Forums > General Discussion   Shooting the breeze...

Is arrogance the key to wealth?

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Created by CMC > 9 months ago, 12 May 2011
cisco
QLD, 12343 posts
13 May 2011 12:07AM
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Is arrogance the key to wealth?

No!

Owning enough cheap real estate is.

When you have got enough of that you can own whatever car you like, be it an 84 Fairmont like mine that I CHOOSE to drive.

actiomax
NSW, 1575 posts
13 May 2011 8:29AM
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I dont think arrogance hurts if youre obsessed with making wealth at the expense of others .Sure you can rip off everybody you meet in the belief that there all chumps .But what do you do hide in a cave with every disgruntled person wants youre blood counting the money with no friends, lover ,family because lets face it friends, lovers & family are the first people they rip off its practice for the greater community & after all these people trusted them so you can gouge them for more.
I also work from the big to little end of town & i can asure you i expect to have trouble getting paid off the water front mansion than the pensioner out west. which i think has more to do sometimes with people overextending themselves finanacally .Before the gfc i was doing a heap of work on a new houses out at kellyville ridge when i went back after it hit every second house was for sale .

petermac33
WA, 6415 posts
13 May 2011 7:20AM
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if my old folks owned their property,well i would soon be very rich.

unfortunate for me they sold up years ago and used the proceeds to live a comfortable life.

which includes for my mum around 80 cigs per day.

i could have better spent the money i'm sure on gear and trips to .....s of the ...ht.

when the crash arrives soon, the middle class are going to realise that life is not fancy cars,big houses,designer labels or expensive champagne.

having a roof over your head,food and water may be harder than you think.

go back to sheep,i mean sleep.









Sailhack
VIC, 5000 posts
13 May 2011 9:42AM
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petermac33 said...

if my old folks owned their property,well i would soon be very rich.

unfortunate for me they sold up years ago and used the proceeds to live a comfortable life.

which includes for my mum around 80 cigs per day.

i could have better spent the money i'm sure on gear and trips to .....s of the ...ht.

when the crash arrives soon, the middle class are going to realise that life is not fancy cars,big houses,designer labels or expensive champagne.

having a roof over your head,food and water may be harder than you think.

go back to sheep,i mean sleep.













You sure you're not a gen-y pm?

Unfortunately the current generation think their parents owe them money when they pass-on. All I got from my parents was a loving home, good morals, hard-working ethics, a good education (public schools), taught compassion for others & respect for my elders...sucks eh? Oh, my dad did go guarantor for my second car loan, which once paid did release a feeling of burden that I felt I had put on him.

The money & assets that they have now will hopefully be spent on enjoying their lives for their remaining time.

CMC - Don't worry about those others, they have their reasons for being bitter/arrogant...you can choose not to be! You might see the bad in people, but there are still a huge amount of people that have less than you do, but still choose to live selfless lives.

cisco
QLD, 12343 posts
13 May 2011 10:59AM
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Maybe this clip is relevant in this thread.

Al Planet
TAS, 1546 posts
13 May 2011 12:47PM
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"How to become wealthy by being More Arrogant than you were" subtitled "the meek shall inherit bugger all" sounds like a best seller to me.

Carantoc
WA, 6725 posts
13 May 2011 11:15AM
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Please do the maths before you sell your house.

Rents are at an all time high, interest rates at an all time low.

What you pay in rent you will be saving little over paying a mortgage.

Whatever money you get from the sale, and what you save in rent vs mortgage presumably you put into an interest account. You get not much interest.

Property is a long term investment. The investment goes up and down, over time it has always gone up. For the last 2,000 years the most secure long term investment is property, and in particular the property you live in (well, I suppose the best investment is actually education and the opportunity you give your kids).


I would suggest you get financial advise from a rich person with happy rich children (who will no doubt own property) rather than somebody who is 40 years old and lives with their Mum in a rented house watching Youtube until 3 o'clock in the morning convinced that the only saviour to this planet is David Icke, the son of god sent here by the liazard king of an alien race.

bjw
QLD, 3628 posts
13 May 2011 2:35PM
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^ next time you get cut off in traffic by an angry Merc driver just ask him for financial advice.

theDoctor
NSW, 5780 posts
13 May 2011 7:14PM
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the problem as I sometimes see it is...

everybody seems to want to live like they are trying to impress someone else,

when we were growin up my parents never ever bought me a branded piece of clothing; I can count the amount of times we ever went out for dinner from the time I remember being alive to the time I moved out of home on one hand.

me and my siblings went to private schools but the family drove a beat up old falcon that was beat up before we got it and I'm sure they still had when I left.

