drbubb

Your friend was very lucky. Even the Piggies are waking up: Re: Central London Apartments/Flats I would be careful of London. It is now being widely talked about as one of those cities like Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Cardiff etc where prices are tumbling due to a huge oversupply in flats. Where I live in West London there are large amounts of flats being built every where. Its become a complete glut. The luxury flats in Brentford dock have plummeted tens of thousand in just the last few months and yet huge developments of Luxury flats are being built next door (A4 Great West Road Development - Barrats). It may be different in East London and Belgravia but here there are a lot of people loosing money. South London leads some of the biggest drops in the country /see: http://www.singingpig.co.uk/forums/thread/471018.aspx I remember visiting those flats on Brentford dock, and thinking how wildly overpriced they were for such a remote location. I live in HK in a nicer flat, only 30 minutes MTR ride from centra, and it was far cheaper to buy. I have no doubt my present flat will one day be worth more per square foot, than those Brentford disasters

GAL have been "serial disappointers"

SPACE INVADERS (art lovers: Ronny Leung, Livia Garcia, Stella Tang, and Carl Cheng Chi-ming contributed) Book: OASIS: Artists' Studios in Hong kong : a visit to 25 artist studios (and 39 artists): Thru direct mail at hk$388 & from: aopp@asiaone.com.hk Setting out to compile a directory of artists' studios in the city proved a revelation for a team of art lovers, writes Charmaine Carvalho, in article in today's SCMP. Places she mentions: + Cattle Depot Artists Village : + Ho-Siu kee's studio, in an indiustrial building in Cheung Sha Wan + Fo Tan studio, and Mountain Loft, in Fo tan + Wilson Shieh Ka-ho's studio, in a Sai Wan tenement + Kwun Tong 1126 studio "Hong kong lacks the history that helps give artists the sense of being part of a tradition... Students tend to cite foreign artists rather than local ones, perhaps because of the lack of documentation and the low profile of artists working in the city." says Stella Tang Ying-chi, an artist and (with Carl Cheng) a co-founder of the Oasis project. "It's important to expand the circle of art lovers, so that local artists have a wider audience." Cheng also sees great potential: "The more I became involved in this project, the more I began to think about Hong Kong art and the environment that we work in. I realised that the standard or art is quite high, and i'm confident teh best Hong kong art will be fully recognised in the future." asiaone.com.hk : http://www.asiaone.com.hk == == I have a sense that when a community starts to document its local artists, it may be a good time to start collecting their art. and with HK 'the third largest art market in the world", I find it very strange that HK-based artists are not better known, even in their home city. Is this a great counter cyclical opportunity that i am staring at??

HONG KONG's ART SCENE... (and its reliance on the mainland's CCA) note's from a article in today's SCMP, C6-Life by Justus Krueger Growing Up Fast A new gallery in Sheung Wan is taking a refreshing approach (Tang Contemporary Art - Zheng Lin, owner) Hong kong is the third largest art market in the world- after New York and London, when measured by auction sales. But most galleries in Hk tend to focus on "contemporary chinese art" (CCA), produced by artists from mainland China, because that is where the buyers' interest tends to be centered. The "china fever" started in the 1990's when "a few curious expats" started collecting art produced in China. Collectors like the well-known swiss, Uli Sigg, started his collection then. The market for CCA really took off after the 1997 asian crisis, and has reflected growing affluience in the mainland, and the desire of wealthy chinese people to collect their own art. This growth has happened after a 100 year "ice age" in collecting Chinese art. Zheng started his first gallery in Bangkok around the time of the Asian crisis, and survived that downturn to become ever more successful after the market took off again. He also opened a gallery in Beijing, because: "If you're not in Beijing, andytou deal with CCA overseas, you are likely to get marginalised." Zheng wants to help his clients develop "a good eye", and his gallery will not be showcasing just CCA. As he says, "If you give your clients some good guidance anbdgardulaly adjust their views, they are able to turn to serious collecting. Zheng wants to develop a wider audience, and help bring CCA into the global mainstream. And maybe a gallery in HK will be just a stepping stone to more galleries overseas. He knows the scene from years of experience, and is well connected with the artists. The approach taken by the Tang Contemporary gallery is different from most: "We invite independent curators for many of our exhibitions, and i dont interfer with their work... in teh end the curator decides." Currrently, he is showing : Naked Beyond the Skin, a collection of sculptures by Xiang Jing

