uro_who

Could it be because a house price crash will mean that new build sales will plummet and that P/E will not look quite so good? In the long term the shares are very undervalued. That gives lots of scope to watch them turn around first rather than try to call the bottom. There's a lot of bad news coming yet.

Over the last year or so I had begun to worry that you weren't the same LJ that had been on here since 2004. You'd come over all bearish. But the guzundering comment has re-assured me that yep it's you alright!

completely agree with all of that. That's why my profits from shorting gold over the last couple (and maybe next couple of days) are going straight back into physical gold once we've reached some sort of bottom/support level. Just got to watch the price of the dollar and oil meanwhile and well as looking forward to the fed's next move. If it is 0.5% I want to have purchased my gold before they announce that!

I'm an absolute beginner. Doubled my pot in the last few days! Basically saw the oil price coming down and Gold fever with it. Simply hedging against my bullion holdings (such as they are). I've now taken the money and will watch how the Aussies go on Sunday night before re-opening my hedge. My feeling is that it's a temporary respite in the growth of gold. Any decrease in inflation will be offset by flight to safety if the US economy continues to tank and recession is on the cards. I think that the up coming interest rate cuts in the pound and dollar will will weigh heavier on the valuation of sterling and that will also increase the relative value of bullion. Currently operating with tight stops. Better to take a small loss and re-enter than wait for the market to turn and find it doesn't. Just my opinion and I can tell you - on these matters its worth nothing!

Despite thinking that a 5% fall on banks and dodgier builders was on the cards I rather stupidly (in retrospect) kept out of it. I was nervous that the yanks would come in with all guns blazing at 1330 and I'd take a loss. In fact I'd have made a fortune. Well that's stocks!

OK, now I'm starting to get this chartist stuff. Its a straight line from the 20th Feb right across. I couldn't understand the movement in the DOW (apart from everyone was in a better mood after Thanksgiving) but it certainly seems to support your theory. I would guess the Bull rally will only be short term. I won 't be shorting the DOW however unless it shoots through, shows a pull back and falls again. Or something!

Yep that's me, shorted A&L and HBOS yesterday. Didn't go so well. As Keynes said, the market can remain irrational long enough to make you bankrupt - or something. Still, I'm tight so I only lost the price of a round of drinks in London. The day before I'd done quite well out of shorting the building and construction sector. Could have been worse, could have left that open!

I noticed that too. Unbelievable really. Whenever I see a story in the media, newsprint or TV about my industry it always shocks me just how uninformed they are. Makes you realise that watching/reading the news is completely pointless as its 95% political PR spin.

You'll be pleased that is exactly the system that the government is introducing. What won't please you quite so much is that the companies are not teutonic paragons of efficiency but companies that seem to employ cut price doctors who won't be here tomorrow to answer for any mistakes they make. Before you acuse me of waving shrouds I've seen plenty of it first hand. As for Germany, Consultants in Germany often have huge private practices and salaries. Is that in your plan too?

Talk me through that, why is it corruption

I'm not sure where I suggested that doctors had a monopoly on providing vital services, think fireman for instance, not the same salary there. Not sure what the differential was in the USSR before it folded but it would be interesting, my guess is it might be similar for both. Russia had some of the worst healthcare in the world. Medicine (like many jobs) definitely comes with a personal cost, I sacrificed quite a large part of my youth to my career not to mention huge amounts of my own cash invested in gettting myself trained. I remember walking past Anderson Consulting every night on a 3 month evening course I paid £1500k of my own money to attend, out of my salary of £700 per week (my one bedroom flat was costing £695 at the time). As I watched blokes aged 25 like me (then sadly) driving out in brand new TVR's I often thought what a fool I was being. As for that fee, indemnity will reduce that to £400, secretarial and other professional costs £300, tax man will take £150, leaving £150. For that you get a 2.5 hour operation and a sober consultant sitting at home who can be called 24 hours a day with no further fee payable for 4 -5 days. Even if you just take the 2.5 hours that gives you £60 per hour cash in hand. So about the same as a plumber or sky satellite dish fitter. Money for old rope! I once performed a study where consultant surgeons wore a suunto cardiac monitor whilst operating, everyones figures were about the same. My pulse prior to surgery was about 60bpm. During the most difficult hour my pulse was consistently 150bpm. You might not believe it but operating on people, breaking bad news, attending coronors court etc. is stressful work. Doctors have the highest rates of suicide, divorce and addiction. The reason that doctors have been allowed to continue with private practice is that it enabled the government to pay less than they would have to in order to encourage them to give it up. Just make sure that you're not being taken in by the unremitting media message that doctors are evil money grabbing leeches that are bleeding the NHS dry. Try picking on the legions of clipboard holders.

