No6
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Posts posted by No6
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UK bookmakers looking to expand into India. Could be big news if they get a license.
Betfair and William Hill target IndiaForeign operators bid for licence in Indian state to grab share of $60bn market
Britain's biggest betting companies are bidding for the first online gambling licence in India to gain a slice of the country's $60bn (£37bn) betting market. The high-street bookie William Hill, along with internet players Betfair and Bwin, are bidding for the internet licence in the Himalayan state of Sikkim in early September. A decision is expected in the next two weeks.
Some 13 betting companies, including local Indian operators, are battling it out for at least three licences in Sikkim. Sources said they want their betting services live from April 2010 – in time for the football World Cup in South Africa. The bookie Ladbrokes and the online specialist 888 are also considering bidding for a licence in Sikkim.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business...ia-1810025.html
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Land Registry job cuts.
The Land Registry wants to axe 1,500 posts - about 25% of its workforce - as part of a five-year plan to cut costs.The registry believes the closure of offices in Croydon, Peterborough, Portsmouth, Stevenage and Tunbridge Wells will also help save £92m a year.
The proposals will make the registry "fit for the future", it says.
The Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union said the proposals had left staff "shocked and angry", and that the plans could damage services.
A statement on the Land Registry website said the "reorganisation and transformation... will cut its costs significantly and put it in the best possible position to deliver the services its customers demand".
The government body, which registers all land ownership transactions in England and Wales, is funded by fees charged for its services and receives no taxpayers' money.
The property market downturn in the recession led to a loss in 2008-9, with another loss predicted this year.
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Does anyone here have any BDEV shares, I am ashamed to admit that I took a punt at around 60p and have had a good return, down 40% today though!
Anyone else own BDEV and thinking about taking up the offer?
But are they actually down or is it just a correction to take into account the rights issue? More shares in issue are going to dilute the share price/div, etc.
Nothing to be ashamed about in taking that punt, actually it was brave because many would have said that it was on the road to going out of business, when the reality is that many companies by March of this year were in the bargain basement bin for a punt if you had the nerve to do it. Some will have made 5-10 times their money on this and others and the company is still a dog!
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The indexes are more sophisticated than that, but I expect a small number of sales would make them less accurate in any case. As I understand it, they calculate the price of various characteristics of houses sold (number of bedrooms, size of garden, etc) and project those prices onto an average house (3.6 bedrooms, 0.21 acres, etc). When there are fewer buyers and less panic to get on the ladder, the houses which sell might be those which score highly in characteristics which are not counted by the statisticians (stylish wallpaper, recently installed boiler, etc). If the index includes the value of these characteristics in the price of those which it measures then it will overestimate the average price by overstating the attractiveness of the average house.
I suppose the point I was trying to get across is that the number of sales right now are about half those reached at the peak of the boom in 2007. What if house prices went up 15% next year, but total sales fell by 20%? Then the year after, prices up another 15%, but sales another 15-20% lower? I'm sure this would be reported as positive because prices are still going up, yet in reality because of the lower sale numbers it would be meaningless. The market is being distorted by the attempts to maintain prices at the level reached in 2007, but as all the dodgy mortgage products have been removed and the FSA now want to make some of them illegal, these price levels are a farce and out of synch with the new reality of a properly regulated market. I await all the sob stories to come of those on self-cert mortgages who are struggling and want a Government/BoE handout to help them along after they find they cannot renew their mortgage because of the new regulations.
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Supply shortage leading to record prices
Someone on the HPC newsfeed pointed out that this is Righmove prices, so it's dreamworld seller prices rather than feet-on-the-ground buyer prices. Also, the supply squeeze is not quite as reported. They checked a few London postcodes and didn't find a shortage. Fulham is mentioned in the article so I checked the SW6 postcode: Rightmove has 574 for sale (not including under offer) and houseprices.co.uk has 580 sold since the start of last August. Their latest sales data is for August 2009, so it's about 1 year's worth of property on the books of those who use Rightmove.
It is very difficult to get past the VI manufactured propaganda in the housing market. All of the reports today point to house prices being on the way up again, but hardly any mention is made of the poor level of sales compared to anytime in the last 10 years or so. Without a decent level of sales these price increase are meaningless because eventually you could have just a handful of sales at the top end of the market and that would be your average, but it would be no reflection of the real market price. To some degree there is a shortage of properties on the market right now because many people have pulled out of the market because they couldn't get the asking price or anywhere near it. If they came back to the market some will be waiting forever to sell if they are looking for a 2007 level price.
