Bratnia

☠️

Die younger after fast cars/women/smoking/drinking and a sudden dense clot demise ... or perhaps frugality and 10 years spent in total in a gym during younger years to provide 10 years of continual late life in a bed to chair daily routine within a nursing home where you don't even recognise family members. LOL! I'm opting for the former.

Q. Why do Indians prefer to buy gold jewelry for their wife instead of gold bars/coins? A. It adds a whole new dimension to "I lost all my gold in a boating accident"

£100 per oz would be even better. No risk of loss, if the price of gold falls spend a 1 oz Britannia as a £100 legal tender coin, if the price of gold rises you can sell the gold and buy £100 of stuff for less than £100. Win/win. 28th August 1998 and gold was £166/oz, -40% maximum downside/loss.

Currency debasement isn't just a fiat thing. The Romans were doing it centuries ago https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/roman-currency-debasement-brief-history-von-wooding

In 2007 the UK had around £500Bn of debt, Gilts (debt) where paying around 5%, so servicing that debt cost around £25Bn/year. Much of the debt is deflated away over time (nominal Gilts). Then came the 2008/9 financial crisis, so since then the Bank of England has pretty much printed money, and bought up all of that 5% yield debt, to levels where it now holds getting on for 1Bn of Gilts ... and returns all of that interest back to the treasury (so as good as torn up debt). The treasury have issued another 1.5Bn of debt (Gilts) priced to around 2.5% interest rates, so costs around £30Bn/year to service. Inflation since 2007 is around 60%, so £25Bn/year in 2007 is in real terms more than £30Bn in 2024. The debt 'mountain' isn't a issue, the primary concern is deficit, spending (importing) more than you have coming in (export). Japan can run a debt of multiples of GDP because much of that debt is held domestically (which is just a internal money redistribution issue). As each Gilt (bond) matures you have to decide whether to repay that, or roll it (sell another Gilt) - which is spread out over many years and each is assessed according to circumstances at the time (roll or repay). The deficit since Covid has been a major issue. Sunak as Chancellor fouled up big-time. Truss/KK had the right idea but implementation was extremely poor, quangos pretty much threw a spanner into the works as they preferred Remain over Brexit. Sunak is a closet Remainer, gifted the EU Northern Ireland (Windsor agreement), along with other massively wasteful/lost spending (such as paying some £2500/month to stay at home during Covid, but not others, so had near zero effect/benefit, but at great cost. Contracts were also issued where the money was lost (stolen) and not trivial amounts either). High cost and inflation are largely attributable to Sunak. Financial year ending March¹ 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 Deficit (£ billion) 83.1 55.6 55.1 39.1 59.4 327.6 Deficit (as % GDP) 4.3 2.7 2.6 1.8 2.6 15.3 Source: Office for National Statistics - UK government debt and deficit

£2025 will be a fake top?

SUNAK = anagram of UK SAN ... or in English Mr UK ... arrogant, or - as you correctly sorted it.

He has 100% support from his electorate, which wasn't the general public, wasn't even the Conservative Party Members - just himself (the great backstabber he is).

Stocks broadly tend to see prices rise over time that negate inflation, and also pay dividends. Own a home and again price rises might broadly negate inflation and avoids having to find/pay rent, has imputed rent benefit Gold (and cash deposits/bonds) broadly might be expected to just see price rises that broadly negate inflation But all in a volatile manner, you can select two points in time to make a asset look extremely great, or lousy, according to whichever picture you might want to paint. When you rebalance, such as yearly rebalancing back to thirds house/stock/gold weightings, that is a form of add-low/reduce-high trading that in itself tends to yield a 'dividend'. Attribute those 'trading' gains to gold, as though gold also paid a dividend and stock/home/gold can compare to all-stock total returns, but tending to do so in a less volatile manner. Three assets (land/stock/commodity), three sources of income (imputed rent, dividends, withdrawals (SWR)). Similar total return reward expectancy to all-stock but with less volatility = better risk-adjusted reward (higher Sharpe Ratio). It's not easy to rebalance your home value, other than maybe at seven-year-itch type intervals, however the interval between rebalancing isn't a critical factor, more a case of being appropriate when more extreme deviations have occurred. Non rebalanced has the tendency to see the portfolio averaging higher average weighting in the asset(s) that performed the best, low weighting in the asset(s) that performed poorly. 33.3/33.3/33.3 initial stock/home/gold weightings might drift to being 50/40/10 in the best/mid/worst assets, time averaged 42/37/21 weightings, and yielded a similar overall total return reward to had you rebalanced back to 33.3/33.3/33.3 weightings each and every year. Note the inverse correlation between stocks and gold. Across periods when stocks did poorly gold did well and vice versa. Having one or more assets that do well more consistently is important, otherwise if you're totally in say just stocks that endure a decade long period of low/no real gains, maybe even a loss, then if you're also drawing a income from that such as a 4% SWR then that eats into your base capital, erodes the portfolio value, potentially to a low point that is too low to recover from.

A country is only a safe/secure as the strength of its military might and resolve of its government

3.9% UK jobless rate when 6.2 million are receiving Universal Credit = not in a real job, just kept off the streets/active that's part funded by taxpayers/private sector. Nice bookmark, thanks.

Insider trading, haven't yet averaged-in enough into gold, when they have .... kick off and start averaging out/profit taking.

