Member Info for strictlybricks

PS Crossley

The chart/table/(not sure what word Velo would use for this?) hasn't come out nearly as tidily as it went in, so I hope it still makes sense...?

You might have to copy it into Word or something and put the spaces back in...?

Strictly

Crossley,

It was a pain getting these numbers to line up here, so hopefully this is of some use...?

Below is Bellway, year by year, from & including 2000, to date, based on starting with a £1,000 investment (that's not what I actually started with ~ I couldn't live off that :-) ~ but for illustration).

Against it is my performance, again starting with £1,000, and the differences tell a whole story...

I didn't have my "epiphany" about house builder shares until 2003 and so, as you can see from the bottom, I started off well behind Bellway from the get go…

It got worse in the credit crunch, as I hadn’t acquired the first of my now "Three Golden Rules" by that time, which was not to invest, at any price, in shares that are heavily leveraged…

And I’d owned Barratt shares, which had seemed cheap at the time…

2009 went very much in my favour though ~ it was a wonderful year for relative house builder share price volatility (and it’s the “relative” that matters, I mean, against other house builders, if you're pursuing best perceived value, as I was ~ the share price volatility of itself isn’t an issue) and I made 150% that year and so recovered my credit crunch c.ck up…

Thereafter, having hopefully continued to improve my game, I steadily overhauled Bellway, and then had a big leap forward in 2000 when I largely swerved the covid iceberg while Bellway, obviously, didn’t.

Anyway, hopefully there’s enough in all that to answer your questions… if you want more on this, I suggest you now join the blog… :-)

Strictly

Bellway My comparative
% gain % gain performance
2023 £19,744 19.1% £40,048 17.2% 102.8%
2022 £16,578 -40.1% £34,171 -37.2% 106.1%
2021 £27,665 16.0% £54,381 13.4% 96.6%
2020 £23,849 -20.6% £47,955 19.8% 101.1%
2019 £30,037 60.4% £40,029 57.4% 33.3%
2018 £18,726 -26.9% £25,431 -21.3% 35.8%
2017 £25,617 49.8% £32,314 61.6% 26.1%
2016 £17,102 -9.5% £19,996 -7.2% 16.9%
2015 £18,901 52.5% £21,548 64.1% 14.0%
2014 £12,394 23.4% £13,131 23.1% 5.9%
2013 £10,043 56.1% £10,667 80.1% 6.2%
2012 £6,433 48.3% £5,923 65.2% -7.9%
2011 £4,337 6.8% £3,585 1.2% -17.3%
2010 £4,059 -15.8% £3,543 -2.0% -12.7%
2009 £4,822 38.0% £3,615 150.7% -25.0%
2008 £3,494 -23.7% £1,442 -61.9% -58.7%
2007 £4,577 -43.5% £3,785 -38.5% -17.3%
2006 £8,106 40.8% £6,154 36.5% -24.1%
2005 £5,758 41.5% £4,508 42.2% -21.7%
2004 £4,070 25.7% £3,170 25.8% -22.1%
2003 £3,236 53.4% £2,520 47.3% -22.1%
2002 £2,110 10.0% £1,711 12.2% -18.9%
2001 £1,918 29.4% £1,525 27.5% -20.5%
2000 £1,482 48.2% £1,196 19.6% -19.3%
Start £1,000 £1,000

Velo, I've just sent you an email....

Strictly

"I LOLoud to myself as I muttered I'm pretty sure Strictly has built a fortune on the back of ROE believing it to be a top value metric."

..............

Velo, I reckon you may be thinking value in Ben Graham terms...?

Cigar butts, and all that...?

That's not how I look at things…

Ben Graham just looked at companies that were Jonnie Junk cheap, less than book value, margin of safety, and all that fine stuff…

But where’s the ongoing value in something that’s going nowhere except the breaker’s yard…?