BIG BOUNCE DUE soon in Sotheby's stock? ======== Here's a close-up of the MONTHLY chart ... update It looks like there is important support at about $22/23. Bigcharts shows: + P/E Ratio: 7.61 + Yield: 2.43% According to that WSJ article: "Sotheby's stock tumbled in November after a pricey Van Gogh, estimated to go for $28 million, failed to sell, and its shares continued to slide." (Perhaps some people "in the know" areaware that they will get hit on some of their big price guarantees. But this "potential bad news" may be in the price already.) The auction that I attended in Hong Kong last week was a record-breaking affair. The art market in the fareast remains healthy, andis still growing, and Sotheby's is working hard to keep it going. If we are going to get Jim Puplava's "oriel cookie- creamy center rally" soon, might a punt on BID from $22/23 (or lower!) be an interesting way to play it?

Is Trouble coloring the Art world? - article from today's Asian WSJ Accounts receivable climb at Sotheby's as buyers delay payments ======================== "Wealthy clients at Sotheby's appear to be falling behind on their bills- and that could signal trouble for the auction house and the art market." Sotheby's (BID) : All-data : Daily chart : weekly / Last: (11/28/17): $48.53 Accounts Receivable more than doubled to $835 million in 2007, according to the Sotheby's annual report: - The largest total in company history - $520 million of the incraese came in the 4th quarter - Sotheby's is incraesingly guaranteeing sellers a "minimum payment" in order to win business . (Guarantees were $902 mn in 2007, double 2006, and up from $131 mn. in 2005 - Sothebys doesnt pay the consigners until they collect from the buyer Auctions has become "competitions of conspicuous consumption" filled with cekebrities, hedge fund managers, mysterious Russian billionaires. A ticket to the May auction in NY has become highly coveted, since the number was reduced last year. (DB note: it is still free andeasy to attend in HK- they are trying to build the market here.) Sotheby's says the climb in receivables is not problematic. It has to do with the timing of auctions. Others disagree, saying that Sothebys is letting buyers wait as long as 3-4 months before paying. This is a dangerous practice, particularly if Sotheby's has a guarantee outstanding against such art. If they are forced to resell the piece, it may come at a lower price, putting a starin on the Sotheby's balance sheet

ART thread: A long term investment? Or short punt? What are they cycles? How to choose investment art? =================================== I have attended two major Sotheby's auctions in Hong Kong, and am fascinated with the potential for investing in Art: + Art prices jumped 18% in 2007, according to: http://www.Artprice.com + Some paintings have been sold for absolutely fabulous returns, like 100 times or more of the cost. + You get tax-free "dividends" through the pleasure you get in having it around you Having said this, there are some drawbacks - My initial work suggests that we may be at-the-peak or over the top of a long term cycle - The big money is made by SELLING AT AUCTION, not in buying there - It is difficult to spot up-and-coming artists, since art investment depends on more that pure talent. Of greater importance is how good the arts (or his managers) are at promoting art, and how important and artist becomes in a the "flow of art history" A fascinating subject (to me), and so I hope others are interested too == == CYCLES... Sotheby's (BID) has already experienced the sharpest drop since 1999 Monthly BID Chart ... update : close-up-2008 TURNING POINTS: : 1 : late 1980's stock boom : A : End of Property downturn in the US& UK : 2 : Peak of the Dotcom boom : B : End of the Nasdaq/Tech stock bust : 3 : Peak of the pre-subprime Stock boom

LOL Continuing: "The Bank of England revealed that new home loans slumped to a near 13-year low in February—73,000 were granted, compared with 120,000 in February of last year, a decline of 40 percent. Even so, the scale of the crisis is set to intensify as the credit-fuelled spending boom grinds to a halt and goes into sharp reverse. The Bank’s figures showed that consumer credit had its sharpest rise in five years to almost £227 billion. Unsecured debt, not mortgages, rose by £2.35 billion in February to its highest level since October 2002. This was due to a £2 billion surge in borrowing through loans and overdrafts, the biggest rise since figures were first collected in April 1993. Outstanding debt on credit cards has increased by £350 million. The situation is compounded by the growing number of lenders who face negative equity. The 2.5 percent house prices fall in March was the biggest monthly decline since September 1992. Estimates vary, but all predictions are for further substantial falls for the next two years. Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Vince Cable warned that 3 million households could fall into negative equity within a year and that there were signs that repossessions were approaching the levels of the 1990s recession. “There are currently three million families—three million—who have loan-to-value ratios of properties in excess of 90 percent, the Council for Mortgage Lenders confirms that,” he said.