I played tennis at an elite national level and never owned anything other than volleys (I still wear 'em now). my mum still chides me about beating 'poosis

we weren't even close to poor, mum's a bank executive and the old man fleets cars to mines.

I guess its all about perspective.....

Is a t-shirt that costs 50 bucks and made in china any more of a t-shirt that is made in china and costs 10...?

the big mistake I think anyone can make is to confuse being rich and being wealthy with an amount of money in an account or plastic crap in the cupboard...

and my biggest pet peeve is when someone tries to tell me how much they or someone else are worth..... the answer should be, the same as everyone else-- (except maybe politicians and kiddy fiddlers and people who worship money they arn't worth the air they breath )

CMC
QLD, 3954 posts
13 May 2011 8:58PM
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You know something Doc, I am beginning to like you more every time you post lately. I cleaned toilets for a Summer in England with a guy who had more money than anyone I have ever met, I am talking 100's of millions. He stayed in a caravan, had a Labrador and drove a Hilux. We'd clean the cans and then go surf everyday, he loved it!

He always told me being a yuppy was an attitude not a bank balance.

theDoctor said...


the problem as I sometimes see it is...

everybody seems to want to live like they are trying to impress someone else,

when we were growin up my parents never ever bought me a branded piece of clothing; I can count the amount of times we ever went out for dinner from the time I remember being alive to the time I moved out of home on one hand.

me and my siblings went to private schools but the family drove a beat up old falcon that was beat up before we got it and I'm sure they still had when I left.

I played tennis at an elite national level and never owned anything other than volleys (I still wear 'em now). my mum still chides me about beating 'poosis

we weren't even close to poor, mum's a bank executive and the old man fleets cars to mines.

I guess its all about perspective.....

Is a t-shirt that costs 50 bucks and made in china any more of a t-shirt that is made in china and costs 10...?

the big mistake I think anyone can make is to confuse being rich and being wealthy with an amount of money in an account or plastic crap in the cupboard...

and my biggest pet peeve is when someone tries to tell me how much they or someone else are worth..... the answer should be, the same as everyone else-- (except maybe politicians and kiddy fiddlers and people who worship money they arn't worth the air they breath )



evlPanda
NSW, 9202 posts
14 May 2011 12:16AM
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Carantoc said...

Please do the maths before you sell your house.

Rents are at an all time high, interest rates at an all time low.

What you pay in rent you will be saving little over paying a mortgage.


Rent goes up. Mortgage goes down.

cisco
QLD, 12343 posts
14 May 2011 5:08AM
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Aaargh. You got a roof over your head, food on your table, a woman you love in your bed and something you love doing in your spare time, how much better than that can it get??

Mark _australia
WA, 22521 posts
14 May 2011 3:24AM
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Carantoc said...

Please do the maths before you sell your house.

Rents are at an all time high, interest rates at an all time low.

What you pay in rent you will be saving little over paying a mortgage.



Try and explain that to somebody like me who, in a mining boom in WA, saw house prices double in 8 yrs. I did the right thing, went to work in the country (living in Govt subsidised housing as Govt employee) to save money and then buy a house in Perth. Houses were about $250K for a good one when I left Perth in 2003. Saved up a deposit but by then average house was $350K so we bought a block in about 2007, as it was all they would lend us, in the hope it would appreciate, and we delayed going back to Perth a few yrs so that we could sell the block for maybe $50K profit and get a house. Nup, the market had peaked and now after 20K deposit and $50K repayments in 3yrs I have a block worth less than I payed for it, can't afford to sell it ......and can't afford to keep it if I want a house.
Now average house is $450K and I'll never get a deposit.
The conventional "wisdom" of 'just get into the market' failed me dismally due to the greed of baby boomers treating housing as an investment (with Govt approval) and the greed of a Govt that sees growth at all costs as good for the nation. So the artificailly high market dropped a bit and left me high and dry.

Maybe in a couple of years I can sell the block for what I paid for it..... ie:start at zero again, having lost about $70K over 8-9 years.