The house builder share price ride is more Alton Towers than river cruise, and obviously it ain’t for the faint-hearted ~ as I’m oft repeating to my crew lest they forget…

But we have something “The parable of the Old Git & The Dog”, and that’s what this game is all about, not the Hokey Cokey…

I mean, the ongoing value comes from the underlying company progress…

And if you’re an ROCE boy, let me ask you this….

How do you, all-importantly, track the progress of a single share using ROCE…?

You’re a better man than me, Gunga Din, if you can do it…!

Strictly

Crossley & Velo,

The pair of you seem quite persistent…? :-)

I have taken on a few "outsiders" for the blog (which is a private one, so you have to be sent an invite link to join) over the past few years but, at the same time, I am wary of opening Pandora's Box in terms of numbers as it was originally set up for my circle of family & friends ~ and part of that is some familiarity & informal friendly banter from time to time, apart from anything....

However, they were pretty much all starting from scratch ,and would probably have otherwise parked their dosh in the Nationwide, or whatever, if they hadn’t got involved in this game, so it’s fair to say that they mostly came to this as innocents ~ whereas the folk who have joined from here were/are generally already experienced investors with something useful to say and therefore could bring that to the collective pot for the benefit of one & all…

As, like Brian, “I’m not the Messiah, just a very naughty boy” and I certainly don’t hold any sort of monopoly on useful ideas…

So, that is the quid pro quo…

What I am saying here is, rather than my continuing digging ever deeper into all this stuff on LSE chat, it has all been previously kicked about in the blog to within an inch of its life….

So, if either, or indeed both, of you would like to continue any discussion there, you’d need to put up an email address here ~ albeit maybe just a temporary one just for me to be able to make contact? ~ and, from there, once we’re on email and out of the public domain here, send me some details about yourself and, all being well, I could send you an invite for the blog…

And if you then take the time to go back to the basics at the start of the blog, and read those, you’ll likely find all these sorts of questions answered somewhere within it anyway…

And that would also save me a shedload of effort two finger typing out stuff I’ve already droned on about ad nauseam previously & elsewhere… :-)

Anyway, I’ll leave it with you, then…?

Strictly

Velo,

Clearly you need to watch the Jim Jarmusch film "Ghost Dog" to understand why that is our name for Bellway....?

And when it comes to numbers, to borrow from Pink Floyd, “Careful with that axe, Eugene!”

Since March 2000, when I started, I have, on average, only beaten Bellway by 3.6% a year ~ which means that, with dividends reinvested, Bellway have made an average annual gain of 13.4%.

And that's with their current price to book right down at 0.78.

If you restored their share price to their 19/2/20 peak of 4,321p, their average annual gain goes up to around 17% ~ which is what mine is currently, though put Persimmon & Redrow back up to their 19/2/20 peaks too and my average goes up to just over 20% a year which is what it had been before the headwinds of recent years…

Hence, Bellway = Ghost Dog, as you could have made the above by simply just buying Bellway in 2000 then scratching your bum for 22 years (probably not advisable though?)

And yes, I’ve learnt much from Warren Buffett…. and he’s possibly the most trusted person in America too ~ might have made a great president if he wasn’t even older than Joe Biden, hard to believe though that is…

But Warren, like many in life, apart from being rather nifty with numbers, is also a great salesman…

So he talks about his long term investment performance, which is way beyond impressive, rather than just his more recent numbers….

To be fair to him, he does also talk about the humungous size of the Berkshire Hathaway fund being a drag on performance, though he doesn’t, understandably, particularly big that up…!

But if you crunch his numbers from the start of 2000 to the end of 2022, he’s actually averaged 9.7% a year…. still hardly shabby, but far from the 20% a year that probably nearly everyone thinks of when quoting performance figures (and I rest my case on that one, Velo..!).

