Has the positive trend continued? House price latest from Nationwide.
30 Apr 2009 [1 Comment | 228 views]
As you are no doubt aware, there have been hints of good news on the UK housing market of late.
Recent data has suggested mortgage approvals have picked up, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors has observed an improvement in enquiries at estate agents, and Hometrack reported the lowest fall in its monthly index in ten months in March. But the big one came from Nationwide. It recorded a 0.9 per cent rise in house prices in March.
This morning, all eyes turned back to Britain’s biggest building society. For this morning, its April index was revealed. What did it say? Would prices continue to rise? Would we see a sharp fall cancelling out the previous month’s improvement? Or maybe the finding would be somewhere in the middle?
According to the Nationwide, house prices
Hint of early morning light shines from Japan to High Street
30 Apr 2009 [0 Comments | 150 views]
It was a funny day yesterday.
It was a day when good news vied with bad to dominate the economic climate.
This article focuses on the latest reasons for hope to have emerged yesterday. In the next two articles below the focus is on the worrying data.
Let’s begin with the good.
Some really encouraging signs came out of Japan. It really does seem possible that after suffering an especially poor previous two quarters, the economy of the Rising Sun is close to recovery.
There was also a hint of cheer to come out of the Eurozone. And finally, back home, a report from KPMG suggested that a light has appeared at the end of the gloomy High Street tunnel.
But US sees recession deepen
30 Apr 2009 [0 Comments | 173 views]
The US economy contracted by a stunning annualized rate of 6.1 per cent in Q1.
Wage inflation goes negative in UK
30 Apr 2009 [0 Comments | 222 views]
Meanwhile In the UK, it seems average wages saw their biggest weekly fall in 60 years.
Chrysler on the brink; Bank of America boss steps back from brink
30 Apr 2009 [0 Comments | 221 views]
It’s been all go in the US corporate sector.
It seems Chrysler could be hours away from bankruptcy. Meanwhile, the fireworks went off at the Bank of America yesterday. But was the bank’s embattled chairman and chief executive able to avoid the rocket?
British High Street and US consumers celebrate Easter, but will the party continue?
29 Apr 2009 [0 Comments | 168 views]
Yesterday was one of those days when good news seem to strike, from nowhere.
It seems the UK High Street enjoyed its best period over Easter in 15 months.
In the US, consumer confidence has enjoyed a sharp lift, while more evidence has emerged from across the pond to suggest the housing market may at last be stabilizing.
In the UK,
US bank giants fail stress test
29 Apr 2009 [0 Comments | 174 views]
You may recall, when Barack Obama and his lieutenant Timothy Geithner revealed their plans to save the banks, an important part of the strategy was a stress test which each bank must undergo. The tests would consider how each bank would survive in the event that the recession worsened, house prices fell further, business failures increased.
Any bank that then failed the test would be forced to raise more money.
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal this morning, two of the most important banks in the US have failed the test.
Eurozone rates need to fall below zero
29 Apr 2009 [0 Comments | 164 views]
The world’s central banks are stoking up inflation, right? They are creating one unholy mess, which can only ever result in the ultimate ascendance of gold, right? Central banks are panicking, and as a result are creating a massive hangover for future generations to deal with, right?
It’s a funny thing, but at least one economic theory would suggest the opposite. And what is really strange is that this theory is normally seen as a principle applied by the inflation hawks.
Recently, the FT argued that the US rate of interest should fall to minus 5 per cent. Now Capital Economics has followed the same logic and said the Eurozone interest rates should probably fall to between minus 1.25 and minus 1.75 per cent next year.
It is
Tesco suffers at hands of cut-price rivals
29 Apr 2009 [0 Comments | 210 views]
The mighty Tesco has seen its market share slip.
Last week, the retailer revealed an impressive 10 per cent jump in profits. But now it has emerged that the seemingly invincible retail giant has lost ground to the cut-price retailers.
Swine flu, toxic debt, the end of the dollar: is it time to buy gold?
28 Apr 2009 [1 Comment | 190 views]
Shakespeare’s Prince of Morocco said that all that glistens is not gold. It seems that Shakespeare's famous dictum applies to economics too, because, from an economic point of view, when the economy fails to glister, it is usually seen as time to buy gold.
A couple of years ago this column was a fan of gold. At the time it all seemed right. Sure, there was the speculative motive. Just like now, there were plenty of reasons to believe gold would come back in fashion as the dollar gradually lost its dominance.
But there were other factors. Two years ago, gold was in high demand because it is especially popular as an item of jewellery in India. As the Indian economy grew, so too did demand for that yellow metal.
It also has properties that make it especially useful as a conductor of electricity, which means it is used, albeit in tiny quantities, in semi conductors.
Sure enough, gold did indeed boom. Relative to the pound, it did especially well, for not only did the dollar price of gold shoot up from less than $600 in 2006 to over $900 by last year, at the same time the pound fell against the dollar.
So, if you had invested, say, £1,000 in gold on 12 September 2006, when there were 1.87 dollars to the pound and gold was going for $592.5, then today, with a dollar pound exchange rate of 1.4577 to the pound, and with gold at $900.8, your £1,000 would have risen in value to £1,950.
So, if you had bought gold at about the time when this column starting predicting it would rise, 30 months ago, you would have doubled your money.
But has gold now lost its lustre?
