All Activity

And also that wages in universities were practically frozen from 2008. Dunno where they are now though.

Looks to me like PMs get a run up thru the middle of the month then get hit around the 20th, flatline for a couple of weeks then start on their way up again. No lines drawn tho I'm just staring at a chart till I lose focus then recklessly gambling with my children's futures.

Menace on the Menu: The Financialisation of Farmland and the War on Food and Farming - Global ResearchGlobal Research - Centre for Research on Globalization

A few more weeks like this and I might even be in the green!

Never got around to selling any Sovereigns, when the Gold/Silver ratio dropped I sold some Silver instead to buy some Gold and PM Miners.

Got all but one of those names and loads more silver / uranium shitcos in my ISA, it's been flying last few weeks, gone from -55% up to -20%! I need to sell into the top this time unlike 2020.

Dont forget the one i put forward for you all a month or two ago Bear Creek Mining,it went up another 15% friday I had a nightmare buying them had orders refused and had to leave limit orders to get filled slowly.Huge silver deposit,but likely diluted away to nothing to build the mine.I think i might flog them this week,thats is if i can,likely one where the market makers will only take them off you on a flying up day so they can make out like bandits on the spread.

One can’t help noticing that all the articles on tuition fees go on about the fact they have reduced in real terms by 50% since 2012. They conveniently forget that fees were just £1000 in 1998 before tripling to £3000 in 2004 and then going up by a similar amount in 2012 to £9000. If that £3000 figure from 2004 was inflation adjusted using the BOE calculator it would be worth £5284 today so Universities are still getting about £4000 per annum more than they would under the 2004 fees. There were 1,237,660 full time First Degree Students in 2004-2005 according to the HSE https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/publications/students-2004-05/introduction In 2020-21 the figure was 1,883,860 First Degree Students https://www.hesa.ac.uk/news/19-01-2023/sb265-higher-education-student-statistics/numbers So basically a tripling of undergraduate fees has only increased the supply of undergraduates by 50%. That seems a poor return on the money invested regardless of degree subject

Too busy counting your gains?

The usual suspects are still way below their previous tops from the infamous silversqueeze, and on mcap basis too, so accounting for severe dillution over the years. One or two absolute dogcrap cos trebled from their lows of a few weeks ago, mostly because they were priced for bankruptcy. In some cases it makes sense, as those companies spent the last few years drilling dust, acquiring unpermittable "assets" and rewarding their management handsomely while building an overhang of cheap warrants, but the relativly well-run ones also only saw modest gains, all things considered. I haven't seen signs of a mania just yet. I have a feeling the likes of GR Silver and Equity Metals might moon, maybe ecen Santacruz, on a basis of "the crappier the company, the more it overshoots" but I don't have the stomach for it, plus there's always the worry of relatively low liquidity making the exit difficult. I'd love me some Impact Silver, sadly not available on II anymore. My main degenerate silver play is Avino, Abra is the quality one, Fortuna serves as the "large cap with silver in its name", even though it's a goldie. I might add some Discovery for the sheer size of their deposit which, like most low-grade bulks, gets larger with every dollar of price increase. TL;DR: Absolutely no fomo yet, at most there's some gambling on individual beaten-down stocks. Btw, you asked for goldies and I only talked about silver. Apologies, it's been frantic 24hrs.

The greens have it as a policy and strangely it’s really popular with people who find it very expensive to rent somewhere. but it’s completely insane given that rental turn around times are at an all time low - so the issue is lack of property even at current rents. The only solution is to build millions of homes and I just don’t see that happening (for multiple reasons one of which is lack of skilled workers).

Nationwide doubling their personal loan amounts - from £25k to £50k - because building costs have risen so much. https://www.theguardian.com/money/article/2024/may/18/nationwide-doubles-maximum-personal-loan-50k-rising-building-costs Interest rate on loans above £25k is 8.9% (no fees or early repayment apparently). Big old whack, too, if you need to go down the smaller loan amount to buy a house rather than a larger mortgage.

Schools teach pupils a wide range of different subjects over 30 hours per week over 39 weeks of the year at a cost of about £7000 an annum per pupil. It is therefore difficult to understand why it costs £9250 to provide 15-25 hours tuition to University undergraduate students sometime over no more than 24 weeks of the year.

I'm aware of some american financial services companies who won't service cigs, arms, oil, because they want to hit ESG targets. Insane, in my view.

It was more than that. Think it was around $2.80 paid out in 2023 per ADR. As I said, when the going’s good they churn out dividends (or as @Mandalorianwould say return your capital back to you).

Good point,fine for a SIPP luckily.Be interesting to see what the divi is within a SIPP as it looks like the last year might of been 14%.Looking at them they look like you should buy now,hold until they hit they $18 level and sell.Iv made good money over the years in several Brazilian stocks doing similar,some of them over and over,never multi bagging,but always consistent 50%+ gains.Tends to be some political issue when they all get hit and out of favour.Most institutions avoid the area because being mostly cyclical markets they cannot stomach the risks,but very lucrative for retail who understand the cycles at work.

We already do have a kind of rent control. Just it is hardly ever used. https://www.gov.uk/private-renting/rent-increases

Labour are on the radio saying they wont introduce rent controls. Dont trust that at all so its obviously on the agenda. We dont often put up the rent on our flats unless a tenant changes. Weve decided to do a big hike now taking into account what market value would have been in 2 years. I imagine others are thinking the same this morning.

I suspect the problem lies mostly with American suppliers, so far. Am American based sub-supplier are now asking for end user details for some specialised kit (we just tell them to sod off and that they are for stock). We have been asked not to quote for a particular weapons manufacturer as there was a possibility that the end user might be a country that America didn't like and the ceo of the manufacturer was nervous about being prosecuted in the states.

Are they paying money? Is it legal business? If so, what's the issue?

One thing to note is because their primary listing is in Colombia you can’t hold them in an ISA.

I've been asked to quote some equipment by a tobacco company (have to be coy due to an NDA) and the first question they asked was if we were prepared to do business with them. It seems as though some suppliers are refusing to engage with tobacco companies due to the whole ESG thing.

PetroTal is one that I haven’t bought but have considered a small punt. Canadian company (with a primary listing in Toronto and a secondary AIM listing) operating in Peru. Market cap is only around £500m. Reasonable (over 10%) dividend yield over the past year (but half that of Petrobras and Ecopetrol and they don’t have the production diversity of the other two).

Once they run properly I will be converting most of the profits into 1oz Gold Britannia's.