So, once again, I do suggest you watch Ghost Dog, to see what I’m blathering on about in that regards…

But don’t over-expect in the current economic climate…. since the start of 2016 (ironically which was when I started the investment blog) we've faced some serious headwinds both in terms of underlying performances and share prices, and I’ve only averaged a 9% annual gain ~ so I’m in Warren territory there…

But, if you restored all house builder share prices to their respective 19/2/20 highs, I’d be back over 20% average again…

Ho hum, one just has to be patient… but, in the world of likelihoods rather than that of certainties, house builder shares are probably cheap right now..?

Strictly

Velo,

Are you asking these questions specifically in respect of house builder shares, because I don't really have anything to offer in respect of other sectors as I have pretty much written them all off for me as being overpriced, or underperforming or too scary...?

If you distil things down to the simplest, it’s about the progress in the underlying value of a single share, adjusted for dividends paid ~ the only thing that messes that up is a rights issue…

ROCE has no part in it (I did have a discussion here, on RDW chat I think, some years back with a commenter, Josh95, who I was a dedicated follower of ROCE and who was pretty dismissive of my approach ~ but each to his own).

If you go back to my earlier comment about just four numbers, it really is just that and, by comparison, pretty much everything else in a company report barring outlook & current trading tends to be either puff or deflection.

And the thing about going back as far as possible is to see how particular builders have handled previous housing cycles…. just like folk, companies can have natures, and they don’t necessarily change just because the boss has moved on….

In our investing circle we have a home grown metric which is weighted book value, which measures other companies against Bellway, which, IMO, is the Ghost Dog of house builders.

While I don’t see how you could use it for non-house building companies, it provides us with a “currency” for house builder shares that facilitates trading back & forth between them on small perceived value gaps ~ as we do when opportunities present themselves ~ for additional gains…

This has overall improved the gains for my crew, and we even have an annual competition, “Strictly Wacky Races”, to add some investment focus (& potential for banter)…

But I come back to: to what extent does the house builder share game specifically interest you and, if it does to a significant degree, perhaps think more about the “just four numbers” along with the graph/chart I’ve described…?

As a benchmark for this, I’ll give you my numbers. I’ve averaged 17% a year gain over 22 years, which may not sound much, but it takes £1,000 to £40,000 over that time due to the magic of compounding…

You may or may not know your own number (most folk don’t seem to) and if so you may or may not wish to discuss it here…?

But, if your own performance has pee’d all over mine then it’s likely that what I’m telling you is only of very limited use..?

Strictly

PS In respect of your screener question, I’ve never used one, but perhaps they’re useful for sifting the mountain of dross… however, if you’ve found the nugget of value, why not DYOR, customise your results, and trust your own numbers..?

Velo,

Don't worry ~ I'm not someone who takes offence whether intended or not and I was only aiming for clarity.... perhaps using the word graph is just showing my age..?

Anyway, never mind all that....

And, in return, I think you perhaps misunderstood my point about the graph and my dear wife ~ I was aiming to make the point that if it could make that much difference for her, i.e. from zero to enlightenment in minutes, and for someone who has practically zilch interest in anything to do with investment, imagine what it did for me…?

Tangibly, it pushed me to up the stakes…

For the first year or so since starting managing my own stuff in early 2000, I had only invested residual capital from the sale of a business many years before…

But I also had a house free of mortgage, and once I’d decided, rightly or wrongly, that I was okay at this investing malarkey, I’d borrowed against that with a mortgage on the basis that for all the work I was putting in (and, in the early days, it was a lot) I might as well make it more worthwhile…

In for a penny, in for a pound, and all that…

But the epiphany that I had from this (insert your own word, chart, drawing, whatever…) in 2005 moved me to immediately increase the mortgage to put a substantial amount more into house builder shares…

I’m not trying to give you any sort of sales pitch here, by the way, I’m just trying to get across what a big deal it was for me…

I’ve had enough people step back & virtually make the sign of the cross at me as though I was a vampire when I tell then what my particular investing game is to understand that it clearly ain’t for everyone…

But, never-the-less, many of my circle of family & friends followed me into this, and, like me, were sorely tested come the credit crunch.

