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Rave

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Everything posted by Rave

  1. I've just sat here and watched it go from <$10,000 to $10,750 in under 3 hours. Short stops getting taken out, FOMO, who knows? Better go to bed I suppose.
  2. There are two types of drains- those that go into the sewerage system, and 'storm drains' which are designed to channel rainwater directly into a watercourse or the sea without treating it in any way. I would imagine the roadside drains in a seaside town would be the latter... Edit: that's not to say that I'm in favour of persecuting van dwellers, indeed I came close to buying a van and clearing off for a bit myself, I'm just saying.
  3. Not exactly cheering news for me though, Lot 1, 205 Bellingham Road, sold for £460k. Those houses are quite large for a 3-bed semi but that one appears to require extensive renovation on top. Just going to have to accept that London isn't for me any more I guess!
  4. I'm not indifferent- I think wind turbines are lovely and add interest to some otherwise fairly unremarkable bits of countryside. Anyway, regarding coal stations running out of coal / the UK running out of power- I daresay we are in the clear for the rest of this winter, I doubt one more cold snap will result in any brownouts. From next winter we could be in trouble though I think- Eggborough didn't win a new capacity contract and will close in September (which in reality means it shuts down in the next month or two, it's highly unlikely to be needed over the summer). We can't just import lots more power from the continent- we only have a total of 4GW of interconnectors coming in to Britain- 2GW from france, 1GW from The Netherlands, 500MW to NI and 500MW to Eire, and they've often been flat out recently. My feeling is that we only got away with it this time because there was a strong wind blowing throughout the cold snaps we had, and wind consistently generated 8-10GW the whole time. We came fairly close to running out of gas at one point, and often had all the remaining coal plants running at close to full capacity, which I guess was to save gas, although an old coal plant probably runs very efficiently with low ambient temperatures anyway. Without that wind our gas plants would have been close to flat out as well. Just for the benefit of anyone who hasn't taken an interest in this before, the Gridwatch site is very interesting and informative: http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
  5. https://www.classifieds.co.zw/en/zimbabwe-houses-for-sale-221 They're cheaper than London, but they're by no means worthless. The value of the Zim dollar is a moot point when nobody uses it.
  6. It's right there in the article- some US states are Recourse, some are not, and defaults are lower in states where the lender can come after you for the outstanding balance. From Neverwhere's post on the previous page: 16 In the event that the proceeds of the sale of your property (after sums due to the first standard mortgage lender – excluding any redemption penalties - have been repaid) are not enough to pay the amount repayable for the equity mortgage, then (provided you have complied with the terms of the equity mortgage) the HCA will accept the balance of the sale proceeds as full repayment of the equity mortgage. In doing this they will agree to release the charge over your property and will not take action to recover any further monies from you. Please note that the HCA (or their agent) will need to approve the sale before the charges can be released. So, if, to use their own sums, a buyer bought a house for £200k with a 95% mortgage from a bank, they would put down a £10k deposit of their own and borrow £190k. If they then sold the house for £150k (without having repaid any of the principal), they would lose their £10k deposit and still be on the hook for the £40k shortfall. If however they bought the same £200k house using Help To Buy, they would put down £10k, the bank lends £150k, and the taxpayer lends £40k. If they then sell the house for £150k they still lose their £10k, but the HCA writes off the £40k of taxpayer's money and they walk away free of any further obligation. At least that's how I understand it. Sorry if I'm being dim somehow. Edit: of course in reality the buyer will have repaid at least a small amount of the principal as I don't think you can get HTB with an IO mortgage, but the point that the non-recourse nature of the HTB part of the loan will assist the process of price discovery in a falling market stands...
  7. Just stumbled across this and figured this was as good a thread as any: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-03-01/britain-s-white-collar-cops-are-getting-too-good-at-their-job
  8. This is the best news I have heard in quite a while. Let me be very clear about this. Leveson's proposal was that an unelected quango should have the power to decide what the public gets to read in the press. As a member of the public, I object to that very strongly indeed. Anyone who thinks that would be a good idea is a nasty fascist dirtbag who I hold in absolute contempt.
