Bulls, bears and the 200 day moving average

A search online for the 200 day moving average or simple moving average (200 dma or 200 sma) will reveal many hits and a lot of different opinions. Firstly what is the 200 dma? In its simplest form it is the average of a markets closing price over a 200 day period. To construct the average you add the last 200 days closing prices and divide by 200. Another form is the 200 day exponential moving average (200 ema) which is a little more complex and provides more weight to young price data and less weight to old price data.

The numbers just roll so easily off the tongue

Ten billion here, a trillion there. It all rolls so easily off the tongue as governments continue to both spend more than they “earn” and bail out banks & other institutions. How often though do you think about what these sums actually represent? That’s something I did today which I thought I would share. Firstly let’s try and appreciate what a billion dollars, that’s $1,000,000,000, is by looking at three images courtesy of pagetutor.com. The first sets the scene with a $100 note, then the second image piles these $100 bills into a million dollars and finally the last image piles these $100 bills into 10 pallets of money to give one billion dollars. Impressive isn’t it. Now let’s look at just two news items from Thursday.

Buying gold

Yesterday I made another purchase of gold despite me detailing here that it is still well above its historical average real (after inflation) price and real trend line price in US Dollars (GBP). The same also holds true for gold when priced in British Pounds (GBP). I made this decision after the monthly analysis of my retirement investing low charge portfolio detailed that I was still 0.8% short of my desired asset allocation.

Australian Property Market – May 2010 Update

I intend to keep a close eye on Australian house prices as I build my retirement investing today portfolio. This is because Australia is a very likely retirement possibility (if not sooner) for me. I do this by watching the quarterly releases from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) which is what the content of today’s post is however on a more regular basis I watch the data coming from RPData with my latest post here.

My Current Low Charge Portfolio – May 2010

Edited 06 June 2010: I have found more exact data allowing me to determine benchmark returns to the day. I have therefore updated the data in this post to reflect this.
Apologies for the confusion but I'm learning here too.
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Buying (New money): Since my last post I have struggled with my savings a little and managed to save only 53% of my after tax earnings and pension salary sacrifices. While I’m unhappy with the month’s savings rate I still believe it is well above the average punter on the street. Total new money entering my retirement investing Low Charge Portfolio was around 0.7% of my total portfolio. This were allocated as follows: 37.6% to cash, 9.4% to UK equities, 13.1% to international equities, 2.5% to index linked gilts and 37.4% to UK commercial property. This money was invested both outside of tax wrappers and also within a pension.

The PIGS or should that be the UPIGS

PIGS are an acronym for Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain. Unlike the BRICS the PIGS have high government debt levels and high government deficits when compared to their GDP’s. Let me take a moment to explain debt and deficit because given that the UK is currently letting governments get away with saying ‘we will halve the deficit’ without really being challenged I don’t think most people understand the difference.

NS&I Index Linked Savings Certificates – review of previous issues and why I think they suit me as an investment

Regular readers of Retirement Investing Today will already know that I personally think National Savings and Investments (NS&I) Index Linked Savings Certificates are a good investment class and I currently hold 19.7% of my Low Charge Portfolio in them. A previous post detailed why I like them however I wanted to learn a little more about them given my large holdings. A web search turned up very little so I have had to do some analysis of my own. I have followed a similar style of analysis to that of all the asset classes I invest in or someday would like to invest in (these can all be seen in the right hand side bar under Latest Charts) that I regularly post about however because of their complexity the analysis is not perfect but in my opinion more of a trend.

Average UK savings interest rates – April 2010 Update

My chart today shows that for those that are looking to save it still isn’t getting any better out there. If you don’t want to lock your money up for greater than 2 years (I know I don’t with what I see going on with inflation) then the average interest rate on savings accounts continues to decline.

UK Property Market – April 2010 Update

I am still out of the UK residential property market although today I really am beginning to wonder why. It really is amazing what a government can achieve if they are prepared to sacrifice the country long term to keep a bubble afloat. Today the Nationwide reported that average house prices had risen from £164,519 to £167,802, a monthly rise of £3,283 or 2.0%. On an annualised basis house prices in absolute terms are up by 10.5% and if I look at real (after inflation) returns they are still up by 5.2%.

British Bankers Association reports on mortgage lending levels

The British Bankers Association (BBA) reported on mortgage lending levels for March yesterday. As regular readers will know I blog on mortgage lending levels monthly (last month here) however I use the Bank of England data which is currently only published up until February 2010.

US Consumer Price Index (CPI) Inflation – April 2010 Update

The above chart shows the US Consumer Price Index (CPI-U) to March 2010 courtesy of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Year on year US CPI inflation has risen from 2.1% in February 2010 to 2.3% today. Annualising the last 6 months has inflation at 1.5% and annualising the last 3 months has inflation running at 3.1%. Have the US government succeeded in kick starting some good ‘healthy’ inflation? Many developed countries around the world are in my opinion craving this to help them erode both their debts and those of their reckless population who gorged themselves on easy credit.