Opportunity is like beauty…

It’s in the eye of the beholder…

So, I think I’ll leave it with you to decide if it’s worth considering further…?

Strictly

Velo,

Difference in wording, perhaps ~ I mean, what you call a chart, I call a graph...? And I suppose, yes, fair cop, while many here are concerned with short term share prices, I would agree that that isn’t necessarily the same thing as being trend/chart/graph/fashion followers…?

It's perhaps like mixing different religions to try to blend charting with a fundamental value approach ~ I mean, like oil & water ~ but let me just offer you something that I perhaps does achieve this to some extent…?

It might seem rather simplistic & straightforward, but, once I’d thought to do it back in 2005, it was like taking off the dark glasses and has had a permanent impact on my perception of this game ever since…

I mean. it was a big leap forward in clarity for me, once I’d had the thought to do it, and it pushed me on to up my game with how much I had invested along with a number of folk who’d followed me into this malarkey…

What occurred to me was to take an FT.com share price graph from right back at the start (1983) of the house builder I rated top at the time ~ which was Wilson Bowden.

And then to run a series of “tramlines” through this for 0.8 x BVPS, 1.0 x BVPS, 1.2 x BVPS, etc., up to over 2.0 x BVPS…

Straightforward enough to do, as I already had all that basic book value information going right back, but putting it into a graph opened up a layer of understanding about the nature of the market in relation to the nature of the company…

A picture paints a thousand words, and all that…

To the extent that, with a few minutes’ explanation, my wife ~ who self-confessedly ain’t the greatest mathematician in Christendom ~ could see it straight away, and far more clearly, on my shiny new graph than I had previously been able to with hours of study of the figures in their previous format in columns.

And, in contrast to my wife, I’m alright with numbers…

So, if you’re genuinely interested in understanding a bit more about what I’m at here with all this, maybe have a go at that? (I’d suggest using Bellway for this as Wilson Bowden are now, sadly, owned by Barratt and therefore lost as an investing option to us humble private investors) and see if it has a similar impact for you ~ as I said, for me, it was like taking off the dark glasses..

If it does, it could perhaps form the basis of a discussion…?

And if it doesn’t, well, perhaps you might conclude that our respective MOs are too far apart..?

Strictly

Velo,

I would say that, in common with perhaps the majority commenting here and on other house builder chats, you seem to be rather focused on trends and share price graph movements…?

And this is not in any way intended as a criticism, but I have to say that I absolutely don’t do that as I have zero skill, knowledge or ability in that regard…

And, insofar as the in the language used for these things ~ double head & shoulders and all that malarkey ~ you could all be talking about shampoo for all I know…?

What matters to me is, primarily, long term underlying company performance and, secondarily (and that’s very much secondarily), how the market has, on average & over the longer term, responded to that…

As you can hopefully see, this is all very much rear view mirror stuff….

You may have come across a book by Jim Slater “The Zulu Principle”..?

When I read that, I thought “Yes, that kinda sums me up as an investor”.

By which I mean, it’s about going deep but staying narrow ~ very narrow, in fact ~ and thus hopefully understanding just a little bit more about your particular, but narrow, topic than most…

I didn’t set out this way back in 2000 when I started managing my own stuff, but it did find me by virtue of housebuilder shares being the only sector that made long term sense to me….

I really am the wussiest of investors, and pretty much every other sector terrifies me as being gambling to various degrees, having spent many hours back in the day looking at literally hundreds of companies ~ many of which only needed minutes spent looking at them to discard…

And they notably included Vodafone, by some margin the biggest company in the FTSE100 at the time, as I could see it was a pile of p..p for the longer term, even though, in between, there were no doubt opportunities for folk with sharp skills in graphing and all that to do their stuff successfully…

Strictly

PS. Yes, within your 9, you have all 7 of mine..

