other quarters 5. Right click the chart and select ‘Chart Type’. Change to ‘XY (scatter)’ if it isn’t already selected 6. Now add the new data line 7. Right click the new data line and select ‘Format Data Series’. On the patterns tab, you can match the line type to the other nationwide line so they both look the same. The Nationwide data will look like it is one continuous line switching from quarters to months (but it will be shown twice on your key) Come back to me if this wasn’t clear

Link http://www.nationwide.co.uk/hpi/downloads/..._since_1952.xls

How long does/should it take for GM o do the CAP verification? I sent off my paperwork a week ago and heard nothing back so far. I should have spent 2 minutes looking at GM before asking. It takes one working day to verify (usually) http://support.goldmoney.com/article.php?id=081

According to the Halifax data, we have done 39 months of damage in the first 11 months. And most people I know are still claiming ‘house prices may fall a bit, but they won’t crash’. Why does your nationwide line start 2 years in?

The monthly BBA release is out. Number of new mortgages approved by British Banks increased by a massive 0.07k (seventy) Seasonally adjusted. NSA, July 2008 was the worst month ever. (Or at least since 1997 when the data series starts) http://www.bba.org.uk/content/1/c6/01/44/49/stats260808.pdf

Assuming you are serious. It is possible but the outlay costs are prohibitive. I have bought a few fuel tanks over the years (for commercial use, I don’t have them in my garden). They cost around £5 per litre of storage. Example, a 2,000 litre tank costs £10,000. It probably makes more sense to lease / buy a petrol station and use its tanks for your storage. I’d guess a fuel tanker will hold around 25,000 litres of fuel, so most petrol stations should have over 100,000 litres of fuel storage. When you lease / buy your petrol station, make sure it has operational tanks. It will cost you a fortune to re-commission mothballed tanks because of the constantly changing environmental standards.

The sooner the **** bag builder fail, the better in my view

In my simple thinking. The price of oil is coming down because people are expecting demand reduction in a recession. And people think the USD is regaining strength. I think ’people’ are wrong and oil will soon rocket through 150 $/bbl and probably 200 $/bbl too. From what I have read on GEI, the bottom in oil price is expected to be somewhere around 100 $/bbl Doesn’t the same also apply to silver (the bottom price is yet to come)?

What do you think of DrBubb's prediction? Edit: Spelling. Sorry DrBubb

Sorry if this is old news, I haven’t seen it anywhere. The Bank of England has sold all of its gold! I have put together this graph of the UKs gold holdings. The continuous line is the Treasury. The dotted line is the Bank of England. $ is a log scale. http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/statistics/.../Tempoutput.pdf EDIT to correct graph line

I’ve found the website http://www.castlestonemanagement.com/fund-...n.php?fund_id=1 There is a factsheet http://www.castlestonemanagement.com/pdfs/...s-Factsheet.pdf And a presentation with some precious metal investment graphs http://www.castlestonemanagement.com/pdfs/...esentations.pdf

Friends Provident have got a precious metals pension fund. Does anyone know anything about this fund? I’m planning to put some money in, but it’s not showing on my list of funds. I’ve sent an email to FP to find out when it is available. http://uk.reuters.com/article/fundsNews/id...dName=fundsNews

Gold in the mainstream media again http://uk.reuters.com/article/fundsNews/id...dName=fundsNews

Are you using Firefox? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3006

Could this be a big day for gold? Bradford Bingley is on its **** in the UK and the USA are on a bank holiday. http://www.greenenergyinvestors.com/index.php?showtopic=3551

Your story is very similar to mine (including Post #52). I was left with enough money for 2 trades after being too greedy. I’ve slowly managed to make my money back. Thankfully, I’m spreadbetting with what I can afford to loose and I have learned a very important lesson.

How do you short a stock without spreadbetting? Is there another way? I’ve been using Capital Spreads to short UK housebuilders. Is CFD the other way? I’m not keen on CFD because of the tax. Knavel, I have read your suggestion on rolling cash, I will do some reading.