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I think the ITEM club are being very optimistic about there being 1million sales next year. At the mortgage fraud assisted bubble high, 1.7million sales was the record.
The ITEM club on house pricesErnst & Young Item Club today repeated its warning that the recent rise in UK house prices may be a false dawn.
It warned today that the property market would not return to 'normality' until it became affordable to first-time buyers. 'Although housing may appear to have turned the corner, this recovery is supported by cash-rich investors rather than the first-time buyers needed to restore the market to normality,' it said.
The Item Club sets out the problems facing the property market:
• Mortgage lenders are reluctant to foreclose and crystallise a loss for fear of damaging regulatory capital so households that are in negative net equity simply cannot move.
• Even those with some residual equity are stuck – loan criteria are currently too demanding.
• The low level of sales will weigh down on prices over the medium term because these locking-in effects prevent people from sustaining demand and house price inflation by moving up-market.
The group says that prices and transactions are 'linked by a series of intricate financial and behavioural effects': Rising prices build equity, allowing families to move up-market. That in turn pushes prices up. 'Whatever the reason for this, prices and transactions are closely intertwined, both on the upside and the downside (see chart) making it hard for prices to move ahead while transactions remain depressed.'
It therefore sees transactions struggling to reach one million next year and remaining well below the peak of 1.7 million seen before the credit crunch and house prices will 'bump along the bottom for another two years'.
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/mortgages-and...ticle_id=492090
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Give the Guardian credit for correctly reporting the reality of the market.
At this rate, when the market is down to just 12 sales to hedge fund managers in London and the average price of a house is £1,000,000 it will no doubt still be reported as a booming market.
Property asking prices in London have broken through the record high set in November 2007 as the drought of homes for sale around the country continues to distort the market. New research out today shows that the average asking price in London jumped 6.5% to £461,157 in the four weeks to 10 October, sailing through the high of £412,731 set in November two years ago.The survey by the property website Rightmove also shows that asking prices in England and Wales are now higher than a year ago, after climbing 2.8% in the past month. However, any optimism about the speed of any housing market recovery is expected to be dampened by today's report from the Financial Services Authority, which will outline plans for reform of the mortgage lending industry.
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Rightmove said 95,000 new homes were put up for sale in England and Wales during the month, 36% less than in the same month of 2007. All areas saw price increases during the month, except the north and East Anglia, where prices fell by 2.5%. London saw the biggest monthly gain of 6.5%, followed by Yorkshire and Humberside at 5.3% and the south-east at 3%. Average asking prices are now higher in London, the south-east, West Midlands, north-west and Wales than a year ago.
The number of mortgage products available has collapsed from 15,000 to 1,500 in just two years, according to Fathom Consulting, with mortgage approvals also down sharply. Many first-time buyers are frozen out of the market due to the hefty deposits and the industry fears that the proposals outlined in today's FSA mortgage market review could further affect demand.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/oc...above-2007-high
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up, up and away !!
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...id=aTAk2M_ZrU2g
At this rate by 2012 the average price of property in London will be £1,000,000 thanks to those 12 sales to Hedge Fund Managers.
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Oct. 19 (Bloomberg) -- London home sellers raised asking prices to a record high this month and led gains across the U.K. as the shortage of properties for sale intensified, Rightmove Plc said.
The average cost of a home in the capital rose 6.5 percent, the most since records began in 2002, to 416,157 pounds ($680,000), the owner of the U.K.’s biggest residential property Web site said today in a statement. Prices climbed 2.8 percent across Britain as transaction levels dropped by half from 2007.
London asking prices have now surpassed the peak reached in November 2007, Rightmove said. The report shows how the credit squeeze, the construction slump and a shortage of properties have combined to skew the U.K. housing market at a time when the recession and rising unemployment have hurt affordability.
U.K. home values are rising partly because people are reluctant to take on more debt and are moving house less, curbing the supply of properties on the market, Rightmove said. Unemployment stayed close to the highest since 1995 in the quarter through August as the recession destroyed work in industries from banking to construction.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...id=aTAk2M_ZrU2g
London house prices surge past 2007 record high
Asking prices in London jump 6.5% to £461,157
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/oc...above-2007-high
Ah, the London market. Is it foreign money that doesn't need to get a loan that is driving it higher? How many sales are going through? As usual, no mention of sales levels or comparisons with previous years.
