Left the UK 2009

Agree with that. I just cannot understand the mindset of these people, this utterly reckless approach to personal finance. I almost enjoy trying to live on as little money as possible. I give myself an extra chocolate biscuit if I can spend less than 50 euros in a week. Far more fun than buying a new car.

Bump for a very old and interesting thread from about the bottom (so far?) of this HPC. At the start of 2009 I was expecting around 60% falls.

No surprise here I am afraid, interest rates are not going to increase significantly any time soon, especially with Andrew Sentance due to be leaving the MPC at the end of next month. For some reason, the BoE still has the confidence of the markets.

I remember at the start of this year, a lot of the pundits were saying a drop to 1250, hell I even put it in my Chrimbo predictions. In the event it barely got to 1310. That certainly sounds plausible, would make sense for it to occur around June when the Fed is meant to be ending QE2. We will surely come down to test the 1450 level as well at some point. I find it hard to do TA when the price is at record highs. There are a couple of obvious trend lines but my target for the next year or two would be the 161.8 fib extension of the October 2008 to November 2010 bull, at around 1880 dollars. Good old RB. I particularly remember his call for a "triple top", at about 1000 dollars. It broke that level within a few weeks.

Wow, I wish that I had listened to the goldbugs a bit more in 2008. At the current rate of increase it should be at 1600 in no more than a couple of months. The way that a lot of the gold commentators are talking about 1650 dollars suggests to me that it will not reach that level, at least in the short to medium term. Nice signature General.

Fairly tight mortgage lending leading to a requirement of a deposit of 30 to 40%? A high level of stamp duty ranging between 3.5 and 4.5%? High estate agent fees? Capital gains tax for the first ten years on a primary residence? Citizens financially much better educated than in Britain? Rental laws favouring long-term renters over the landlord? Without wanting to come across as a ramper, property in Germany is significantly under-valued. Round where I live you can easily find a yield of 8 or 9% with financing costs at about 4%. i hope that there is no house price inflation here in the future.

And here is what it looked like two years ago. Good to see it doing well. I seem to remember some HPCers discovering that it was all funded by RBS?

Yes, I spotted that one immediately as well, what a beauty. Interestingly it has its own former slaughterhouse and stables. If I had half a million euros.......

That is true. They wear those masks all times of the year but particularly in early Spring.

Agreed. The issue is very similar to the SMI, supremely unfair and yet very difficult to argue against without looking like a monster. Stuff like this still makes me angry, so glad I left Britain.

Wow, 200 million pounds as an annual deficit. Britain is borrowing that around every 11 hours. Countries really should be being run like in Canada, there is never a need for a country to borrow.

Great post. What with the problems of dealing with children and unfortunately, the increasing threat of violence in schools nowadays, I can barely think of a worse job to have. I hope they get good pay.

Forexfactory is reporting the average market expectation, so it is a more a case of if the market is ever right. 0.1 percent up today, so market expectations were roughly correct. Not too bad for peak selling season I guess.

News that the US economy is growing strongly with 216000 new jobs created in the last month sent the dollar tumbling today whereas the ratings downgrade for Portugal and banking problems in Spain sent the euro to new highs. Got to laugh sometimes.

Nice sell there at 1.613. Setting up nicely to break through to 1.58 with some decent non-farm employment figures tomorrow.

Great idea OP. A truly staggering amount of money being wasted here from hugely over extravagant council tax. I pay less than 20 euros a month for the equivalent of council tax here in Germany and see a better level of public services.

I think that I have read on here that it was 400 million pounds, but that would surely be expanded. Some extraordinary information from this website, which however does not look to be an official government website. Apparently people who took a mortgage before 1995 are eligible to receive it. How could someone have bought a house in 1995 and not have paid it off by now? http://www.governmentmortgagehelp.co.uk/ways-of-aiding-you-with-repaying-your-home-finance-loan/ My point anyway is that this ridiculous system cannot continue if it gets to the point where a quarter of the population is on it. And a banker bashing stop paying your mortgage campaign would have a chance of success if supported by a few well chosen celebrities.

Wow, a free house! Thats what I call a house price crash!

Exactly right. In my opinion, the best thing for HPCers to do would be to start a campaign highlighting and encouraging mortgage default, the SMI system would have to collapse if millions were doing it.. What a ridiculous country Britain is. For the record I put 4 percent. Which is why they won`t raise them there.

Just noticed Fafa`s post while writing this and he explains it far better than I could, just typical market movements. I will be looking to sell again when we reach the 25 day moving average.

Extraordinary. It should have been obvious from the time of the reactor 3 explosion that this place was unsalvageable. Thanks for the translations 小田急線。

It is certainly not an exact science, and different analysts might see different things when looking at the same data. I would also agree that technical analysis is a reflection more of the collective market herd mood than of any fundamental economic analysis. But that is the point. The market is not an anonymous entity that is always correct, it is a collection of traders all looking for the same or similar things and prone to wild shifts in emotion that produce wild shifts in price. If you were to produce some random data for an imaginary share or currency then technical analysts would look at it, find channels and support levels and then this would affect future price movements in this imaginary share.

That`s right. I am no city boy but I do speculate, at the moment against the pound. I never understand why technical analysis gets so much stick. Anyone who knows how to do it knows how enormously powerful it is.

Great post. There will be huge inflation in the next decade and the pound will fall considerably against most other currencies. There might be a considerable fall in house prices before that as well.