What is going on today? - Megathread

Great interview with prof Campbell, amongst other things, here:

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But you can do something about all of those things, can’t you? Modern doors, windows, roof insulation, open fireplaces with wood stoves etc. Even exterior walls can get a small improvement with rendering. Or is it listed? £750 a month is minimum wage for 16 hours a week!

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The February bill was actual, albeit a couple of extra days because I was late reading the meter. (And had a poorly person here who needed heat). Thankfully, it dropped in March and the ongoing monthly DD is only ££349.

Summer projects may include more draught proofing where it’s possible. Old houses aren’t so desirable at the moment but I can see reasons why having 50 cats and living in one room.become something that happens to us with age … :hugs:

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Winter ours is over £400/month. 4-bed detached, so on the large side but not huge by any means. Built in the 60s, so solid as a rock. And that’s with new windows, roof and boiler in the last 10 years, jumpers and warm pjs etc.

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Old house enjoyer here too. Built 1937, winter bills were over £300 pm and that was with the heating only going on when absolutely freezing. Or wife being home while I’m out :zipper_mouth_face:

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Short S&P 500 and Short Vix non-recommendations or insights please?

:+1:t3:

I can feel the core inflation coursing through my veins.

Time to buy more GME

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Well, up it goes with retail sales rising faster than expected. We really must stop buying stuff for a moment. Unfortunately the financially and politically illiterate (which I must add, I am pretty close to being) need to play the game to get a handle on inflation.

I feel really sorry for those mortgaged to the hilt on variable rate deals but I guess that is how things work.

Of course the government are still giving cash to low income families in the form of cost of living payments, so I wonder how much of an effect this is having on consumer confidence?

Certain benefits rise with inflation. I wish my wage went up by inflation!

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Good reads including (i) Effects of 5-10% Allocation to Gold and (ii) Slashing FX costs. In which currency should I Buy ETFs?

Weekly press review:

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Me too. Waiting for the results of a pay review.

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  1. S&P 500 / VTI has now commenced its upward target of 5,000 and will reach that before 2024.

  2. JULY 2024 global equities will begin to fall as cracks start to re-emerge.

  3. Sometime between JULY 2024 - MARCH 2027 a konker of a stock market down-fall will beast.

The accuracy of the above will be striking.

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Isn’t £1,457Bn the same as £1.457T?

Yes.

Time we went back to a billion meaning a million x million. (UK norm until last couple of decades)

Numbers would look better :rofl:

Doesn’t look good.

But it’s nothing new:

And since I were a lad, there have been numerous such warnings. Pre t’interweb, I mean, when you had to buy a large piece of printed paper called a newspaper to get the lowdown on what was happening in the world.

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This too shall pass.

Always look on the bright side of life (à la Monty Python).

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The last 6 months media outlets have shouted that consumer debt is at its highest value since other era’s, though they state the value in £ pound terms rather than percentage terms.

Of course debt is higher in £ pound terms than the 1990’s or 1970’s because things cost more so the number will be larger.

What’s currently happening is a forest fire which will wipe out the weak and from that point will begin growth from afresh… like it always will.

Non of the middle class will fight together to protect what they have and the wealthier ones above are continuing to pounce on their freedoms & assets.

Regarding the newspaper sentence above, I still find it wild that people en masse would go out of their way to pay for a piece of paper which manipulated and lies to you. The better route would be for people individually to go and push themselves harder at skills and abilities to gain their own actual understanding of what’s going on. Rather than be told by a manipulative media outlet.

When you push yourself for more than a decade, your mindset can quickly respond to BS lies and PR campaigns naturally. So you can then in turn make better decisions and be much more confident as a long term investor.

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Don’t disagree with what you say overall; I never read the Mail, it was just an example I put up to show that these headlines are nothing new.

Of course there are winners and losers in whatever economic situation exists; it’s always been the case and it’s hard to see that ever changing.

You are absolutely right that more people need to educate themselves more about personal finance in general, and that should start in schools.

In my opinion, the single biggest flaw in the current economic setup of the world is the (possibly deliberate) reluctance of governments etc., to tackle this financial illiteracy. In my simple and simplistic head, the better off people are generally, surely the better news for the economy overall.

I cannot understand, and I’ve tried and tried to see this from all different perspectives, why so much wealth is concentrated in so few hands, and how that makes economic sense.

But what do I know.

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