WHAT IS A GOOD PROXY for the CDNX? Endeavor Capital has been tracking it more and more closely EDV.t vs. CDNX ... update Weekly EDV

NO EARNINGS - a big part of the problem (from Advfn's gold thread): Lemain - 9 Apr'08 - 14:36 - 37790 It seems that people are waking up to the fact that shares are useless unless you have earnings, that all earnings are historic and to have a share portfolio with no divis is having all the risk with none of the reward. If that lesson has been learned then maybe we start the descent?

Back to the Future... Barbera is now a U Bull Revisiting Some Radioactive Ideas What's next for U308? by Frank Barbera It was late August of last year when I sat down to update readers on the outlook for Uranium stocks. At the time, the sector had been going through its first major correction following several years of unbridled advance. Several months earlier in my newsletter update on June 21st, 2007 we became concerned that the Uranium sector was headed for a serious decline. In that update, we stated... As we can seen in the chart above, Wave C down was almost exactly the SAME PERCENTAGE decline as Wave A with Wave A totaling (4/9/07 peak at 1389.58 less the A Wave low on 8/16/07 at 684.74 = 50.72%) with Wave C totaling (1116.04 Wave B peak on 11/2/07 less 556.41 on March 31st = 50.14%). What’s more, the declining waves were also very similar in terms of overall elapsed time with Wave A taking up 90 trading days on the downside, and Wave C unfolding over 101 trading days into the March low. Within the overall A-B-C structure, Wave B retraced exactly .66% of the prior A Wave decline. If we plot the Primary Wave II correction on the same longer range graph, we find that prices retraced about 1/3 of the prior entire bull market run (does that sound strange to anyone?). If so, it should not as this is simply what bull markets periodically do, and constitutes nothing but a ‘normal’ correction even though the absolute price decline from high to low so far has been (4/09/07 1389.58 less 556.41 3/31/08) a stunning 60%. /see: http://www.financialsense.com/Market/wrapup.htm

Cleveland has been added to the list of cities in the header. There's a new Cleveland thread on GEI FALLS SINCE JUNE 2007 - various Cities: mo.: +CSXR. / +S20R / Miami , SanFran. -NYC-, Boston, Chicago, Denver Detroit, Cleve. jun. : 217.33 / 199.43 / 264.89, 209.48, 209.34, 171.29, 165.94, 138.09, 110.70, 118.33 dec : 200.73 / 185.01 / 231.71, 189.23, 202.32, 164.59, 160.03, 130.98, 103.30, 112.07 J.08: 196.06 / 180.65 / 225.40, 183.81, 200.49, 162.59, 156.47, 128.98, 100.17, 108.49 Chg.: - 9.8%/ - 9.4%/ -14.9%, -12.3%, -4.2%, - 5.1%, -5.7%, - 6.6%, - 9.5%, - 8.3%

FEWER HOLIDAYS, DENTISTS, and PANIC SELLING - may time the bottom ((A low next winter ??)) (a note on Real Estate from Dennis Gartman): Everyone everywhere is trying to ascertain when the bottom shall come in the real estate market, and all answers we've seen thus far are wonderfully complicated compilations of math, done we fear by the same wonderful Russian, Chinese, and eastern European mathematicians who have given us the models that have wreaked so much damage upon the real estate industry to begin with. We shall pay them no heed, for they deserve none. Their sigmas, and deltas, and arcane math have done quite enough damage. We needn't more. Rather, we'll look for anecdotes that shall prove the bottom, for the history we've had in the past thirty + years of trading has always shown that "data" lags while anecdote is coextensive with market changes. In the instance of real estate, we suspect that the bottom shall be made when the doctors, lawyers, dentists et al, who proved to be the great buyers of second and third vacation homes. It was they who were the market for houses in Florida, in Arizona, along the Outer Banks of N.Carolina, in California, Nevada et al. They levered up because their friends levered up; they bought because their friends bought; they invested because their friends invested... and they made the top in the market in venue after venue. To that end we noted an interest bit of what might seem like tangential information but which we think points hard at the problems facing real estate at the margin: vacation bookings are down and down sharply from those of the past several years. The American Research Group in Charleston, S. Carolina, reported that in a survey they'd done just recently that only 16% of American households plan to take holiday this summer. At the same time a year ago, 48% had made their summer plans. This is not an immaterial downward shift; indeed, it is as material as any bit of news we've seen in a very long while. Bookings at the Outer Banks are down materially this year from last, with total rentals down and weekly average rentals falling. The doctors, lawyers and dentists who'd bought homes at the "Banks" were not too concerned about falling prices of their vacation homes so long as the rental income to support those homes more than equalled their mortgage payments. That, however, is about to change, and when it does, and panic begins, the bottom shall be made. When will this happen? Much later this year, probably, for most of these DLD's ("Doctors, lawyers and dentists) will tell themselves that it is others whose vacation homes will not rent, but that theirs shall, for "Ours is nicer." They will rationalise that their homes has better features; has a better view; has a bigger deck.. more amenities, et al. Eventually, however, they will cut their weekly rental rates, and the race shall be on amongst everyone to the downside, as each tries to undercut the other. Finally, when bookings are down one half from a year ago, panic shall begin and the banks shall find themselves owning "McMansions" they do not want, with the prospects of weather damage always looming. When will the bottom come? Later this year or early next. Anecdotes will tell us, and they will be bleak... and the DLD's will be throwing up in unison.