All it says is;
‘Acute Shortage’
“There’s an acute shortage of property,” said Robert Green, a real-estate agent at John D Wood & Co. in Chelsea, southwest London. “Demand is very strong. Also mortgage availability is improving. It’s unlikely we’ll see enough supply come to the market to see prices falling.”
Demand from foreign buyers is also helping drive up prices in central London due to the weakness of the pound, Green said. The U.K. currency has dropped about 17 percent against the euro in the past year.
It also says;
Debt Worries
U.K. home values are rising partly because people are reluctant to take on more debt and are moving house less, curbing the supply of properties on the market, Rightmove said. Unemployment stayed close to the highest since 1995 in the quarter through August as the recession destroyed work in industries from banking to construction.
Recent house price gains may not last, Shipside said.
“The combination of economic hardship, pending taxation decisions and an imminent general election could stamp out the early stages of a housing market recovery,” he said.
The opposition Conservatives had support from 41 percent of voters in YouGov Plc opinion poll published yesterday in the Sunday Times, leading the Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s ruling Labour party by 11 points compared with 14 points a month ago. An election is due by June.
Curbs on lending may also affect the housing market. The Financial Services Authority today called for a ban on self- certification home loans after a review of Britain’s 1.2 trillion-pound mortgage market. The regulator also called for mandatory affordability tests for all mortgages and making lenders ultimately responsible for assessing a consumer’s ability to pay.
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Somehow I doubt that even the city bonuses this year will do much accept to inflate the top end of the market. For the average person and most homeowners, the market is now dead, as any increase in properties coming to the market is unlikely to be met by available mortgage funding. The death of self-cert has left an enormous hole in the market for all those people in the £15-30 grand a year salary range who will now not be able to get a mortgage, whereas a couple of years ago it was easy to just add £5-10 grand to your salary figure on a mortgage application because no one checked it.
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A quote from the devil himself.
"And to protect homebuyers further, we need much tougher rules to make sure that high loan-to-value or high loan-to-income mortgages are offered only when the lender has done rigorous checks to ensure people can keep up repayments."
From:
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It's the lead story on BBC lunchtime news.
Already the representatives of estate agents are out there arguing against it, so you know it must be good in terms of the type of dodgy deals that it will stop. Be interesting to see if the FSA hold firm on this. If they do, I see UK house prices falling heavily once the General Election is out of the way because at current price levels, coupled with a tightly regulated market, you will only get about 50,000 sales a month if that.
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I think this is the biggest news story in the UK today (even though it was effectively put out over the weekend), although it will probably take time to fully take effect, this is the final nail in the coffin of the UK housing market. Finally, self-cert and fast track, no check mortgages are laid to rest. Already the VI's are out in force, as can be seen by the CML comment in the article. Considering that house prices reached their bubble high on the back of loose lending and fraud between 2000 and 2007, if these regulations go through then house prices can only be held up by fewer sales, which is the current state of the market. I think that removing the 50% of no income check mortgages means that the vast majority will never be able to afford at current prices, especially as we are entering a period of low wage increases, if any, for the majority to re-balance the economy and pay for the bankers greed.
Mortgage affordability test planBorrowers face a mortgage affordability test from lenders amid plans by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) to step up the regulation of home loans.
Self-certification mortgages will be banned under the proposals with lenders required to verify borrowers' incomes.
FSA chief executive Hector Sants said that some people who were able to get home loans in the boom would no longer be able to under the proposed rules.
The industry will have until 30 January 2010 to comment on the plans.
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Ban plan
The most striking proposal is the ban on self-certification mortgages - the type with which customers do not have to prove their income.
When the FSA first took over the regulation of mortgage selling in October 2004, it proposed that borrowers who were not self-employed should not be allowed to self-certify their incomes. The mortgage industry lobbied against that idea and the FSA relented.
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I do wonder if this is an example of insider trading, the attack on the Ladbrokes share price. Look at the coincidences here.
Ladbrokes has become the target of short-sellers, including hedge funds run by BlackRock and Marshall Wace, which took a combined 9% position in the UK betting company following the announcement of its rights issue.============================
On Friday, six hedge fund managers released statements to the London Stock Market detailing short positions they had taken on the company the day before, when the rights issue was announced.
Hedge fund managers take short positions by borrowing stock from other investors, which they sell in the hope of buying it back at a lower price and pocketing the difference as profit on the return of the shares.