  9. No...I went and passed my truck test so that I can drive as big a van as I please, but then got cold feet. Have spent the last year drying out and trying to do more shop arbing, for which living in London is a major advantage! I'd really like to be able to buy the van without dipping into my house deposit fund, but perhaps I'm missing the point there...
  10. A kind and noble thing to do Mrs B! No need for any justifications, especially since they sound like people keen to integrate and participate in the economy rather than people keen to sponge. One can be against the current system without disliking the people who have taken advantage of it to improve their own lot in life, and that of their children.
  11. Thanks for your very readable refresher on Futures . What led me to ask the question was this section of the Shaun Richards blog post (that I linked to originally): "Next is that one of the benefits of futures trading may not actually apply and h/t to @chigrl for raising the issue. Remember I said that allowing short selling was one of the key points of a futures contract? Well here are the rules of Interactive Brokers and the emphasis is mine. If this is in any way widespread the whole concept of a futures contract on Bitcoin may be holed below the waterline. As I pointed out earlier the ability to sell short is if not the modus operandi a big point of having a futures market. Added to that is that there are of course plenty of risks in being long Bitcoin at current levels. Are market prices supposed to bring a balance between the risk of buying and selling?" This is the second result when you google "bitcoin futures short position": https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-12/bitcoin-short-shortage-keeps-crypto-futures-wobbling-above-spot ..and so, while I'm undoubtedly still being dim, I'm none the wiser as to how anyone could- at this point in time- profit from shorting bitcoin.
  12. Wealth creation is not a zero sum game. The pertinent question is whether the current price of bitcoins represents the true value of the blockchain.
  13. OK well that's fine, but if by definition someone has to be taking a short position, who is it? If it's not the punters, then it must be the CBOE? Please don't think I'm trying to be argumentative (easy to get that impression on this thread! ) , I'm almost certainly just being dim- but i don't get it.
  14. Is it actually possible to short Bitcoin via the newly launched futures? https://notayesmanseconomics.wordpress.com/2017/12/11/bitcoin-futures-trading-indicates-plenty-of-problems-ahead/
  15. Good luck charging it- by that point bitcoin mining will be using more power than the total output of the sun, apparently.
  16. They've bought the house next door to my friend's mum, and have apparently been refurbishing it. I'll be interested to see what they paid for it when the land reg figures come out.
  17. Woke up to find that, on paper, I'm £370 richer than when I went to bed last night. I'm finally getting to experience what homeowners had from 2002-2008.
  18. PCP deals are being pushed for bikes pretty much as hard as they are for cars now. The number of people using bikes for day to day transport has been in decline for many years now, albeit that scooters are more popular than they were in, say, the 90s (though I suspect people are being put off buying them now because of the likelihood of them being stolen and used for robberies). You can buy a commuter bike for a £1k deposit and £79 quid a month or similar, I think. The majority of bikes are (I would say) are sold as 'toys' and used purely for leisure. I reckon the state of the market is probably a pretty good leading indicator of economic confidence (or just the health of the economy in general). Sales of posh bikes absolutely went off a cliff in 2008; and an arbitrage opportunity arose when the pound tanked- lots of desirable used bikes got bought up here and exported to Europe, which kept used values quite high here for a while afterwards. It's anyone's guess whether the Brexit fallout will cause that to happen again, or whether there'll be a glut of used bikes on the market here- I'm certainly hoping for the latter, but not getting my hopes up too much!
  19. Thanks. I have a couple of copies of the files, for obvious reasons!
  20. I have a wallet.dat and my address from years ago. I'm not sure I have a private key, or is that stored in the wallet.dat? I really ought to check that I can still access my coins before I count my chickens, so to speak.
  21. Sorry if I'm being dim here, but I thought that a DBS check was part of obtaining a private hire license from TfL? https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/taxis-and-private-hire/licensing/private-hire-driver-licence So how is the apparent unsuitability of their drivers Uber's fault, rather than TfL's?
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