Hold on I'm just putting my cricket box on. OK, I'm one of these greedy, lazy bribe requesting consultant surgeons. I agree with some of this thread. Hospitals and medicine are being prepared to be sold off to the private sector so that we can have a similar healthcare system to Australia and the US. The difference is that we are also trying to produce as much medical unemployment as possible to drive down costs, unlike those other two countries where doctors still control their own numbers. There are some bits I don't agree with. Both hospital doctors and GP's new contract is perfomance related. I'm on the old contract which is a professional contract, it's not time related in any way. The new contract was designed for hospital doctors to be pinned down rather than have the option to come and go. For many years hospital doctors told the government that we spent many hours not just in outpatients or the operating theatre (I spent 11 hours there yesterday) but also on other work. It is easy to forget that every patient I see will produce a number of investigation that need to be performed, results that need to be reviewed and discussed as well as letter produced and signed for the patients GP. In addition we need to teach medical students, junior doctors, assess competence, audit our own results, keep up to date, fill out the million and one bits of paper that government has asked us to, as well as develop services, learn and introduce new procedures and treatments. Shortlist and interview new staff (I usually have to score and comment on 100-400 applications for each job). Conduct clinical and scientific research, oversee a post doctoral researcher. Provide meetings for local GP's and the local patients. In my case also in the evenings produce educational materials for the university, my royal college and also engage in consultations that the government have requested from the BMA. Apart from that I do jack. The reason that consultants pay has gone up is that some of this work is now funded. Why has clinical work gone down? Take the example of cancer. 5 years ago if I diagnosed cancer I'd decide what to do and get on with it. The government however decided that just in case we were a bunch of mavericks we need to have a meeting every week where we discuss each case. A good idea and it works well. It unfortunately takes a further 2 hours, thats 12 less patients in outpatients each week for each doctor who attends (16 at ours). This is repeated around the country. It provides much greater quality but productivity seems to be lower. Take another example. Traditionally junior doctors worked long hours and absorbed information by osmosis. Now post qualification training has been shortened for a consultant from 46,000 hours (for a surgeon) to 12,600 (at the governments behest - more specialists ASAP). If you want any of these people to know your ar$e from your ellbow I need to spend more time training them. Nurses do most of the work. They always have done on the wards and in the community. What's new now is the specialist nurse. I work with a number and they are fantastic. The will not however work outside very fixed clinical situations. As soon as a patient has a more complex pattern of disease which does not fit the specific condition that they look after then their more limited training becomes a problem. I saw a man this week who a nurse wrote to a GP suggesting that he should be prescribed testosterone for his erection problems. She was an 'endocrine specialist nurse'. Because however she wasn't a doctor she neglected to realise that as an afrocaribean man he had a higher chance of prostate cancer, she neglected to examine his prostate (she couldn't she wasn't trained). I co-incidentally was looking after the patient for another matter, checked his prostate and his blood tests and it is quite likely that he has prostate cancer. Testosterone would have made this much more likely to have spread to his bones making his cancer incurable, luckily I managed to cancel the GP's presrciption. You get what you pay for I'm afraid. Doctors swinging the lead to increase private practice. I work with over 300 consultants I have my suspicions about one or two. Everyone else is at pains to be as ethical as possible. WHat do you think the proportion would be for lawyers, estate agents, politicians, financial advisors etc. Cases per consultant have gone down. 1)less operating. IN time honoured fashion, spread sheet management has identified that savings made to staff numbers in theatre, less porters, not admitting patients until the very last minute mean that I spend about 3 hours of my operating session waiting for patients. I use the time on admin but it is getting worse and worse. 2)Outpatients. 15 years ago it was possible to say 'I'm going to operate on your [enter organ here] I'll write with the date, next'. Now, thank God we have the demand and opportunity to explain the disease to the patient, help them to make decisions about the treatment they want and explain all of the risks and logistics. If you want us to go back to the 1950's then I suggest you let government know as the current set up is very expensive. Private practice. A minority of hospital doctors make money from private practice. About half of my fee goes on indemnity. I see private patients not because I have a long waiting list (hardly anyone does any more) but because some people want the extra that is provided, just the same way that some people buy a 7 series beemer when a yaris would be fine. They pay for 40 minutes of my time as a new patient (and admin etc) and for the hotel services at the private hospital. A few possibly pay because they want to be certain that the operation is performed by a specific person. I however spend about 44 hours each week on NHS work and 6-8 on private work. I do think I'm short changing anyone - except possibly my family. Merit awards, no completely wrong! First you have discretionary awards, these are for the sorts of things I'm invlolved in over and above clinical day to day work, work for the greater NHS, e.g The Modernisation Agency, being a clinical champion for the introduction of a new computer system. They are specifically not for just doing your job. The sort of merit award you mean are the bronze, silver, gold, platinum awards, these are given to doctors usually after at least 10 years of being a consultant (and numbers are very small). All of them mean you need to be doing work of national and international impact, they are externally awarded by committees made up of doctors, managers and lay public. The higher of these are usually awarded to presidents of specialty organisations with a huge track record of research. Of only it were as simple as you suggest, I'd be a happy man. In summary - it depresses me to read this sort of twaddle, I work hard for and care hugely about the people I look after and its sad to see a whole bunch of tired stereotypes being flaunted as fact. Right back to the pavillion quick.

