pensioners crying in Greece, uk residents should help them out

[marrqkashg]

Really breaks my heart to see pensioners in Greece crying over their pension being HALVED! There seems to be a lack of outrage about this in the uk. I really do think our foreign aid should go to these pensioners as they are much closer than other countries we donate to.

[TheSnufflet]

Christ, it's like ZeroHedge in here

[EllieFAntspoo]

Cote On the premiss that one should buy low and sell high, has gold and silver now not moved from being a hedge asset into being an investment opportunity? And what about mining shares?

[EllieFAntspoo]

Sorry, prior, not hence.

[EllieFAntspoo]

TalkinPeace Spot on. Sadly that doesn't work for a pension pot, however, if one was so inclined, you can hold physical metal within a SIPP, although you are stuck with allocated or unallocated, and onshore or offshore. We are not as liberal as other nations in that regard.

Cote 5 years too early may lose you a sizeable paper gain, but 5 seconds too late trying to buy physical could cost you your entire portfolio. People have been 5 seconds too late getting out of their stocks throughout history, and they tend to be wiped out.

I'm curious. If you predicted the last crash two years hence, why did you not pump all your capital into the short end of the trade and make a killing on the downside swing?

Personally I don't have that level of faith in the market, and. I don't have the time to spend on the technical analysis. I see the debt bubble, and the increasing volatility, and I see the major hedge fund managers telling their clients to exit the markets, and hold cash. So I hedge. Could they be wrong? Sure. But when you've made billions doing it, you tend to be right more often than wrong, so I take weight their council accordingly.

[CoteDAzur]

"If you don't understand why people buy gold"

I'm the one who said several times that people who feel that a currency crash is imminent should buy gold. HOWEVER, if DoctorTwo was indeed telling people to sell stocks for the past three years, that was indeed very bad advice because stock markets have gone up SIGNIFICANTLY in that time period.

This is fact, and it's very easily verifiable.

"I'd rather be 5 years too early getting my money out of paper, than 5 seconds too late."

5 years too early will lose you a lot of money. 5 seconds too late not so much.

True story: We predicted that the American credit bubble would burst and started acting accordingly 2 years before the crash happened. You would not believe the amount of money we lost on those options in a year. We finally stopped and waited until the bubble actually burst.

I'll ignore the rest of your post because otherwise I would have to report your personal attacks to MNHQ.

[TalkinPeace]

Those of you who "own" gold.
Is it at home?
If not you do not own it.

[Gemauve]

European spec' cars.

There's a vanishingly small legal market in re-registering cars to sell them second-hand over national borders.

[EllieFAntspoo]

European spec' cars.

That all depends on what happens between now and Christmas. We don't know how much, if any, money is going to be taken from Greek bank accounts. We don't know whether or not a parallel currency will be introduced, and we don't know how other nations in Europe are going to deal with the political instability, and financial turmoil.

Personally I'd have made earlier, and alternative, purchases. At this time I'd even hold currency, but my life has never been overshadowed by life under a military junta or cyclical devaluations in my currency. However, if my only choice was get my money out of the bank by buying something on a plastic card, or lose it, I wouldn't have been one of the sheeple queuing up to see if the cashpoint was going to give me money today or not.

[LittleBearPad]

Ok Ellie so where are these cars going to go to realise their value. Other Greeks can't afford them. The Balkans? Quite a number there already legitimately and as stolen goods. The rest of Europe? Why would people want Greek spec cars in France/Germany?

[EllieFAntspoo]

And buying gold is better than buying cars. Yes if you can get your hands on it, which in Greece has become hard to do, unless you want 9ct costume jewellery and ridiculous multiples of the spot price. And in countries where capital controls are rolled out, it also becomes something very hard to move across a border, no matter how cavernous an orifice you find to smuggle it in. Whereas border agents don't seem to have an issue with cars being driven over borders. Sure, there are plenty of alternative assets they found have chosen, but we are talking here about people who do not read broadsheets, and spend their evenings watching pictures on a plastic and glass box. Faced with a similar crisis, the UK masses would do the same thing.

[EllieFAntspoo]

Cote If you don't understand why people buy gold, you have no real way of contributing intelligently to a discussion on why poeple buy gold. As someone who has told us about your qualifications and experience in finance in the Cirty of London, your posts are now beginning to come accross as quite thick. Is this the standard of financial advice available to Britain's savers, and if so, we'll have plenty of news footage of British pensioners crying in the streets because they followed the advice of Keynesian indoctrinated financial advisers. Oddly, it always tends to be the contrarian investors that make money in the markets, and those unable to do the thinking for themselves follow the herd. Given the current financial climate, I'd rather be 5 years too early getting my money out of paper, than 5 seconds too late. But I can see that you have a vested interest in repeating the established rhetoric. After all, you've staked your entire career, education and life on it. You can't afford to entertain the possibility that you may discover you are wrong.

I'll bet against the debt bubble, you prop it up and bet that it cannot pop. We'll find out who is right and who is wrong. Either my assets will depreciate, or your investments will. I'm in this for the long haul. I don't give a flying F if they rise or fall over any five year period. We are hedging against systemic failure, not trying to earn money.

[sparkysparkysparky]

And buying gold is better than buying cars.

