Lehmans

sabretoothtigger

No just leveraged and this is a down turn..

Plasticman

harbinger13 wrote: »

As I am told - £35000 is guaranteed by Her Majesty herself ... so if there is more than that you are ok.

If one of the big banks goes down then Her Maj may have a bit of a problem. Not sure that she's got enough cash to pay us all back our £35K. Given the current state of the housing market, there's not even much chance of her selling Buck House to a housing developer to raise the money..................

mr_magoo_5

sabretoothtigger wrote: »

No just leveraged and this is a down turn..

Not sure what you were trying to say, but leverage can amplify positive or negative.
I suggest by the time the next pension reports come out they will be negative, in fact quite a bit.

worldtraveller

Interesting development, but not entirely unexpected, post Chapter 11 filing:

Barclays, the U.K. bank that dropped out of negotiations to buy Lehman Brothers over the weekend, is back in talks with the failed group to snap up its U.S. broker-dealer operations.

In a brief statement Barclays said it's discussing the acquisition of certain Lehman assets on terms that would be attractive to its own shareholders.

A person familiar with the discussions said they are focused on the core U.S. broker-dealer operations and Barclays isn't currently interested in acquiring Lehman's wealth management business.

He added it's also too early to say what parts of the U.K. and European operations could be included in a deal.

MarketWatch

teddyco

If AIG fails, it's going to dwarf the Lehman Brothers collapse.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article4767140.ece

Generali

!!!!!!? wrote: »

Bought some gold at the weekend but only to the value of around 5% of my total savings fund. 10% is the recommended level as a hedge so I may double my stake as gold isn't unreasonably priced.

You bought this as an ETF rather than buying the actual gold I believe from a previous posting (I think it was you; I may be mistaken).

Watch out for who is insuring the ETF:

http://boards.fool.co.uk/Message.asp?mid=11222787&sort=whole

I have just noticed that a commodity ETF that I hold has been valued at 0 by my broker. On investigation it turns out that the ETF is backed by AIG.....

So I can't close my position in the ETF. I suppose I may lose 100% of this investment, regardless of the performance of the underlying.

WTF?_2

Generali wrote: »

You bought this as an ETF rather than buying the actual gold I believe from a previous posting (I think it was you; I may be mistaken).

Nope, through Bullionvault. I'd prefer to hold physical gold to be honest but this is a good compromise.

Generali

!!!!!!? wrote: »

Nope, through Bullionvault. I'd prefer to hold physical gold to be honest but this is a good compromise.

Interesting outift. I'd be happier if they used a top tier auditor if it were my money but they look pretty solid despite that.

Physical gold is a big security risk.

fc123

Just an idea (from the bottom of the pond STS) but why don't you guys invest some savings in yourselves? Start up a business?
Just one original idea or concept coupled with skill....well, you never know.
Just seems to me (from where I am...TBOTPond) that all this investing and hedging and other things I don't quite understand relies on others....and they don't seem to be doing a great job at the moment.

Just a thought...not being Know all or personal or anything

Generali

fc123 wrote: »

Just an idea (from the bottom of the pond STS) but why don't you guys invest some savings in yourselves? Start up a business?
Just one original idea or concept coupled with skill....well, you never know.
Just seems to me (from where I am...TBOTPond) that all this investing and hedging and other things I don't quite understand relies on others....and they don't seem to be doing a great job at the moment.

Just a thought...not being Know all or personal or anything

Well this is what I'm thinking at the moment.

I'm off to Aus in a couple of months and a return to finance looks like a non starter: I don't really enjoy it and I don't think that there's going to be much in the way of work around for the next few years.

Now I do enjoy food and cooking. Love it, just love it. I've had some thoughts about a particular sort of food company that could well go down a storm over there.

We'll see. I think that the alternative is going to be to improve my IT skills and set myself up as a small scale IT support service for SMEs.

I could do without working for other people any more. I don't really cope too well with being ordered about by bosses.