From the Eat or Drive thread: But there is an Exit Strategy. In the long run, we are all dead. But if you have children, that is not end of the story. And if you believe in Reincarnation, as I do, it is only the end of a chapter. So I believe that we have a duty to try to leave the world a better place, for when we return. And that means confronting the big world problems, not just delaying them. (And this "awareness" is the real seed of GEI, and its mission.)

THE YAWNING GAP It never dawned on us that the Mass Fear in the stock market could drive uranium stocks this low for the biggest disconnect, the widest "Disparity," we have ever witnessed. The current yawning difference between commodities and their stocks, especially uranium, is unprecedented, a brandnew trick by the market we have never before seen. Nonetheless, the lower uranium stocks go, and with so much cash floating around the world, when the inevitable upturn occurs it could be explosively higher. Especially since the Fed has slashed interest rates, run the printingpress money machines out of control and, at some point, the Mass Psychology should snap to the upside. . . . Looking back, we are dismayed that we are left with bullish long-term charts for gold and uranium, even while gold and uranium stocks are in Downtrends, and we must therefore assume that there will be lower stock prices ahead until those Downtrendlines are actually penetrated. The big question remains, how low can uraniums go? It is not realistic to expect them to go to zero, which must mean that they are nearing a Bottom Formation and another great buying opportunity. -Jim Dines

Thanks for the post, G. And welcome here. I reckon the Juniors (and CDNX), may soon have another run to the upside to test resistance

M., Do you mind using the New thread?? (please post response there)

NEW THREAD - for April: http://www.greenenergyinvestors.com/index.php?showtopic=2979 Spliting into a new thread will make it easier to find posts

(from the GOLD thread on Advfn): energyi - 31 Mar'08 - 18:22 - 37351 Gold is doing what it NEEDS TO DO, ie retest the recent lows. And (so far) it is doing so on lightish volume. THAT IS GOOD

Clive's chart He could be right. But thank goodness, there's another interpretation: + Gold's big selloff was largely due to a forced liquidation of a big long position held by Bears Stearns, and the knock-on effect that had on stop losses + Gold needss to build a base on lighter volume buying and selling before it can head higher, but if it does so without falling much below $900, then it will remain healthy. + The channel may need to get redrawn if that happens, since a longer correction is better. To me, it looks like A TOSS UP A as to whether Clive's interpretation will happen, or the bullish one. But I do not see a clear parabolic upmove in that chart.

TIMBERrrrrr

Fitch said countries that run current account deficits above 10pc of GDP for any length time almost always come to grief. East Asia's debt crisis in 1997 erupted before any state reached double digits. Iceland's deficit is now 16pc of GDP. Latvia is at 25pc, Bulgaria 19pc, Georgia 18pc, Estonia 16pc, Lithuania 14pc, Romania 14pc and Serbia 13pc. The region will need $337bn in foreign loans this year. == UNQUOTE ===== These are very scary figures! United Europe will be in big trouble someday. An overvalued currency will not help

I am bidding for some in-the-money calls on Goldfields/GFI

Not much volume going thru on anything today. A good day for a mild selloff

I would have thought so, yes. But no guarantee on that