foft

I think £ is looking oversold now and Euro overbought... Don't think the BoE have much more scope for rate cuts given their mandate is to target CPI which is already over target. The expected cuts are already priced in for £. For Euro if Trichet even waivers then cuts for Euro will start to be priced in. But then I'm rubbish at predicting the future:-)

I know Gold is volatile, but it surprised me how straight the fall was - managed to take almost 80-90% of the fall thinking we'd get some rebounds (I bought at 1005, 969, 920...) -> almost 50% trading capital gone (I missed 927->1020 - got back in at 1005...!). For anyone thinking of trying CFDs just a reminder to take care... Also doesn't appear to be related to any market event that I'm aware of - other than being overbought and the FED splitting the cut into two days? What kind of cut were people expecting? 2%?? I'm just hoping the house I want to buy is falling faster than my crap investment abilities! I'm allegedly smart, but sometimes I wonder if I really am... Feeling pretty stupid at the moment.

There seems to be a lot of distrust of UK (mostly) CPI and RPI on here. I guess this is reflected in the currency markets - sterling is dropping faster than USD despite much larger USD rate cuts and much higher USD inflation stats. I'm not sure who I believe since I'm generally distrustful of conspiracy theories! Does anyone know of any credible 3rd party statistics available for the UK? i.e. non-government sponsored and no obvious controlling interest?

I think mostly because people will spend less when their house prices are falling (less MEW, lower confidence). So less inflationary pressure, so lower interest rates needed to hit target. Lower interest rates make the currency less attractive so it falls. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interest_rate_parity I think a lot of the fall is already priced in - inflationary pressures are back and the BoE has to target that. As the Chancellor reasserted last week. Some people don't trust the inflation figures, but thats another matter... If you truly believe we are heading for high inflation then borrow as much as possible and buy the biggest house. Even with 50% falls you'll be up. Of course if we get deflation (people have less easy credit money, but same amount of stuff being made -> deflation) then owing people money would be bad...

Surprising, getting two singles with the exact same fixed journeys is often cheaper! Was £100 cheaper on the trip I just booked from London-> Newcastle. If we have 2% inflation of stuff that gets easier to make, then you'd expect things that do not get easier to increase _much_ more... Mark

I know this has been done to death, but I tried doing another (trivial and invalid) longer term comparison of ownership vs rents. Again disregarding maintenance etc. Just for fun There seems to be a lot of comparisons of rent vs the current price. Just taking into account interest only payment for this year vs rent. That seems wrong since the sum that interest is payed on is fixed. So using time value of money the later payments are considerably cheaper than the close payments. In contrast to rent which increases each year. I chose a fixed rate interest only mortgage for comparison. Any repayments could be invested at the interest rate... I made some big big assumptions. BOE keep CPI at 2% on average. Rates are constant! House price and rent price inflation matched (housing shortage) and run at double CPI throughout. As an example property I chose one nearby that I'm thinking of renting. Rent: £1000/month. Last sold price £350,000. 3 bed end of terrace with garage. I also assumed no capital gains tax, no difference in interest on savings vs mortgage cost and no tax on savings. Using this program and being "in it for the long term" - 25 years in this case, as long as I can fix. The numbers I think should compared are discounted cost (total interest - equity) vs discounted total rent. The discounted ones are in brackets. At 5% things look about equal - perhaps £50,000 overvalued. After 25 years - total rent:499750(255325) cost:-145542(321113) total interest:437500(246644) equity:583042(-74469) At 4% houses look £70,000 too cheap - should be worth £420,000 After 25 years - total rent:499750(288461) cost:-233042(218709) total interest:350000(218709) equity:583042(1.16415321826935e-10) At 6% we're about £200,000 overvalued - should be worth £150,000 After 25 years - total rent:499750(227318) cost:-58042(401052) total interest:525000(268450) equity:583042(-132602) At 7% the house is £250000 overvalued - should be worth £100,000 After 25 years - total rent:499750(203528) cost:29457(463600) total interest:612500(285512) equity:583042(-178087) At 8% (long term average) it looks like the house should worth about £20,000?! After 25 years - total rent:499750(183222) cost:116957(512652) total interest:700000(298893) equity:583042(-213759) I've come to the understand why I'm a software engineer and not a modeler of house prices. Because its hard to do right and there are gazillions of factors to consider. Perhaps this just means I should fix at any cost if rates hit 4% again:-) Mark -------- Code follows for anyone interested. What did I get fundamentally wrong here given these assumptions. #!/usr/bin/perl -wuse strict;my $interest = 0.04; #Long term averagemy $inflation = 0.02; #boe target (includes rent)my $rentpi = 0.04; #Housing in demand, so rent and hpi runs at double rest of inflationmy $housepi = 0.04;my $starthouseprice = 350000;my $currenthouseprice = $starthouseprice;my $startrent = 1000*12;my $currentrent = $startrent;my $totalrent = 0;my $discountedtotalrent = 0;my $totalinterest = 0;my $discountedtotalinterest = 0;my $years = 25;foreach (1..$years){$totalinterest += $starthouseprice*$interest;$discountedtotalinterest += ($starthouseprice*$interest)/((1+$interest)**$_);$totalrent += $currentrent;$discountedtotalrent += $currentrent/((1+$interest)**$_);print "Year $_: rent:$totalrent interest:$totalinterest\n";$currentrent *= (1+$rentpi);$currenthouseprice *= (1+$housepi);}my $equity = ($currenthouseprice-$starthouseprice);my $x = (1+$interest)**$years;my $discountedequity = ($currenthouseprice/((1+$interest)**$years))-$starthouseprice;my $cost = $totalinterest-$equity;my $discountedcost = $discountedtotalinterest-$discountedequity;print "After $years years - total rent:$totalrent($discountedtotalrent) cost:$cost($discountedcost) total interest:$totalinterest($discountedtotalinterest) equity:$equity($discountedequity)\n";

I think you can't take most of that video at face value, but perhaps thats just me... As for the MP's pay question. 60K is surely negligible pay for someone of that position. What is their real total comp after all the perks etc? I don't see how limiting the base to CPI is going to help anything... Or get a decent answer.

Its the (lack of) video decoders installed into Windows Media Player. I suggest using VLC instead of Windows Media Player. Its great and its free - download it from http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

I didn't have much luck with wmv, so went back to xvid. 30 seconds download for plain 512kbit ADSL is too hopeful... I've put up a <4MB 320x180 one. http://ssh.scrameta.net/HPCNewsSmall.avi Or a bit more reasonable <5.5MB 480x270 one http://ssh.scrameta.net/HPCNewsLarge.avi

Yes indeed, they're huge:-) I was thinking you'd have the high quality one and re-encode as appropriate! About 1.5MB (50KB/s (orginal ADSL) * 30s) won't be very good quality. I'll see if I can find a free wmv encoder and do another version... Thanks, Mark

I've put a copy (full intro + HPC section only) on my web server for now at: http://ssh.scrameta.net/HPCNews.mpg Also a smaller divx version (Still fairly good quality I think) at: http://ssh.scrameta.net/HPCNews.avi I'll remove them tomorrow, so please post back if you got them ok.

If you are still after a recording I have one. I tried to post yesterday, but had neglected to create a user (and validation takes time). Anyway its a recording of the full MPEG2 transport stream as broadcast by Sky. So about 1GB! I can send a DVD with the file or upload somewhere. Can also transcode it to another format (e.g. divx) if you like.