They may also take short positions as a hedge when they buy a stake in a company.
According to data from Bloomberg, none of the hedge funds had held either long or short positions in Ladbrokes before, or for at least 12 months.
Ladbrokes declined to comment.
Ladbrokes' share price had tumbled to 144p per share at the close of play on Friday. It closed lower yesterday, at 141p.
http://www.efinancialnews.com/assetmanagem...tent/1055418967
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No return to the free for all of the self cert fraud years. Prices are going to go down, bank on it.
Banks to tighten lending criteria on loans and reduce credit card limitsBanks are expected to tighten their lending criteria on loans and credit cards amid signs of economic recovery, a report by the Bank of England suggests.
It comes as more lenders said they had reduced the availability of mortgages rather than increased it during the past three months following a “deterioration” in the cost and access to wholesale funds.
It comes despite billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money being pumped into some of Britain's biggest banks.
The Bank’s Credit Conditions Survey suggested lenders will place stricter limits on those they give money to and reduce credit card holders’ limits in the run up to Christmas.
It also warned that more people would default on their loans as the profit margins made by lenders on credit cards and unsecured loans had risen.
It comes despite signs of recovery in the economy with house prices and number of mortgages approved rising from the low levels seen during the height of the credit crunch.
Oliver Gilmartin, a senior economist at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, said: “The survey is yet to signal any significant improvements in the availability of credit to households.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/persona...ard-limits.html
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I think that there is a very good chance that the next downward leg in UK property prices will happen once the next election is out of the way. Regardless of who wins, the cutbacks in public spending, continued high unemployment levels, close to zero level pay increases or pay cuts will see house prices falling further. As it is the Tories who are likely to be elected, they will be hoping to get this bad news out of the way in the first two to three years of the next Parliament so that they can have a run at being re-elected in year 4/5 on the back of prices having stabalised and going back up again.
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With the highest uk quarterly rise in Northern Ireland (over 9%), and first house price rise here for 2 years.
I'm kind of fed up with this waiting to buy a house nonsense now, I'm trying to hold out till 2011 - but if interest rates don't go up etc, will this thing just be dragged out for years?!
Prices have been going up recently, but on much lower sales levels. The removal of self cert, no income check mortgages from the market means that only those that can prove their income and put up a big deposit can afford to buy at current levels. House prices went up on the back of a self cert fuelled boom between 2000 and 2007 and house prices still reflect the fiction of prices achieved in a liars market because of the attempts and policies of Government and the BoE to keep prices as high as possible. The reality is that real income levels do not support current house prices, but they can be kept artificially higher through sales to high earners. Fact is that current mortgage approval levels are 50-60,000 a month compared to 100-130,000 a month at the self cert peak. The headlines only report the increases, not the reality of the market which is still a long way from being healthy if you believe that actual sales levels are important.
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Raj Gill has an interesting story to tell.
http://www.greenenergyinvestors.com/index.php?showtopic=7046
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You have called the book Free Capital: the world of full-time private investors....but after reading the chapter on 'Hugh' (which sounds a lot like yourself...retired at 34, former academic etc).....but it sounds like 'Hugh' is more of a trader than investor.
Traders to me are people who go long and short and watch the market every day monitoring price movements....investors like Buffett just buy and hold for the long term collecting dividends along the way and selling out only once they figure out when the long term bull market is coming to an end.
I hope to be a full time investor within the next ten years...but not a trader, I think the difference is important.
Not entirely sure that Buffett does just buy and hold.
Bloomberg recently conducted an interview with Mohnish Pabrai and Jean-Marie Eveillard, two well respected value-oriented investment managers. Bloomberg's Betty Lui questioned whether the "buy and hold" investment strategy was still worth pursuing. Specifically, Lui asks, "Have there been times when Warren Buffett should have sold out or done shorter-term strategies in order to maximize returns?"Pabrai responds by saying that it is a common misnomer that Buffett is a "buy and hold" investor. If one were to study Buffett's investment history over the past 50-55 years, there are very few stocks he has held for many years. Pabrai states that the reason why Buffett appears to "buy and hold" investments is due to Berkshire's large capital base. He states that investors with smaller amounts of capital might be better served by following Buffett's early strategy of buying "forty to fifty-cent dollars" and selling those assets once they reach fair value. He also warns that comparing value investing to "buy and hold" is like comparing apples to oranges.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/134524-is-...d-hold-investor
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Bullish yes, but this illustrates my point about them being dopey.