The missing 2 being Cairn Homes, as, since my experience with Inland Homes (even though I swerved their most recent debacle), I have a serious aversion to small companies due mainly to their lack of stock market liquidity, and Berkeley Homes as a) I never trusted the, now deceased, founder and b) they are London-focused and even though that is where I was born the lack of geographical spread makes me nervous (I told you I was a wuss..!).

Velo,

It has never occurred to me to use any sort of screening service as I’m only looking at seven companies, and only three of those in detail as the others aren’t in the zone currently….

That included Persimmon until last autumn…

And I’ve got the numbers I need going back 40 years and, as I’m almost 100% rear view mirror investing, they tend to be sufficient to do the job for me…

Strictly

Velo,
……………………..
"How did he know October was the precise floor? "

By saying “Precise floor”, that implies that I’d correctly called the market ~ whereas hopefully I’ve already made it clear that I absolutely can’t do that…?
………………………

“I would urge StrictlyB to write up a nifty ebook”

Well, I do kinda have this already, by way of a blog that really does go into the ins & outs of a duck’s a.se about investing in house builder shares ~ but it is a private one, I’m afraid, mainly for my circle of family, friends & acquaintances, which a kind, computer-literate, friend set up for me in 2016 as an upgrade from my previously sending out a continual motley assortment of emails with investing updates to everyone concerned ….

My observation of the chat here, though, is that, sooner or later, most/nearly all folk get pulled into conversations more about share prices rather than value ~ to which I have nothing really to contribute…

Let me leave you with this thought, though…

Life can be about sifting a mountain of dross to find the nugget of truth.

Nowhere, IMO, is this more true than for company reports…

Typically around 150 pages of largely irrelevant and, these days, virtue-signalling waffle, you just need to extract just four numbers then you can pretty much bin the rest (barring taking note of the current trading & outlook…).

Those four numbers are:
1) company equity, net of intangibles
2) number of shares in issue at the time of the balance sheet
3) the amount per share paid out in div during the year and
4) the total liabilities of the company.

From these, armed with a spreadsheet, a few simple formulae, and a bit of thought, you can build up all the ratios & track record you need ~ a bit like a printer using cyan, magenta, yellow & black to make up all the colours required…

And the truth is in the balance sheets ~ not in the P&L accounts, which are often great works of fiction and in particular declared earnings per share which I disregard beyond sometimes having a chuckle at.

Whereas, once you’ve put something dodgy into a balance sheet, you either have to carry it forward for ever or show the loss in due course…

To paraphrase “Home Alone”, “It can run, but it just can’t hide..!”

And that, if you’ve never paused to reflect upon it, is well worthy of consideration.

Anyway, getting back to it, admittedly, you’d want to track the four numbers referred to above for a goodly number of years, ideally for several decades ~ as I have for Persimmon & Bellway…

But then, as The Faces sang: “That’s All You Need”.

Strictly

PS.

Velo,

Depending on how impressive your store of choccy biccies is, rather than just look at my comments on PSN chat, you probably already know you can click on a name and go back on all of someone's posts....?

For mine, that will probably give you a broader perspective as, over several years, I've tended to shift across different company chats according to where I've found something worthwhile to comment on ~ given that much talk on these forums tends to be speculation about predicting short term future price movements, which is something I consider would be rather futile for me as, even if it is do-able, which I doubt, it's well above my paygrade...

All in all, I would describe myself as a seeker of best perceived value, and so to leave the market to do its thing and simply watched for situations I consider to be errors in my favour...

Strictly

Velo,

I have just noticed this thread ~ the title of which made me chuckle ~ and will probably give you a more fulsome response later or within the next day or two....?

I've only skimmed your first comment at the moment, but one thing I would say is that I have zero ability to call the short or medium term movements of the market and also that calling the value between any house builder share & cash at any time is also very difficult and thus a thing to conjure with.

I do however take a view on relative value between different house builder shares, and have done so for many years and move around between them and, whether by luck or judgment, that has overall added a worthwhile amount to the long term gains made by myself and my circle of investors..