I thought I'd been smart by shorting a couple of house builders on the FTSE (and gold). Paid out well. Then I checked and found I couldn't have failed if I'd shorted just about anything. Better not give up the day job!

I had a patient once with bladder cancer who'd been to the local medical bookshop, bought a textbook on urology, read the bladder cancer section, searched for recent developments on medline. Did I feel undermined, are you joking? it was one of the best consultations I've had, although I love explaining in terms suited to the individual enough information for the patient to come to an informed decision in this case we had a plenary session discussing the various state of the art treatment strategies available. What do you think he said at the end? What do you recommend? I'll do whatever you suggest. On average you're bonkers if you think you can compete with the 18 years of training I've had! Every day I present the facts and suggest that the patient may want to make a decision and what looks back at me usually is the terrified look of someone who desperately fears making the wrong decision. At this point I offer a suggestion of what I'd have done if it was me or my father/mother. I feel the same when the accountant comes round to mine and gives me three different options none of which make much sense. Let alone if next time I went on holiday the pilot said "does anyone have any strong feeling about how we get to St Lucia?" If you've got a doctor who treats you like a fool get another, I treat all of my patients like the intelligent (even if that's university of life) human beings they are, assume nothing other than the person you are talking to is your equal! Cheers!

Nice post! exactly as my barber told me. Men also have a tendency to go and buy clippers or ask the wife, sister etc to cut their hair if things get tricky. I'm a urologist - anyone want to guess at the name of my trade journal?

Hi. My dear old mum has just sold her house and needs somewhere to put her STR cash until she buys again. Can anyone give me a feel for how much we need to venture on spread bet to tie her £550k to UK property values. Don't panic, I've worked it out myself but I think you'll understand that I am looking for a second (and third, fouth etc) opinion Cheers in advance (I hope)

Dogbox, have a look at http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=BDEV.L&...&q=l&c= Just Barret, but I think you'll agree that this years fall (starting in May) in more concerted and prolonged than any other on the chart. Also look at the volumes.

Where've you been? Its standard practice. HAve a listen again to file on 4 (radio 4). One chap on there had a portfolio of £3 million which he'd only put £60k into. Get mortgage on retail price, negotiate 15% discount, use that as the deposit. Job done. Buy next. Pardon, cash flow problem you say, what prices down 2% you say. Oh I appear not to be a buy to let millionaire but bankrupt. Oh well, I can do it again in a couple of years.

I apologise in advance if you're joking. The Japanese economy wasn't like it is now 17 years ago either. At that point they had borrowed very heavily to buy in to a huge property and land bubble. GDP was and still is high, unemployment was and still is low. They simply couldn't borrow and wouldn't borrow any more money, land and property prices plummeted, savings rates increased, people were and are locked into very expensive mortgages. Does none of that picture look familiar? OK I take your point we haven't got the industrial and cutting edge high tech economy that Japan has, we work in call centres and flip houses to buy Japanese and Chinese consumer goods, have breast augmentations and cover our roads in brand new Japanese cars. We do not have a Japanese economy but we are in danger of heading that way or much worse.

The fall in interest only is due to the popularity of endowment mortgages in 1995. Every one of those had an endowment organised to pay off the loan (or not as the case may be). The difference now is that many interest only mortgages taken out today do not have a repayment plan other than hope the salary goes up or mum and dad die.

Except that the size of the debt has doubled in the last 10 years

But how would you feel if we go Japanese? i.e. Your £200k house is worth £50k 17 years later with a 120k mortgage and the new house you bought for £300k is worth £75k with a £200k mortgage. That's £320k debt and £125k assets. Won't happen here? What happened in Japan? Massive property bubble, over indebted populace, economic downturn. Its got to be different here, hasn't it?

Which means less money overall for house purchases, which means... ...lower prices! I told you it was good news!

I think you are all being cold hearted. May be we should help all of these poor BTL purchasers. Why don't we set up a scheme whereby we sell water softeners. We can let the person that sells the softener keep 30% of the proceeds of their direct sale and 5% of the sales of those they sign up. If we get everyone selling to each other and keep increasing the price every month we can soon all be rich. Can't we?

I remember thinking that in the 1970's. It was about Japan then. All they made was cheap plastic tat and cars from 20 year old UK designs. China is re-investing it's huge income from our debts into Universities, research, infrastructure. I think you'll find that in the future there's a real danger of us producing cheap tat for wealthy Chinese consumers to pay back our debts.