Australia needs to urgently reconsider why one of the 4 essentials of life (ie: shelter) is a commodity and investment for the rich when it should be an affordable right.

petermac33
WA, 6415 posts
14 May 2011 5:32AM
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if i was you Mark,i'd take the hit now,will reduce your stress.

every year you are paying the bank interest.if the block does not go up in price, effectively interest payments a donation to bank.

in 5 years buckleys chance of house or land going up.

house prices are falling a bit under 1 percent per month in U.S



friend of friend, a woman, took a 1.7million loan from bank.

bought a block in Mandurah area and built large house,1 year ago or so.

land and house cost 2 million total.

had $300k of her own money,that she bought land or part deposit of land with.

after building,had property valued at $3,000,000.

a 1,000,000 profit? no.

a year later she has had one offer on property, for 1,200,00 million!

she accepted the offer. bank refused to let her sell.

she could not afford the interest repayments and just heard tonight she declared bankrupty.

so she has lost life savings of $300k plus a year plus on interest repayments on loan, maybe another 100k

bank is hoping property will rise in future so they can recoup their 1.7million.

won't happen.



wodgina6722
WA, 229 posts
14 May 2011 9:15AM
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petermac33 said...

if i was you Mark,i'd take the hit now,will reduce your stress.

every year you are paying the bank interest.if the block does not go up in price, effectively interest payments a donation to bank.

in 5 years buckleys chance of house or land going up.

house prices are falling a bit under 1 percent per month in U.S



friend of friend, a woman, took a 1.7million loan from bank.

bought a block in Mandurah area and built large house,1 year ago or so.

land and house cost 2 million total.

had $300k of her own money,that she bought land or part deposit of land with.

after building,had property valued at $3,000,000.

a 1,000,000 profit? no.

a year later she has had one offer on property, for 1,200,00 million!

she accepted the offer. bank refused to let her sell.

she could not afford the interest repayments and just heard tonight she declared bankrupty.

so she has lost life savings of $300k plus a year plus on interest repayments on loan, maybe another 100k

bank is hoping property will rise in future so they can recoup their 1.7million.

won't happen.






Wow that sucks. How much? approximately was she earning a year to give some perspective on the huge amounts of money being thrown around here.

wodgina6722
WA, 229 posts
14 May 2011 9:43AM
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Alot of these arrogant rich people are jealous as hell of people like you.

If you've got a decent missus good family that's worth billions. I meet some of rich people and some are in a bad way. On uppers and downers, medicated with antidepressants. They are not all there.

I've also worked with sociopaths, don't care who they step on. Unfortunatley they are so charming you would never know it. If you go deeper though, you will find they're family have disowned them and they can never really hold relationships.

I know a young multi multi millionaire and he's happy driving in a **** car, wearing thongs. If you saw him in the street you would never know it. Rare I know...

GalahOnTheBay
NSW, 4188 posts
14 May 2011 11:44AM
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Although I agree with the "spirit" of Petermac33's story, the numbers don't quite add up.

If I look at the CBA loan calculator www.commbank.com.au/digital/home-buying/calculator/home-loan-repayments it tells me a $1.7m loan has repayments of around $12500 per month, so that needs to fit after tax and normal living expenses.

Besides the fact that there is no way a bank would loan $1.7m with only $300k collateral (unless there was other property involved), I also find it difficult to believe someone with a lazy $12k per month income would only have $300k in liquid assets (shares, cash etc).

Granted WA has a lot of jobs paying stupid money, but you would hope someone would have done some homework in to "the way things worked" before dropping themselves in to a $4.5 million dollar hole (see below).

Last I checked there was no need to spend anywhere near that sort of money in Sydney to buy something to live in, let alone in WA.

On the other hand, Peter's ideas on the cost of a loan are spot on:

Home Loan Summary
Loan amount $1,734,754
Total interest charge $2,765,237
Total repayments $4,499,991
Loan term 30 years and 0 month(s)
Lump sum repayment Not applicable
Home loan typeStandard Variable Rate
Repayments$12,500 per Month
Interest rate7.81% p.a.
Repayment typePrincipal and Interest

Carantoc
WA, 6725 posts
14 May 2011 10:00AM
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Yes, property in WA sucks. It is massively over priced. Due to in part I think to low government land releases and the last boom sending property soaring, so everybody now thinks they will get 10% growth each year so they buy on that basis.

Fortuntely I did the opposite of Mark.

Bought a house with seaviews in an outer suburb in 2003 for $170k. Went away to work in the mining boom, paid off the mortgage. 10 years later came back to Perth. House is worth maybe $450k today, probably peaked at over $600k judging by what the surrounding houses were selling for.

Then I tried to sell and buy a big block in Perth. Prices blew me away. I basically refused to be part of it so I looked further afield. Found some OK places, includung a house that backed onto the beach in Geraldton, which was OK price for WA, but alot money. Then looked at east coast. You get 10 times better value for money (maybe not waterside in Sydney, but everywhere else). Yes wages are much less on the east coast compared to regional mining WA, opportunities are less, but lifestyle is 1000 times better.