In the meantime, I’m just trying to manage any expectations here…!

Mainly, I would say, it pays to be a patient anorak, armed with a spreadsheet…

Strictly

Bobrad,

Traditionally, we are informed about dividends upon the blowing of the full time whistle ~ due 1st March....

Strictly

Slownsteady, in round terms, you are correct about doubling share prices to get back....

House builder peak share prices were on 19th February 2020, just before the covid iceberg struck.

Of the ones I track, Persimmon are the furthest off, at minus 54%

The others, with the exception of Redrow, are within the range of minus 46% to minus 53%.

Redrow are only 34% off.....

And Redrow absolutely warrant this relatively better share price performance based on their underlying performance, in that while their return on equity might not have quite matched that of Persimmon, by sharp contrast they didn’t spaff nearly all of it on dividends, so their book value per share has grown significantly more than Persimmon’s since and their PBV and P/E figures are in line relative to other house builders…

And from here I think it’s likely that Persimmon will still have a bigger dividend pay-out ratio of earnings than Redrow, based on what the respective companies themselves have said about this, and that means I wouldn’t want to try to call the relative value between Persimmon & Redrow right now for anyone looking to reinvest dividends…?

But I have reached the ripe old age of seventy and, from here, my intention is to take all dividends as income along with extra gains made from trading between different house builder shares ~ a game that has worked well for me, and others in my crew, these past 20 years…

Strictly

“Do you have a view on cladding ? I know they seriously upped the estimate recently. I worry its adequate.”

…………….

Banbury, I think that the only view I can reasonably take is one on human nature…

By which I mean, it seems to me that, having been seemingly initially complacent in having got the first cladding reserve so badly wrong in comparison with the other house builders ~ they kicked off with £75m and then said, “Oops, make that £350m” they won’t been looking to goof up on that again..?

That seems straight out of the Homer Simpson school of estimating to me….?

But also, they are seemingly keen, to put it mildly, to put the reign of King Jeff well behind them as he brought opprobrium raining down on the whole sector, not just on Persimmon… for example, if you read the Telegraph, columnist Liam Halligan there, whom I generally rate on most things he writes about, did an expose on King Jeff’s Persimmon a while back and seems to have had a bee in his bonnet about builders ever since ~ and not in a nice way….

Also, Persimmon have climbed back up from a miserable three star HBF rating to the top, five stars now….

And, more recently, they pro-actively offered a retention to buyers for snagging issues…

Then there’s that they’ve done the sensible thing with dividends now, while we’ve been in a crisis… as someone said in politics a few years back, “A good opportunity to bury bad news”

As I recall, they got sacked for saying it, but that doesn’t mean it ain’t true..!

Anyway, as I’ve said loud and clear here, though perhaps controversially in some quarters, the big div WAS bad news, and now they’ve dealt with it…

I could no doubt list some other issues, but hopefully you get my point ~ which is that I am hoping that Persimmon are “kitchen sinking” this now and that it’s all out there…?

And I guess we have to wait for the full time whistle in March to learn more, but the initial impression given on the most recent update was that their latest wheeze (and, let’s give credit where it’s due ~ Persimmon have always been good at wheezes…) about paying the first ten months’ mortgage on some properties seems to be having a positive effect.

So, travel in hope but prepare for the worst….

It’s all we can do, really, ain’t it…?

Or lob our dosh into the Nationwide..?

Strictly

Mike,

A few thoughts for you, as you haven’t said whether you are 1) a long term buy & hold investor and, if so, 2) whether you draw the dividends for income…?

If your answer to both the above is yes, then, beyond share prices going so low as to encourage the risk of takeover, you are immune to the whims of Mr Market…

Okay, perhaps not on a visceral level ~ I imagine that to varying degrees that can get to us all ~ but at an objective, financial level.

If you reinvest dividends back into shares, then that IS an issue more specific to Persimmon than the others, given that: a) up to now, their big pay-out ratio and: b) their typically much higher price to book value (probably of itself largely due to a).