[sparkysparkysparky]

perfectly normal in a screwed economy to put your money in stuff that holds its value rather than banks. I've seen it when living in countries in economic melt down. You would do it yourself if we had the same situation here.

[CoteDAzur]

"the last 3 years, I've felt so alone for telling people to buy assets and get out of stocks and bonds."

Very very bad advice.

Euro Stoxx 50 went up by 70% in the last three years. FTSE 100 is up by 35%.

I really hope you weren't telling people to buy cars as investment during a time of monetary easing and stagnating interest rates

[DoctorTwo]

I think the Greeks looked back a couple of years to what happened in Cyprus when ordinary citizens had money stolen from them to keep the banks alive and proactively removed their money and invested in tangible assets.

Ellie and mijas, where've you been for the last 3 years, I've felt so alone for telling people to buy assets and get out of stocks and bonds. You're not my sockpuppets, by any chance? :o

[LittleBearPad]

The fishermen didn't buy Mercedes because they anticipated a crash, that's a ludicrous suggestion. The Euro made them cheaper, low borrowing rates made them affordable on the never never and the German car companies found a large and appreciative new market.

There are tens of deserted Mercedes/VW dealerships now. There were many two years ago when I lived in Greece. There were also many second hand cars for sale at rock bottom prices.

[EllieFAntspoo]

Cote

Go buy gold if you are worried that your currency might soon be worthless. That is what will appreciate in value when local currency tanks, if only because its price is quoted in USD.

Now that is the very thing they should be doing, however, not too easy in the weeks running up to a systemic faulure as the Greek people have found out, and not the first thing most people think to do, due to exposure to and education about PMs being absent from all western societies these days.

Then you said they must have been buying Mercedes cars because they predicted the crash.

No, you jumped to that conclusion and assumed I was talking about something. I was talking about the actions of people immediately prior to this known crisis, and you assumes and got your assumption wrong.

It is ironic that on the one had the German government are briefing the media about how lazy and greedy the. Greek people are, and the. Greek government are propagandising the oppresive Nazi meme and the unpaid historical debt, and all the time the Greeks are buying new German motor cars to try to save their wealth, and the German car industry is experiencing a boom in profits.

[EllieFAntspoo]

Cote No, you are floundering around now. The example was offered only as a direct rebuttals to your assertion that there is no such thing as cars that do not depreciate.

[CoteDAzur]

It was not an assumption. It was a reference to daisychain's post below. That's where the Mercedes meme came from. Then you said they must have been buying Mercedes cars as a store of value because they predicted the crash.

And on that note, have a nice evening

daisychain01 Sun 05-Jul-15 09:01:43
Interestingly I just heard someone say their Greek friend living in a small fishing village told him that the EU subsidy given to fishermen for new boats was spent on .... luxuries like Mercedes cars.

[EllieFAntspoo]

Cote No, that was your assumption. I looked at the car sales figures, and car sales in Greece jumped by 47% in April. It was a precursor to the exodus of money out of the banking system in May and June. Any reference to historic cases of fisherman squandering money on cars was your assumption, not mine. I have never mentioned any such thing.

[CoteDAzur]

"A car will still be worth something in two years time even if sat in your garage, you could even export it, but your savings may not be worth anything at all"

Go buy gold if you are worried that your currency might soon be worthless. That is what will appreciate in value when local currency tanks, if only because its price is quoted in USD.

[CoteDAzur]

"Rowen Atkinson bout a McLaren F1 for £640K in 1997"

Right. That's what we want to compare the handouts Greek fishermen got to buy new boats

And of course appreciation in value as a rare car becomes a classic is representative of whether cars depreciate in value over time or not.

Sleep tight Ellie. Tomorrow is another day

[mijas99]

Gemauve - you have a limited imagination. A car will still be worth something in two years time even if sat in your garage, you could even export it, but your savings may not be worth anything at all

[CoteDAzur]

"a new fishing boat would be just as good (or bad) a store of value as a new C Class, and more likely to generate an income"

That's where this whole "Mercedes" thing came from:

daisychain01 Sun 05-Jul-15 09:01:43
Interestingly I just heard someone say their Greek friend living in a small fishing village told him that the EU subsidy given to fishermen for new boats was spent on .... luxuries like Mercedes cars.

... from which Ellie came up with the hilarious claim that Greek fishermen must have bought Mercedes cars rather than new boats with EU handouts because they must have foreseen that the country would one day be in financial crisis and cars would be good commodities to invest in "because they don't depreciate"

[EllieFAntspoo]

That's nonsense and I certainly hope you know it. People fecklessly buying Mercedes cars with EU aid money were just doing what feckless people do - spend money unwisely rather than invest it for a rainy day.

Now you are taking a report about what people are doing in the immediate run up to a collapse, and conflating them with the actions of what people have reported wasteful Greeks did in the past. Well done you.

There is no such thing. Don't be silly.

Again, you are absolutely right. Rowen Atkinson bout a McLaren F1 for £640K in 1997 and it depreciated so much that he only managed to get £8 for it. No, sorry, that was eight million pounds. It 'dropped in value' to eight million pounds. That is an astonishingly 'depreciating' asset. Your financial definition of the word 'depreciating' is remarkably different to mine. This sort of misunderstand about what is an asset, and what is a liability may well be the root of why the banking system is failing.