nowthenagain

Btw, not that the extreme short term matters one bit but check out a chart for US light crude in the past 30minutes..

This is a question that I believe we will see a swift resolution to, yes. One way or the other. I have no master. I am an independent investor... It allows me to avoid getting carried away in the mass hysteria of speculation.

I lack specific detailed knowledge about oil reserves or cost of extraction. In fact, I don't think anyone really knows the truth about oil reserves. It's all speculation. How much exactly does Saudi Arabia have? Now go prove it! I forsee a sharp downturn in the demand for oil in coming years caused by recession worldwide. This contraction of demand will push prices down over the short/medium term. Beyond the medium term alternative technology may well usher in the end of the oil age. It is eminently possible that we will never see $100 oil. I am short crude oil at $95 btw.

Between a rock and a hard place. The BoE are. The result will be a long period of hardly any movement whatsoever through fear of attracting blame for the ensuing mess.

Should it not be: 'British Car Manufacturing Is Saved. Ta ta!

If Oil hits $120 I'll eat my hat. Every day the price fails to get over $100 brings forward the crash. There have been a lot of interests trying to push it above $100 for a while now.. They've failed. The weight of data will eventually end this silly little speculative escapade. There is no undersupply of crude.

Why the rocketing share price? Time to short NRK?

Forecast earnings? Analysts? This makes me laugh!

When does Alistair Darling make his statement about this?

10 years+. When prices fall there will be more first time buyers, thus reducing the pool of renters. Rents will fall. BTL is going to hell!

Goldfinger, Pluto. et al. I find it amusing that you constantly do exactly what property 'experts' have been doing for the last 5 years. i.e. ramp one asset class to death. Gold is much more susceptible to a crash than property. Property is always going to be, to a lesser or greater extent, sticky on the way down. Gold will one day fall fast off a cliff. Buying gold at $800 now might be considered somewhat similar to buying a 2 bed flat in city centre Watford for £300K. I look on Ebay and there are some people making a fortune selling gold at current prices. Wise people they are to have bought at the bottom, but any argument against the morals of estate agents must also be levelled squarely at those ramping, and profiting from, gold.

Gold falling fast all of a sudden.: http://www.kitco.com/charts/livegold.html

THIS IS IT. BLACK THURSDAY IS UPON US. MARK MY WORDS.

Yes. Bought 2003 and am reasonably confident it will maintain something around the price I paid for it. No mortgage anyhow so can't really lose! House prices are going to collapse, we are going to see a deep recession. And about bloody time!

The site will become run-down with only vagrants and drug addicts posting. Eventually it'll close altogether and the domain name will become next to worthless. I will then buy the domain, sit on it for a few years and ultimately make a fortune selling it when there's another housepricecrash boom.

In a rising market then BMV might work if you can genuinely find anyone stupid enough to sell below market value in a rising market. If you are in a falling market however then below market value will quickly become market value and then above market value. All this BMV nonsense is a sign of the state of the market and the Pavlovian nature of BTL'ers. Keep on going chaps! BTL will never die! When prices start dropping these hardcore BTL'ers will buy, thinking it's the right thing to do and then 6months, 12months later they will lose everything. Hopefully real FTB'ers will wait for the bull-trap to do its work. I CANNOT BELIEVE THE QUANTITY OF HOUSE PRICE JARGON I HAVE JUST USED!!!

1% move! That's one huge fire. I hope they put it out soon so the FTSE can resume it's fall!

It sounds like it's just a fire.. Funny how the FTSE immediately rallied on the news and is now heading back down again.

In recent weeks I have come up with a cunning plan whereby I actually pay less for my bread. The trick is to buy half loafs. I never used all of a loaf anyway. This strategy is producing remarkable savings of approx 40p per week. Every little counts.

Romanian property might have been a good investment several years ago but now, after years of price rises fuelled almost entirely by Western property speculators, it is a classic bubble. Similar to our current predicament in the UK, this is partly fuelled by the new availability of cheap credit, to the extent that these properties are being bought by Romanians: http://business.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=1736372007. This is not sustainable in the current climate. The fundamentals in Romania will take many years to catch up with the prices being asked of British buyers or the rental returns these buyers are being led to believe they will achieve. I appreciate the traffic problems in Bucharest (!!incredible.. a different level to anything I have ever seen!!) but I fear the numbers of expensive cars may have something to do with locals spending (wasting?) the money they have taken for their flats/land from Western buyers and/or credit as above. Neither are sustainable.

Oil is in a speculative bubble. The present price bears no resemblance to any notion of supply of demand. I predict oil below $50 in 12 months time. The price will fall in line with general sentiment about the future.

I am in a similar position to the topic starter here. I have been moving into: Gold, Japanese Yen, Antique watches, NSI Index linked certificates, short Sterling.

I've come to realise that there are a lot of idiots working in finance.

I was in Romania a few weeks ago and ended up being shown round a few developments. I must say it is a very poor place. I cannot imagine how a local person could afford 800Euro per month in rent. An agent told me, after much prodding, that the average wage in Bucharest is 350Euro per month (Edit: Wikipedia says that the average wage in Romania is €421.49. This doesn't change my argument). And Bucharest is obviously much more prosperous than anywhere else in the country. Adding to this the surroundings of Bucharest are one huge building site. Oversupply very soon is a certainty. I visited Bucharest, Constanta, and Brasov. All of these places are full of concrete housing, which was given to the population by Ceacescu. With the flood of skilled workers out of Romania I would suggest that there is an oversupply even of this FREE housing. I cannot imagine a situation in the near/middle future where Romanians will be able to afford the sale price or rent of the new properties currently being foisted onto idiot Western speculators. Yes DianaM, you may be able to resell any property you want at the moment, but with any downturn in the prosperity of Western Europe (and particularly Britain) you will find your entire market dissapear. I suspect that there will be many people with Romanian property in a year or so who simply will not be able to sell or rent, for any price. This is not me having a go at Romania. The same problem will surface in Bulgaria, Spain, Italy, France... etc. All bubbles to a greater or lesser extent.

Collapse, maybe not. Down to about $1.80 would do for me!