I guess I was lucky. In at the right time and out at the right time, and happy where I am now not wanting to climb any higher.

I think PM_33's view is a bit distored to apply the boom and ridiculus waterside Manduarah prices 3 years ago across the board. I would agree with him that I doubt those prices will reach those numbers again for a long time. But to me that was an exceptional situation of very limited WA waterfront property being released to a cashed up, low interest market after 5 years of exceptional growth.

Can't see my 5 bedroom brick house with seaviews on 1,000 sqm in Perth northern subburbs dropping below $170k anytime soon, what with the road upgrades, the rail getting there next year and the surrounding bush being developed with schools, shopping centres, industrial estates and 300 sqm residential blocks.

wodgina6722
WA, 229 posts
14 May 2011 10:07AM
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Bought mine at 22 years old when I was at uni in 2001. I lived in poverty for the next few years. Serious poverty.

Now I own a place 200 steps from the beach. Pretty cool pretty cool.

ps I would not buy a house in Perth at the prices they are now. No way.

Gwendy
SA, 472 posts
14 May 2011 11:50AM
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wodgina6722 said...

Bought mine at 22 years old when I was at uni in 2001. I lived in poverty for the next few years. Serious poverty.

Now I own a place 200 steps from the beach. Pretty cool pretty cool.

ps I would not buy a house in Perth at the prices they are now. No way.


Well done. You let the mining boon come to you, rather than trying to go to it

Bigwavedave
QLD, 2057 posts
14 May 2011 12:22PM
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Waterloo said...

Mark _australia said...

I propose wealth is the key to arrogance?




Money is not the root of all evil...

Lack of money is the root of all evil


Wrong!

The LOVE of money is the root of all evil.

Mark _australia
WA, 22521 posts
14 May 2011 2:36PM
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Carantoc,

I'll give you what you paid for it so you have made no loss, and you can feel all benevolent and stuff

Deal?

dirtyharry
WA, 444 posts
14 May 2011 3:12PM
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Carantoc said...

Please do the maths before you sell your house.

What you pay in rent you will be saving little over paying a mortgage.


I don't know about that and I've done the maths (perhaps incorrectly?).

There's often a big difference between rent and mortgage repayments for a similar property. The place I live in is worth about $1.1-1.2m and I pay $375/week to rent it. Admittedly the rent is too low (it's managed by an agent based a long way from it so I assume they have no idea about market value in this area). Also, the value is largely in the block of land the house sits on rather than the dwelling so house value doesn't reflect in rent as much as say for a new house.

But, even for a more typical scenario of say a $450,000 house renting for $450/week:

Annual cost to own in 1st year:
Interest repayments: $33k
Council rates: $1.5k
Maintenance: $500
Opportunity cost of having 20% value tied up in it (the interest you could ear with your 20% deposit if you didn't buy): $5850
Total: $40,850

Annual cost to rent in 1st year:
Total: $23,400

Am I making some wrong assumptions there or is it significantly more expensive to own than to rent?

Owning is great when property values are going up as they did for quite a while up until quite recently. But property values do go down and by all accounts have started to now. In that case, not only are you stuck with the extra cost of owning, but the hit to your equity is 5 times greater than it would be if you were invested in another asset class that was depreciating by the same amount due to the gearing typically involved in purchasing property.

Not a big deal if you are buying to live in a place for the long term as it all comes out in the wash over time. But I would be getting pretty nervous about now if I was heavily invested in residential property in Australia.



pweedas
WA, 4642 posts
14 May 2011 3:43PM
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petermac33 said...

if i owned a house i'd sell asap,rent and then wait till property prices collapse as they surely will.



But pweet, you said a month or so back that we should all sell what we have and invest in silver.
At that time silver was rocketing up and was nearly $50 an ounce.
Like all rockets, it's now on the downward plunge, about $35 an ounce.
At the time I asked if you took your own advice, but I got no reply.

Soooo, let's say that you did have a house and you sold it for $500,000 and bought lots of silver, you would now be the unhappy owner of $350,000 worth of silver, and your old house would still be worth $500,000.

So far, Australian property is the safest long term investment you can get and history shows it always has been.
Logic says it probably always will be because everybody will always have a use for a house.
You can't say the same for silver.
It's only worth what some other fool is willing to pay for it.
Once you run out of fools then the price flops.
By the look of the recent price drop we might have run out of fools.

You probably don't remember, but back in the early 80's silver did the same thing.
From trading at $5 an ounce for years it suddenly took off to nearly $50 and ounce, just as it is doing now.
Once the bubble popped, it slumped right back down again and LOTS of people lost LOTS of money.
If you want to wait another 30 years to get your money back then rush out and buy silver. Lots of it. You might be lucky and it might go up a bit more.
OR you might be unlucky and it will fall a lot more.
I think the latter is more likely.

