The Romford Navy

Can any of the more experienced Gold investors out there help clarify my understanding of the best way to buy Gold as an investment. ETFs - most suited for short term trading of price fluctuations, gold not actually owned by client therefore still at risk from failure of ETF managing institution. Therefore not suitable for long-term holdings. Quite low spread. Subject to Capital Gains tax. Bullion Vault - not closely linked to London Bullion markets so could possibly experience a large price difference at times of high market volatility. Trading Website at times a bit slow and unreliable, also no real people to actually communicate with to discuss issues/questions. Reasonale spread of 0.8% each way. Subject to Capital Gains tax. Coins - Suspect quite high spread but can't confirm this as current buy/sell prices do not seem to be quoted anywhere. If UK legal tender exempt from Capital Gains tax. Also as Investment Gold exempt from VAT. Any comments?

Another Bullion Vault question if you don't mind: I am currently looking at buying Silver and the BV price spread is £829-£833 per kilo, however the spot price is currently £804. Why the difference?

That can't quite be right can it Red Knight. Surely there must be a mechanism for increasing and decreasing BV's stock of bars based upon the quantity of investments by it's clients. Lets assume the Company started off with say 10 gold bars, then as more clients came on board they must have had to purchase the 11th and then the 12th bars etc. As these were purchased they must have been introduced to the trading screen somehow otherwise they would still be trading with only the original 10 gold bars! By extension if Purchases can be introduced into the system then surely Sales can also.

Can anyone give me some advise about BullionVault, I have recently setup an account with them but not used it yet. Their bid-offer spread looks good (say 0.5%) on the best bid/offer prices but not so good if we look at 2nd/3rd best, how does it work out in reality? Also what about storage charges do they mount up to anything significant? As for safety I understand that as holdings increase enough they actually buy physical bars to cover paper holdings 100%, is this correct. Thanks

Your new website layout is horrible, please please revert to the old layout. New board looks like it has been drawn by a bunch of infants. Sorry to complain but this really is bloody awfull.

Yep, Game_Over you are quite right. I recall discussing this and doing some calculations a few years back when all this drivel about how melting icebergs were going to cause raised sea-levels first started. If I recall correctly we calculated that a floating Iceberg which melts leads to approximately a five percent decrease in volume displaced.

Recently I have noticed that there seem to be a number of former occupiers of large properties who are currently leaving the country. I guess they can afford to so unlike the rest of us have no need or desire to see out the recession in this marxist cesspit. Most of these properties seem to remain empty, I assume these people are not bothered about the potential rental income and prefer to avoid the risk of getting a bad tennent. I wonder how many of these would rather have a _reliable_ house-sitter rather than leaving their properties empty? Obtain somewhere to live for free while offering a service at the same time, most difficult part is ensuring a suitable quality of candidates, I'm not sure that merely being a member of HPC would be an absolute guarantee of suitability. What do you think any demand for such a service.

Thanks for that The Last Bear, great picture. A brief history of the RomfordNavy: The phrase originated from an article published in the Times somewhere around the late 90's when we spent most weekends (regardless of weather conditions) water skiing off either Bradwell, Stone or Two Tree Island (Southend) and were obviously observed by aforementioned columnist.

Is Jim Rogers one of us? He certainly holds very similar views to most of the HPC community. Good to see that the theory regarding an impending Depression caused by the f**kwits (politicians) is now gaining some mainstream press. Unfortunately I suspect most are too arrogantly stupid to listen. The very people whom we need to learn from history are always the very ones which don't!

I'm almost offended General Melchett, I'll have you know Romford was nearly the center of the Christian world; Jesus was almost born here. Well he would have been apart from the requirements; it was difficult enough to find three Wise Men let alone a Virgin.

Probably about right, that's why a completely new and more open and honest organisation not encumbered with such problems should be able to clean-up.

And, as long as you don't consider it too innovative, those at the front-end of this Investment vehicle such as the Actuaries, Accountants, Investment Manager etc. should all receive half their wages linked to the Companies overall long-term profit. Hence it would be to everyones advantage to get the safety/risk balance correct. Say pay these people half of their salary up front and the bonus linked remainder spread over five years (even if they have left the Company by then), that sould certainly provide them with suitable encouragement to ensure the long-term robustness of the organisation.

Absolutely bloody hilarious, today needed livening-up!

Good point FSCS could well be bit of a brick wall, anyone know how to find out what that would cost? There is always the option of running the Company offshore to get around that but that would of course reduce trust from the UK investors. Perhaps having a reliable Accountant doing monthly audits, which are then published to the public, would help build trust in this new investment vehicle. On the other hand if the FSA insists that membership of the FSCS is a requirement for any Company wishing to conduct Investment business in the UK then we are totally screwed. If that is the case, and I sincerely hope not, then no new bank/building society would be allowed to help solve the liquidity crisis without being forced to bailout the fools that got our country into this mess in the first place. Lord Elpus..

So let me see if I have got this right. On one side of the coin we have savers who can get virtually nothing in interest on their capital and on the other we have business who cannot get investment regardless of how much interest they are willing to pay on it. We have Savers who would quite like to get returns of 5-7% or so on their capital and we have good solid Businesses who would like to borrow capital at say 7-10%. However, these businesses are going bust because there is supposedly no capital to lend to them, where has the savers capital gone! Hmmm... Is it not time to start-up a new Commercial Building Society whos purpose is both to help savers get a decent return on their capital and to help solid reliable businesses fund the cash flow they they require to survive? We would of course need to completely ignore any fictitional 'Base Rate' which the incompetent idiots, sorry I mean the Government, choose to use for their flag waving cerimonies but other than that why wouldn't it work? Anyone here know much about running a Building Society.