fadeaway

Depends where you go and how closely you look I suppose. Young people don't know what a house is worth, so these FTB houses can be made smaller because they don't know any better. I've seen 160k 3-beds with 1,100sqft with decent gardens & driveways and £240k 4-beds with 800sqft and tiny gardens within several miles of each other here in Norfolk.

Depends what happens to interest rates.. or inflation/wage inflation.

aquaman - I'll echo what others have said here. You have a fantastic degree in a fantastic subject. If nobody is smart enough to want you in this country, other countries are begging for more engineers.

Nope, the inheritance was just enough to cover my partner's student loan, which at that time was 9k (before tuition fees rose). The magical 60k you're pondering came from hard saving, a prudent lifestyle and investments based on this and other forums such as gold/silver. Don't forget we graduated at age 21 and are now 24 & 23. That's 5 man-years of earning a good amount, and saving around 10k a year (less if you invest it well via compounding interest). Which I admit is a lot, but doable if you're lucky enough to have a good salary and a good prudent head on your shoulders. Not trying to be smug. Yep I've been lucky, but yes a lot of my friends are workshy and reckless with their cash. I'm always the last to have gadgets, but you bet I'll be the first to retire.

Age 24 and 23. ~50k pre-tax income combined plus ~10% pension contribution. Both graduates. We live in a house 'worth' 180k and owe roughly 125k on the mortgage, 3.94% fixed for 5. We overpay by £500 a month on the mortgage and contribute 8% to our own pensions. I don't live in London. 1 of us has a 20k student debt, the other paid it off with a grandparent's inheritance. 1 of us had rent paid for us while we were at uni, the other did not. No bank of mom & dad, only a few thousand £ gift towards the deposit and a fridge, I would say we are in the lucky minority. Most of our friends are workshy and reckless with their spending, with 0 pension or savings.

ADVFN. If you're serious about shorting or even investing (lol) buy the level2 premium, or at least get the trial.

hmm not at nationwide.. they just reduced 2yr and 3yr to 2.99% and 3.19%, but 5yr still at 4.04%.

We're saved.

Looks like the rioting has hit cambridgeshire, just saw some geezer parking on double yellows.

Put permanent color dye in the water cannons - cover everyone outside in water/dye. Arrest them tomorrow.

Absolutely agreed. I feel for them, but I wish they would think about the best way to get their point across rather than mindless violence. We all know the dangerous spiral poverty has on people's lives, attitude and intelligence - but they are not entirely without fault. We as fairly clever people find it difficult to comprehend such mindless violence and the inability to reason, however that's pretty much how they are.

I agree with the initialisation of the riots being a setup. The startups and cars arriving to pick rioters up before dropping them off in new locations is far too organised.

I would argue - that is the fault of the prime minister et al through lack of education, lack of jobs, poverty, corruption etc. They may now know or care who the prime minister is, how to speak properly or even perform basic mathematics... they may not be angry at the right people yet, but I would wager they and history will figure it out. I just hope the perpetrators get their comeuppance rather than yet more victims.

I don't endorse mindless violence. I endorse a protest against our corrupt government. The methods they are using are wrong, but it's good that people are angry. Pity the anger is directed at the wrong people.

Love it (: About time the Brits grew a pair. I hope the police come out of it ok though.

Oh I agree - there are buying opportunities out there, just not at LLOY . ETO, ELM, RMV would be pretty good bets for me. But I'm staying away for quite some time, I caved in to the other half and bought a house as I expect QE3, inflation and wage inflation. Mortgage payments or silver/gold are a better investment than stocks right now.

So many desperate people on there trying to ramp and convince everyone it's merely a buying opportunity.

http://www.advfn.com/cmn/fbb/thread.php3?id=7968693&from=109354 well there's lloyds

Aye, many friends of mine are in a LOT of trouble right now. Many were smart enough last week to reduce holdings, but many were not. Bulletin boards like advfn really are in a bit of a panic. Cgnao is doing his usual thing too. One thing I will definitely take away from it is the old " A fool learns from his own mistakes, a wise man learns from the mistakes of others". I do realise how lucky I got.

You're right, it was mostly luck. But if anyone asks it was because I'm amazing, obviously! But a large part was gut feel as well - we all knew the US was about to kick off. It was also a bit too close for comfort to end-game eurozone. That and as you know I agreed to buy a house soon (but that's another discussion, personally I'm happy with it) Most of my deposit was made through the stockmarkets. I would be in a lot of trouble had I still been in. Even solid companies are taking massive hits, PI favorites with great fundamentals and strong history of rises over the last couple of years.

What a beautiful day! I sold all my shares last week before this shitstorm kicked off Back then I was leveraged, 90% stocks 10% cash, and nicely in profit. Ahhh... timing.

QE3

Lucky I sold all my shares last week I think a Black Friday call is pretty much a Captain Obvious statement right now. This whole week has been pretty black. I posted a thread a couple of days ago saying how every private investor I know is selling and running for the hills. This is a serious one.

FTSE down almost 100 points today on opening, DOW down 265 yesterday.. Let me tell you as an investor, myself and 90% of the private investors I know sold between 60%-100% of their stocks into cash last week on debt ceiling worries. We're down through the 200 day moving averages on most indices and a lot of once-strong shares, and the trend is now down. Something could be changing.