Member Info for skier1

Nasdaq does not like it...

Nasdaq today down -10% from its peak (2 months ago). A formal correction.

Bear market here for tech stocks.

Yes, there is strong opposition to gold mining in Ireland and Northern Ireland. Just look at the Dalradian gold mine, which has spent the last 4 years squabbling with the locals who are trying to block it. Around 38,000 people have formally complained to stop it! When word gets out on CGNR, strong local opposition would be no surprise.

While the UK imports more gas from Russia (and elsewhere), our domestic gas-oil-coal-nuclear industry has collapsed from 8% of UK GDP in 1980 to just 1% in 2020. Simultaneously, the UK is sitting on 1300 trillion cubic feet of unused shale gas. Millions of jobs lost, trillions of dollars handed to dictators, energy bills that are 2-3 times higher than they need to be. A crazy, crazy world.

ZIRP -- Fair enough. Will give the benefit of the doubt ;-)

Fwiw, the current median looks a bit less wild, at 70p.

The average of those 21 crowdsourced predictions for LLOY so far is around 80p by the end of 2022.

Up roughly +65% from 48p at the close of 2021.

Given LLOY has lost around -3% per year on average, for the past 10 years, those predictions look wildly optimistic...

How "patient" do you wanna be...

The CGNR share price has plunged -30% from a year ago, and collapsed -99% from 20 years ago.

A quarter-century has already passed... and any gold is still years away from being fully dug up...

Apple, with 150k employees, now bigger than the entire GDP of the UK economy of 70 million people.

Apple, one company, now roughly the same size as the entire UK FTSE100.

Tech makes up just 2% of the FTSE100, compared with a global stockmarket average of 20%.

Those three stats really ram home just how far the UK has fallen behind.

Not just a gap, but an incredible yawning Grand Canyon chasm!

China has the spotlight of the Beijing Olympics next month. China is getting ready to takeover from the US and run the world. It will want a smooth show. No dramas. Evergrande will quietly get bailed out. It's no biggie for the markets.

A +8% FTSE forecast for 2022 is hardly a "surge".

The S&P popped +30% in 2021.

Given all the junk in the FTSE, from ancient banks to ancient oil, it's hard to see much upside there at all.

Productive education = good
Unproductive education = bad

Lots of non-degrees and non-jobs, like pantomime or fine art.

A study this week in The Economist places the UK at the absolute rock-bottom of the "world Covid economy" rankings for performance among 23 major nations from 2020 to 2021. Worst for GDP decline, worst for Covid deaths, worst for debt pileup, worst for investment, worst for household income falls, and so on. Will take decades to recover from. Pretty depressing stuff.

Lol. Those kind of reports have been saying for decades that the UK will power ahead of France -- but we never do. Total GDP is pretty much the same, while France has much higher productivity and GDP per head.

"... what would you do [for unis] instead"...

Rebalance.

1. More quality, less quantity
2. More hard, less soft
3. More business, more tech, less academia

Most UK unis (since at least the 1950s) are churning out rubbish grads that have few appropriate skills to win the modern world.

UK has 130 universities -- but only a tiny 5-10% of them are among the world's best (top 100).

The other 90-95% are in no-man's land.

UK has thousands of rubbish profs teaching thousands of rubbish degrees to millions of rubbish grads.

Millions wasting their lives away on soft subjects, like Latin or Pantomime.

For comparison, Switzerland has 4 times more top-rated universities per-head than the UK.

Switzerland's wealth per-head today is a huge 2-6 times richer than the UK.

Rubbish in = rubbish out...

Xmas is becoming more like Easter.

Nasdaq close to a correction (-10%).

... is shaping up to be the most miserable year of everyone's lifetime.

Massive tax rises
Huge losses in disposable income
Stock shortages
Inflation out of control
Interest rates soaring
State debt out of control in trillions
More furlough
More unemployment
More lockdowns / house arrest
Nightlife closures
Shop closures
Foreign travel limited or stopped again
New laws restricting peaceful street protests
New laws restricting online usage
Yet more driving laws
Pension age leaping to 68yo / maybe 70yo
NHS on the brink
3-6 jabs
Electronic tagging / vaxx passports
Papers please

Only thing missing so far is a Wall Street crash...

UK total population has gone up by +20% since 1990...

UK NHS total budget has gone up by +200% since 1990...

NHS is your classic British public entity...

Overspending, overmanaged, and trapped in a neverending cycle of artificial misery, hysteria, and victimhood culture.

It will only ever get worse.

As predicted, weeks ago, EZJ share price is continuing to plunge.

Omicron winter hysteria, upcoming massive Tory tax raids, and never-ending green pressure groups make the outlook for airlines very bleak.

If you strip-out home extensions, add-ons and upgrades, UK house prices have only risen by an average of about 2-5% during the past 50 years.

Somebody buys a house for £200k, pays £100k for an extension, and then sells it for £350k, it will be counted in the housing index as a +75% price rise... When, in reality, it's really only gone up +17%.

It's one of the biggest delusions of the UK's "soaring" house prices.