In mid Jan 2015 sovs were £202.50 🌞 IIRC there was also around 0.2354 ounces of gold in sovs back in January 2015 :)

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£840/ounce !!! Oh! The site dropped me into page 1 of 863, time warped me back to January 2015

350+ missiles where fired at Israel collectively from Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Syria. 99% were intercepted, some were allowed to hit ... sand. Unfortunately one Arab girl sustained head injuries from falling shrapnel. Israel applying a regime change in Lebanon would be a loss for Iran, and a removal of the least warning/closest Iranian missile launch sites, and be a warning to other Iranian allies that unless you reconsider that allegiance bad things might happen. 2 additional Israeli battalions have been activated, battalions pulled out of Gaza to leave just one there, indicative IMO of a multi battalion push (storm) into Lebanon (one week war).

Not if you also have a cash cushion

Don't get it?

1965 14.35 1966 14.42 1967 14.64 1968 17.59 1969 14.67 1970 15.62 1971 17.08 1972 27.58 1973 48.35 1974 79.74 1975 69.29 1976 79.02 1977 86.84 1978 110.27 1979 235.19 1980 247.12 1981 208.75 1982 277.49 1983 262.98 1984 265.69 1985 226.61 1986 264.57 1987 259.88 1988 227.55 1989 249.84 1990 203.01 1991 188.58 1992 220.17 1993 263.69 1994 244.57 1995 250.13 1996 217.38 1997 174.72 1998 173.42 1999 180.09 2000 182.83 2001 190.76 2002 212.82 2003 234.15 2004 226.94 2005 297.43 2006 324.04 2007 417.62 2008 596.14 2009 684.18 2010 908.73 2011 1020.35 2012 1029.32 2013 726.99 2014 769.84 2015 716.36 2016 942.58 2017 960.84 2018 1005.45 2019 1157.78 2020 1382.58 2021 1347.06 2022 1532 Year end £ gold prices, by the same reasoning did someone at the end of 1980 who bought a ounce of gold for £247, at the end of 1999 when the price of gold was £180/ounce work for a 28% lower nominal wage than what they worked for in 1980. Also bearing in mind that something that cost £1 in 1980 in RPI adjusted terms cost £2.70 at the end of 1999).

https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/backtest-asset-class-allocation?s=y&sl=7CWLsLH6XBfchAuw5rqYHr The likes of a 4% SWR is a common choice of guideline withdrawal rate during retirement, start by drawing 4% of the total portfolio value, and then increase that amount by inflation as the amount drawn in subsequent years. Where 4% was the historic worst case that ended 30 years (age 65 to 95) with nothing remaining. More often (much) better, leaving a comparable amount as the inflation adjusted start date portfolio value or more. Viewed as 50/50 stock/gold and typically in a bad decade for one the other did well, drawing 8% from one half, 0% from the other ... tended to work out OK. Or simplified further, just take each years SWR from whichever of the two is the most up at that time. Yearly best out of stock or gold compounded together provided a historic return of something like 17% annualised, 13% real (after inflation), the compounded yearly worst asset - lost money. In effect having one half invested in a 'asset' (best of the two) that yields a 17% annualised is ... good enough. Over the 1970's mostly gold provided the gains, across 1980 and 1990's it was stocks, 2000's and it was gold again, 2010's were stocks again ...etc. a tendency for alternations. Where 50/50 of both stocks and gold does ... OK. The above chart is for US data (stock total returns, US inflation etc.), I don't know of a UK equivalent site, but when applied to the UK was generally similar. Will 2020's end with gold or stocks having been the 'winner' ??? Can't really predict that so the next best is to 50/50 both, be neither fully right nor fully wrong. I'd guess maybe gold, but don't care to go all-in on such a bet. Another factor that tends to be over-looked is that at times of stress, high dividends and/or cash interest rates, so also do taxes tend to rise. Gold broadly offsets inflation via price appreciation, bonds do so via interest payments, as interest is a regular/consistent flow so that has tended to be more highly taxed than price appreciation (where you can defer selling until gains are being less punitively taxed). Noteworthy is that over enough time (decades) the tendency is for 50/50 total returns to more align with whichever is the top line of stocks or gold, less a case of running midway between the two. Another factor is that rebalancing is a form of trading, where the tendency is to add-low/reduce-high. 1980 to 1999 whilst the price of gold was poor, rebalancing had you end 1999 with something like 7 times more ounces of gold than was being held at the start. In the 2000's that swung around, ounces of gold were reduced to buy more relatively cheaper stock shares.

£10K for the two weeks Wimbledon tennis period whilst we visit our Portuguese "winter" home, that in turn we rent out for around the same amount again for the school summer holidays period that's otherwise a bit too hot for comfort for us, but that is ideal in winter when the everyday heating costs for our Wimbledon home would be high. Fictional. But where would you opt to have two or three homes?

a.k.a the twice daily 'fix' where big international names/countries representatives commonly level a agreed exchange/price. Otherwise the scales can be too great to settle on the open market. "Fix" could be changed to "agreed settlement price" in order to redirect what some otherwise consider 'fix' to mean rigged.

Now where did I bury that gold stack. Look at this mess, I've lost 16% of my wealth, well maybe I'll get some of that loss back by selling this land. Once I find the gold I buried here we'll be off to our other winter home in Spain. Not a good year, but at least we're alive and a 16% hit isn't too bad, had some past years when the portfolio declined more than that through natural market price motions. Here's another photo of me taken a couple of weeks later shortly after we'd arrived in spain Still a firm believer in a asset allocation of around thirds equal measures of land (homes), stocks and gold.