Look how they bury the lead:
That's the lead. And that's why they are bozos.
It should read:
They are not responsible for the way the media present the story, unless Bloomsberg have reported their press release word for word without any change.
Your re-writing of it shows that bias works both ways, or can be made to work.
Outside of pravda, I think it is a well balanced account of the facts, although the presentation could have been made in one of a number of ways.
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It is actually quite a bullish article.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...id=ayr30bHgFXQE
I did say they were quite bullish on the investment side, but they are mining companies, they must have some idea of falling demand elsewhere.
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Is it just me, or does anyone else here think these fellas are just a bit . . . dopey?
Not sure why they would be seen as dopey? Is it because they said something that might be seen as a negative? They seemed fairly bullish on the investment side of things. Surely they are just reporting the facts that demand at the moment is down for certain things that gold is used for?
The members list has a lot of mining companies that members here may well hold.
http://www.members.gold.org/members_list/
Mind you, I did like the first question in their FAQ list.
Frequently Asked Questions
Alchemy: Can base metals be turned into gold?
All metal atoms are made of the same building blocks of protons, neutrons and electrons, but in different quantities, so in theory it could be possible to change base metals into gold or any other metal of value to mankind. In practice, it is achieved only in nuclear reactions, where heavy radioactive metals decay into other lighter elements, including some isotopes of gold. However, man's ancient dream of turning base metals into gold is not a practical proposition. So it remains a dream!
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I'm sure this has been posted??
Gold Demand Shrinks to Six-Year Low on Recession, Council SaysAug. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Gold demand fell to a six-year low in the second quarter as recession curbed buying by jewelers and electronics producers, the World Gold Council said. Central banks were net buyers for the first time since at least 2000.
Global consumption fell 8.6 percent to 719.5 metric tons from a year earlier, the London-based industry group said in a report today. That’s the lowest level since the first quarter of 2003. Jewelry demand declined 22 percent and electronics, the biggest industrial use for gold, slid 26 percent.
The World Bank said in June the global recession will be deeper than it expected three months earlier. Investors bought 222.4 tons of gold in the quarter, 46 percent more than a year earlier, as an alternative to stocks and bonds, said Rozanna Wozniak, investment research manager at the council.
“Tough economic conditions have impacted jewelry and industrial demand,” Wozniak said. “Investment demand provided a cushion and we do expect that to continue.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...id=ayr30bHgFXQE
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IG Index seem to be doing well.
The financial markets bookmaker IG Group (LSE: IGG) announced its full annual results today for its year ended 31 May 2009, following the update issued a few weeks ago which I reviewed here. I hold shares in the company which makes it of more than passing interest in my case.The figures are not bad at all. Revenue increased by 40% with a large increase in new customer accounts including the acquisition I mention below, but organic growth even without that rose by a very attractive 25%.
Diluted earnings per share were up 10% to 22.31p on 2008, although the company for some strange reason prefers to emphasise its diluted "adjusted" eps of 24.74p, which is up 22% on the previous year. The difference between the two is that the adjusted figure is based on earnings before amortisation and impairment of intangibles arising on consolidation, and the strange reason is that the directors consider it the most appropriate measure because it "better reflects the business's underlying cash earnings." Accountancy can be useful sometimes.
http://www.fool.co.uk/news/investing/compa...fwflwlnk0000001
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This is old news, but what with the money made from the open above, the bookies seem to have had a few big wins recently. Wonder if they will surprise on the upside when they next announce results? Shares for WHill and Ladb have seriously underperformed even in the market recovery.
Susan Boyle Defeat Makes Bookmakers RichScottish singer Susan Boyle's unexpected defeat in the finals of "Britain's Got Talent" reality show Saturday has helped U.K. bookmakers make a fortune, British TV channel Sky News reported Sunday. Bookmakers have avoided huge payouts with Boyle's surprise defeat.
"We are in shock and have made a six figure sum in what has been the biggest surprise in reality TV history. Susan was a certainty," Sky News quoted William Hill's spokesman Rupert Adams as saying.
According to William Hill's estimate, a sum of over 3 million British pounds ($4.86 million) was bet on the show in the final hour.
http://www.huliq.com/1/81606/susan-boyle-d...bookmakers-rich
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Surprisingly upbeat brokers note on William Hill yesterday. Surprising because this is a sector brokers have been talking down for about two years.