When Was The Last Time You Were A Bull?

[Willy Weasel]

To all those who accuse us bears of being doom-mongers, I would like to poll the bears by asking them to answer the question posed. If we can all establish when we were last bullish we can confidently rebut the allegation by showing our bearishness or bullishness depends on the prevailing economic conditions, not on our personalities

[Jason]

I'm a bull now, but not on property. I'm a bull on commodities and gas/electricity bills.

[Realistbear]

For houses, 1996-2003. I bought our last gaff in 1998 and bailed late 2003 and invested the proceeds in the Stock markets before doing some heavy liquidating in April of this year.

[Immigrant]

I always worried about a crash, as I am old enough to remember the last one.

But once the boom started, I was fairly bullish until late 2004 (about the time I discovered this site) then became bearish. In the past 6 monbths or so I've gone from mildly bearish to agnostic - I just don't have a clue what to expect. I can't believe prices are still rising but they are, so obviously my understanding is incomplete.

[Badlad1967]

I was quite bullish until early 2004 - when I saw the light!

Old enough to remember the last crash, and young enough to remember that VI's are spouting out the same rubbish now - but with a little more desperation in their voices "you'll miss the boat and be doomed to renting forever... mu ha ha ha ha ha"

Didn't believe them then, and don't believe them now...

As an aside, anyone who starts inane name calling to someone who wants prices to correct so people on an average wage can afford an average house (without some "nouveau" lending product") is in fact the doom monger. Or as my grandmother used to say, a "selfish greedy short sighted pleb"

Hey - let's all spend 80% of our take home pay on mortage payments! YES! The economy but shudder a little as nobody will be able to buy anything - but the housing market will be GREAT!

[DONT PANIC !!! DONT PANIC !!!]

Im bullish about many things.

Property is currently not one of them, but im optimistic that they will become better value in the future.

[George Mainwaring]

I thought property was OK until about late 2002 when someone shoved a property section under my nose and I thought "shit - this is going to end in tears". I still think that.

[Guest growl]

95' to late 2002.That's when I sold up and became very bearish during 2003 and 2004. Now I'm just bored with the whole thing which probably means we're very close to the edge. Thing is though the Iraq war and everything else including easy credit and low interest rates have just dragged the thing out. Looking back I probably could have stayed in the market a couple of years longer. But I'd rather be safe than sorry. At least I'm not in the kind of debt that some of my freinds are. I think they're nuts!

[Willy Weasel]

So far everyone seems to have become bearish between 2002 and 2004. I negotiated my house purchase in 2002 by successfully pursuading my Vendor that prices were about to fall so I guess I was bearish then (although I negotiated the price down from £135,000 to £120,000 so figured I'd got a pretty good deal).

Does anyone think it would be possible to convert sentiment on this site into some sort of index?

[BrickingIt]

Like many still remember the late eighties crash.

Remember living on a big flash new housing estate in a four bed (not mine, my parents), I was looking at some pertified woman looking out of her window like there had been a death in the family (dont get saucy we were both looking out of the downstairs window and both fully clothed). Think they re-possessed the property in the next few days.

The market went almost overnight in comparison to this never ending slow drawn out nightmare. It was the effect on the jobs market that really hit me.

Can't be a true Bull after the late eighties.

Is it simply that people can just hock themselves deeper and cheaper this time and that another 3-5 years could be a reality. Then what?. They'll screw it for all of us. Unemployment.