Member Info for skier1

Almost all bookies have stopped taking bets today. Liz Truss is the 1/100 odds-on favourite. One of the biggest "election" wins in history.

Boris will be gone by Monday.

The New Iron Lady now needs to dig deep and pay our energy bills for Xmas, dismantle the communist unions currently bringing the country to its knees, and start slashing taxes ahead of the 2024 UK election win.

LTI
Yes, he has a big solar installation on order. But it ain't cheap, everyone in the UK and EU with a pool is panic-ordering the same thing (from Covid-lockdown China), and the waiting list for panels + wiring + skilled workmen is a year or more.

Hardup
My mate has a 6-bed house and outdoor swimming pool and he reckons his UK electricity bill will be over £30,000 a year by April.

Poland looks bad. Folks are lining up for days, sleeping in cars, to get coal for winter heating. Worse than the 1970s USSR Communist era.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/beyond-imagination-poland-homeowners-lining-145000583.html

"...patience is key"...

CGNR first started as a "company" in 1995 -- well over quarter of a century ago.

And the CGNR share price has collapsed -99.9% since this century.

Patience is definitely key here...

There is a *regional* electricity / gas price calculator, to give a slightly more-accurate idea of what will happen to your own household bill from Oct 2022. Everyone can input their own region, and it gives a localized view of your expected price rise in a month or so.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/what-are-the-price-cap-unit-rates-/#tool

MV
Yup, the world's under- and over-ground water resources are a mess. Wherever there are large population centres, water is just getting sucked out of the ground with (basically) a massive straw. Was watching some stuff last week on Iraq -- the Mosul Dam, the biggest, may be on the brink of collapse, due to war and neglect. An eco disaster.

Theo
Some countries are (sadly) seeing a lot of big floods. But, on the whole, the world today is facing one of its hottest, driest periods in mankind's history. From California to London to Romania to China, there is brutal drought everywhere (and getting worse).

https://earthsky.org/earth/drought-around-world-2022-revealing-hidden-artifacts/

Assets are vanity. Cash is sanity. Assets are paper wealth. Real (usable) wealth is cash and cashflow, and that means GDP per-head. UK GDP per-head today is among the lowest in the industrialized world. Wales, for example, is poorer than Bulgaria. And we can all "feel" that poverty effect in everyday life, such as 7 million people waiting to see a doctor, trash pyramids piling up in the streets, etc. etc.

The UK, once, was the richest country on Earth, up until about the 1900s. Sadly, today, in the 2020s, we are among the poorest nations.

Adding up all CO2 emissions since 1750, the start of the industrial age, the UK is the world's 5th biggest polluter of all time. Britain used to make a lot of stuff.

Height no longer guarantees good snow... Zermatt, Switzerland, the world's 4th highest ski resort, this month closed its slopes during August for the first time ever in recorded history. The winter, spring and summer snowfalls did not come, and the glacier ice is melting away this summer like a puddle in the midday sun.

Don't know if the snows will come this (Northern Hemisphere) winter. New Zealand (Southern Hemisphere mid-winter) has just closed half its ski resorts in the past week, due to a lack of snow and ultra-high temps.

"...I am looking for investment to build 100 log cabins on the West shore of the reservoir, along with a leisure-and-entertainment complex on a floating island on the UK reservoir"...

Not sure I'd be investing in waterside property right now. A global drought is tightening its grip. The Northern and Southern Hemispheres are drying up. Europe is at its driest level for 500 years. Populations are soaring. Water levels are plunging. One could literally see their waterside investments turn to dust.

Musicman / Theo
May be a publicity stunt, or charity bash, but Lady Di's black 1985 Ford Escort RS Turbo 1 sold this week at Silverstone auctions for £650,000.

J-Pow today gave a speech lasting just 500 seconds... and instantly wipes $2 trillion off global markets and pensions.

Over 1 in 2 of all UK households are now on one or more benefits. Statistically speaking, half the posters on this forum will be rinsing the benefits system, such as free cash to buy an electric car.

Theo
Good link. Many classic car buyers are going to have pretty bad buyer's remorse in the next year or two. When those £5,000 heating bills start plonking on the mat, the enthusiasm to pay £4k for a shonky old Cortina is going to wane quick.

Some used car prices have already started to tumble. My mate's trying to sell a fast Honda, has slashed -15% off the price in a month, and still can't shift it.

Keep an eye on used car prices in the next 1-3 months. People are soon gonna start offloading assets to pay their winter energy bills.

Energy price cap is ticking up faster than the Countdown clock.

Latest forecasts...

Oct 2022 = £3500
Jan 2023 = £5400
Apr 2023 = £7300

With average UK wage growth around 4-6%, and real-world inflation around 10-25%, nobody is going on a housebuying spree anytime soon. Not to mention the endless wave of new "green" (red) tape for new houses, and the soaring pile of rental bureaucracy for flats. There are pretty much zero positives for UK housebuilders right now. Downside risk here is stratospheric.

The UK has a long, hard, cold winter of rocketing interest rates, soaring mortgage rates, jaw-dropping inflation, eye-watering heating bills, ongoing water drought, unprecedented food prices, a possible global famine due to shortages, and hardcore communist union strikes in the health / transport / comms sectors on the way. Not to mention winter covid, monkeypox, and super-flu. And a sick Putin with a big red button and 15,000mph undefendable thermonuclear missiles. None of that is helpful to UK housebuilders.

The technical charts here also look very (very) bearish. PSN shareprice has plunged -50% in just a few months -- in a rising FTSE100 market. Dropping below previous support points around the ~£16 level. Momentum is strongly downward.

Will keep a close eye on this one. May be tempted to jump in if the shareprice dips down to the £2-6 range in the coming months.

Bank shares are out of fashion with big US investors, so the LLOY 4-5% dividend is (mostly) irrelevant for now.

For a big divvy, MNG is the go-to financial stock. Currently, hovering around 8-10%. Dyor.

Regarding energy -- it looks almost certain the UK govt is going to step in with a £50-150b bailout for electric-gas firms in the next few weeks. The state is going to pay your heating bill.