lobster
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Post by lobster on Feb 8, 2022 17:08:24 GMT
Just had an email from Santander inviting me to 'watch your savings grow'. The invite was for their 0.7% 3 year fixed rate bond, which is subject to availability.
Or, in real terms, watch it shrink by about 5% pa.
That's the grim reality nowadays with inflation running high : Whether it be stocks or bonds or P2P (or the 2:30 at Ascot ) you have to risk your capital simply to avoid losing purchasing power . You'll be certain to lose with any "savings" account
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lobster
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Post by lobster on Jun 20, 2021 9:09:49 GMT
Hi, I have an EQI account, and so does my wife which are due to be handed over to Interactive Investor next weekend 26/27th June. I have had quite a few problems but the most worrying one in this : There is a facility to set up your new ii password here, whereby an email with a link should be sent to the email address that you have registered with EQI. This doesn't work for either myself or my wife and the EQI helpdesk seem unable to assist (after waiting ages to get the phone answered at all ). I was just wondering if anyone else here had tried to do this, and if so , would you mind letting me know if you succeeded? I'm wondering if the problem could be that both my wife and I have the same registered email address with EQI. This has never been a problem with EQI, but maybe it's a problem with Interactive Investor ?? Many thanks, Lobster
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lobster
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Post by lobster on May 4, 2021 15:20:34 GMT
Another nice re-payment into the accounts of Mr&Mrs Lobster - no need for either of us to start getting snappy . In all honesty I'm actually now very pleased that these loans got into such trouble. The reason is that if these loans had been tradeable 12 months ago , I would have undoubtedly sold them at a firesale price at the height of the covid scare (as I unfortunately did with a load of other AC loans - an expensive mistake ). However, as these loans were suspended, I was forced to keep them, and now find that they will be repaid in full with virtually all the interest !! I now wish AC had suspended the entire loanbook !!
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lobster
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Post by lobster on Apr 1, 2021 17:13:13 GMT
Ok, well Assetz duly recommenced payments today , as promised, so no complaints there . By the size of today's payment , I would suggest that those thinking that these loans will take 2 years or more to pay out are somewhat OTT. Hard to say exactly, because of quite a complex interest element, but I would suggest 18 months would be closer to the mark.
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lobster
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Post by lobster on Mar 24, 2021 12:25:34 GMT
I know times are hard and money precious but holy sh1t. It costs £10 per £10,000 to sell on SM. Is there no end to this? Seriously , why don't lenders do this ?? Is 0.1% really an issue ?? Really ?? Or do some folks just like to have something to moan about ?
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lobster
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Post by lobster on Mar 21, 2021 21:28:47 GMT
Stupid Questions time. E mail reads to me "we went to (mr fair play) and offered to pay more back cause we made a booboo" really who dose that!!!. What happens if AC goes feet up within (say the 2 years)? It will be repaid by then if everything goes to plan Absolutely agreed - good news indeed. I can't understand why a couple of recent contributors to this thread seem upset for some reason ?? We are about to start being repaid - surely that is good news in itself ?! But what's even better is the fact that we will be repaid at a significantly higher rate of interest than was offered before the pandemic, and the higher rate of interest will also be applied retrospectively - what exactly is the problem with that ??
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lobster
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Post by lobster on Mar 7, 2021 15:16:16 GMT
Hi all, just wondering if I can check something with people around here who are clearly a lot more knowledgeable than me . I have a lump sum invested in the QAA, but when I view the actual holdings, the sum only comes to about 84% of my total lump sum investment. Does that mean that 16% is just held as free cash , and if so is this a good thing ? ie does the 16% contribute to the PF ? Also does the free cash % vary a lot from day to day ? Thanks in advance.
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lobster
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Likes: 467
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Post by lobster on Feb 10, 2021 14:57:16 GMT
EM makes me laugh... Mid December he tweets: Then, in January, Tesla goes on a January buying spree. Probably reasonable to presume that $1.5Bn purchase wasn't a single transaction and that it was spread across a period of time. Based info from Bloomberg, the average price across Jan 2021 was just shy of $34.7k. Not a bad return if Tesla are already quietly selling.... Makes perfect sense : EM decides to buy in December so he fires off tweets like this to push down the price to allow him to buy as cheaply as possible. Now that he has completed his purchases, he's singing the praises of Bitcoin to drive up the price to allow him to sell into strength and make a killing. Got Tesla ?
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lobster
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Post by lobster on Oct 12, 2020 6:53:21 GMT
The buy/sell spread on a £1000 purchase/sale is now 5.9% / 6.09% .
Rates seem to be coming down. I wonder in today's covid19 announcement from B.Johnson esq will have any impact ?
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lobster
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Post by lobster on Sept 1, 2020 6:08:18 GMT
Hopefully around 6%, depends how much of the £700k interest payment is re-invested or auto re-invested.
What time do the interest payments usually get credited? 9am?