The latter probably makes many investors feel good in the moment ~ a bit like alcohol, maybe? ~ but isn’t actually good for them in the long run…

As far as Persimmon goes, I am only a recent investor though I have invested solely in the house building sector for twenty years (hence the name) and am very much a buy & hold investor though I do move between different shares seeking best perceived value.

The reason I’m now in Persimmon shares is the combination of a much lower price to book value and also that Persimmon have at last declared they’re abandoning the “King Jeff” div policy….

So they have minimised the issues of a) and b)

What I am saying is that despite much of the chat here being about what Mr Market is up to, if you are 1) and 2) above, you can choose to let go of all that, and JUST be concerned about underlying performance of Persimmon.

If what I’ve said seems a tad controversial or you disagree, and especially if you’ve got a lot of money in this game, it really is worth having a play with a spreadsheet to see how much, as an investor, you would miss out when a company like Persimmon (has up to now) had a best-in-show underlying performance but has then largely spaffed it in dividends rather than growing the company ~ which hurts those reinvesting the dividends as, at a PBV of 3 (which is where Persimmon resided until recently...) that’s £2 up against the wall for every £1 well spent…

A bit like alcohol.... again.... I suppose…? :-)

Strictly

Volcano & Peaky,

I am mostly quite bemused by the scribblers' offerings of buy; hold; stick it where the sun don't shine; etc.....

After all, surely every investor has different time scales and different requirements for the performance of their shares…

Of more use, I find, are the forward estimates of earnings…

In more stable times, I generally veer more towards interpreting company statements into projected returns on equity and using the resultant EPS figures that emanate from those rather than rely on the so-called professionals ~ who may or may not have their own particular axe to grind on any particular share…?

However, I have no confidence in my ability to do so currently, so necessarily am using the analysts’ figures….

And our sage scribblers are currently talking ROEs of 22% and 12% for current and next year for Persimmon, and for that you pay a PBV of 1.27.

For Bellway, the projected ROEs are 12% & 7% respectively and you a PBV of 0.78.

And, for Redrow, the projected ROEs are 15% & 9%, and you pay a PBV of 0.90.

So, the perceived best value between these (I quote the above three companies as my entire portfolio is spread across just the three of them) is something to conjure with and is a rabbit hole I’m not intending diving down right now here….

But my point is, surely, with the reasonable best information available for the humble likes of private investors to hand, it is then up to each of us to make like the Clash and ask ourselves:

“Should I stay or should I go?”

Strictly

Minnie,

Thanks for putting up the link, and I just had a look at the bar chart it went to...

Two things...

Firstly, I would say that, given the very strong market reaction to the Kami Kwasi autumn statement and the ensuing deep unsettledness as a consequence amongst folk on the verge of committing to a mortgage, there was surely always likely to be a big wobble in the number of mortgage applications continuing to be pursued in the immediate aftermath of that….?

And now we seem to have moved away from the panic stage of this, and we have also now come into the new year and to the time of year that is typically a better period for the housing market than the run up to Christmas.

And lenders also panicked at the time, and also seem to now be coming back from that ~ such that, while the Bank of England set interest rate is likely to go up again on Thursday with the market apparently factoring in a half percent increase to 4%, fixed rate mortgages are now typically going the other way, i.e. with reducing interest rates…

Either way ~ for better or for worse ~ the market usually gets to do its thing…!

So, all in all, I’m imagining we need a few more months to get a better handle on the shape of things ~ regardless of whatever furious punditry is purveyed about prospects in the interim period…?

And the second thing is the presentation of statistics…. I mean, “lies, damn lies, and all that…”

The bar chart that you’ve kindly provided a link for has a baseline of 30, not 0, and so the fall off in numbers immediately looks somewhat more dramatic than the reality.

So ~ let’s how it’s looking by Easter ~ no doubt with plenty of speculation about it on this board in the meantime…..!

Strictly