One of my accounts erroneously was still set to reinvest interest - reinvested at 7.6% discount. I don't know if all the month end processing has completed yet (mine has) but right now as at 7am the discounts are as follows : To buy £1,000 , 7.6% is best rate. To sell £1,000 , 8.23% is best rate. Basically about the same as last night, it seems.
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lobster
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Post by lobster on Aug 30, 2020 10:00:23 GMT
I don't use any technical analysis and prefer using my own intellect and gut
Most likely the best way. Technical Analysis is tea-reading codswallop.
If it was that easy, everybody would be doing it and there would be insufficient private islands for everyone to sit on.
You can't just rely on magic fairy dust without an appreciation of what is going on with the key drivers of the asset concerned.
Agreed , but with the proviso that many people, for whatever reason, do believe in technical analysis, and because of this TA can on occasions become a self-fulfilling prophecy even if the analysis itself is erroneous. Personally I don't use TA. I hate the way it's pedalled is these highly unpleasant adverts luring in the newbies and mugs with the promise of untold of wealth by following some ridiculous black box "system".
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lobster
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Post by lobster on Aug 29, 2020 7:43:50 GMT
It's hardly spread betting if you buy somehting in the 90's and hold it for decades...LOL There's money to be made, SXX was a decent run. DEB and others. But, most success for me has come out of identifying popular retail stocks and then taking advantage of the retail madness. Yesterday mornig AMIGO offered a similar chance. Days after Moody's downgraded on the release of 2 RNS it spiked 25%, easy money to be made there. Just follow the most followed stock on the likes of London South East and let the rampers do their work, just don't get sucked in yourself! I'm following the gold and silver bugs at the moment. I hold physical and physical ETF's. The latter for a trade, the physical for a disaster and hedge. I added to my silver holdings last year. I won't be buying now. I too follow Gold and Silver , but not always successfully ! However recent months have obviously been highly profitable for both metals and associated mining stocks. May I ask how you will decide when to exit your ETF trading position ? Is it some form of Technical Analysis perhaps ? Or do you go on fundamentals / gut feel ? IMO there is no shortage of hype online, with many perma-bull commentators making pretty outrageous forecasts for both metals. I guess it has always been thus.
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lobster
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Post by lobster on Aug 29, 2020 7:26:08 GMT
Out of interest, what was your edge back in 1999 ? In the early days the spread companies were pretty inefficient and took more risks. Particularly in sports spread betting. Every day a wide range of mis-priced spreads were set up. Often the spread firm was slow to respond to company news, changing conditions at an event or even non participants. "Arbs" were daily and common if desired. The spread companies monitored and closed primarily "arb" players. In sports 2 companies made such losses they couldn't continue - Igsports and CantorSports. Yes, back in those days City Index also offered sports spread betting, as did William Hill, and both of these also closed down. Poor old Cantor - both their sports and financial spread betting outfits were unsuccessful. I think the main players now are only Sporting Index and Spreadex and Star Spreads.
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lobster
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Post by lobster on Aug 28, 2020 16:44:29 GMT
If you have cert , please seek help because no such thing exists. In theory, if you did have a "cert" , then sell everything and also borrow as much as you possibly can and pile it all into your "cert" to reap as much reward as possible ........ if it's a certainty, why wouldn't you ? I've had about 4 certs in my life and you remember them like golden moments. When you know the flock has gone the wrong way and suddenly is about to run to the other end of the field and you got there earlier than them. But I have been trading for more than 40 years and it is certainly (see what I did there) unusual.
Jet2.com, Filtronic, Nikola and Silver ETF all in their time have felt like taking candy from children of a lazy disposition
Why wouldn't I just sell everything and buy the cert, ah, you are confusing the monkey with the method. I have a method which I know makes me a great living, I have a monkey in my head which has sufficient experience to be able to identify a small amount of future vision. That mixture of fear, animal preservation and confidence in the method drives my decisions.
Hedging and Pandemic. If I thought I wanted to protect myself from a balck swan event I'd use a double inverse EDF but the great thing about blackswans is that you don't know you have seen one until it is too late. Like wallstreet I've developed my portfolio to be either resilient to most blackswans and/or to have rapid bounce back. I'm assuming that in a nuclear winter my focus will be elsewhere than my portfolio.
Well congrats on doing well out of the above 4 investments. As it happens I did well buying Silver back in 2003 , but it was far from a "cert" ! I think the point I'm trying to make (badly ) is that there's always risk associated with any investment in shares, and nothing is certain. The trick is of course to have the risk tilted as much as possible in your favour, and it sound like that's exactly what you achieved with these investments.
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lobster
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Post by lobster on Aug 28, 2020 16:32:07 GMT
Out of interest, what was your edge back in 1999 ?
1999 was like taking candy from a baby.
All you had to do was buy a lump of Apple at $14 and forget about it for a decade or so. I SO wish I'd done that
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