That's not to say there wont be occasional dips in the property market but it's highly unlkely to do an all out belly flop like gold or silver ALWAYS does.

petermac33
WA, 6415 posts
14 May 2011 6:13PM
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pweedas i dont own any silver as i used the 5k i had in silver to buy w/surf gear with a year back when price was about what i paid for it $18 per ounce.

i'm poor as ...., content i have a car and my w/s gear,enough for me.


the price of silver year has gone thru the roof,steady around $18 per ounce to $49 peak.now around $35,still double what it was,although US dollar has dropped so less than double.

will drop maybe to $30 then back go to to $60.

my friend who has 200k in silver roughly, believes price will hit $150 per ounce within 5 years. i agree with this.

a precious metal for so cheap $35 per ounce,makes sense to me.

i begged my older sister 3 years ago at peak to sell her house,she got a offer without even putting house on market for $600k in bullcreek.

i then said put it all in silver,price then $12 per ounce roughly, she could have been a millionaire but as always no-one listens to me.

i don't not know details of woman who lost her $300k,but will say back then getting a loan of $1.7m with $300k collateral may have been possible,although likely with some other guarantor involved.

heard another case of property investor getting $3million loan to buy property in cottesloe at peak.

not sure of current valuation but think to get property actually sold my friend thinks he would be lucky to get $2million now!

have heard you can walk away from mortgage in U.S if debt owing to bank is greater than value of property.






japie
NSW, 6974 posts
14 May 2011 8:16PM
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^^ Hey Pweedas, stick with the silver. As I understand it silver has allways been one fourteenth the price of gold. This situation comes about because silver is fourteen times more abundant than gold which is the benchmark for value.

The silver price was manipulated by two of the big global banks shorting it's price. A whistle blower at the bank exposed the scam and silver started to rocket.

The paper money guys hate precious metals because they expose the value of fiat money. I have so much trouble explaining to friends about gold. Gold does not fluctuat in value, ever. An ounce of gold cannot rust, won't lose weight. It just is. Allways been a fascination for it and it is valued by it's scarcity and the effort required to attain it.

Dollars however, they change all the time, and currently they are losing value pretty rapidly, all manner of dollars. The gold folk, they know this. So do the silver folk and it does not take a degree in maths to work out that if silver is to regain its 4000 year value it is going to go quite a lot higher.

I follow this guy with quite a lot of interest:

www.moneymorning.com.au/

Carantoc
WA, 6725 posts
14 May 2011 6:59PM
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But what you are not accounting for in the price of silver is that historically silver and gold had about the same uses - investment and jewellery.

Now gold is used in every electronic item made, silver is to a much lesser degree. That is a lot of gold used thatnever had a use 50 years ago. Also the billion people on the Indian subcontinent love gold, they do not love silver to the same degree. As they become wealthier they can afford gold. Hence gold has more demand today as a percent of silver than it ever had in the past. Why would that not continue ?

I would suggest that as gold as a percent of silver is more useful now than in the past, the 1 : 14 ratio may not continue.

Look at the ratio of say gold to tantalum over the last 50 years. Wodgina6722 would be able to present the figure I am sure. Same reason for increase in value of tantalum. It has more uses than it did, more demand, so higher price.



** disclaimer : do not take my advice on investment in precious metals - seek idenpendant expert advice**

wodgina6722
WA, 229 posts
14 May 2011 7:01PM
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I put my money where my mouth is...lets see what happens?

Carantoc
WA, 6725 posts
14 May 2011 7:03PM
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By the way $300k collateral on a $1.7 million mortage is 82% borrowing.

You could get this from any mortage lender.

Back in the days when they were drunk with credit you could easily get 95% lend, some places were even giving above 100% lend.

pweedas
WA, 4642 posts
14 May 2011 7:29PM
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petermac33 said...

pweedas i dont own any silver as i used the 5k i had in silver to buy w/surf gear with a year back when price was about what i paid for it $18 per ounce.



Well that was a good decision. I can't argue with that.

General advice for investing;
Never buy anything that has already gone up heaps because the chance that it will turn around and go down increases with every percentage point that it goes up.
When highly paid advisers tell you that you should be buying XYZ because it has gone up 50% in the last 3 months, all it means is that they probably have a big investment in it themselves and they are looking to drive the price up a bit higher before they bail out and leave you holding some grossly overpriced commodity, shares, property, whatever.
The time to buy anything is when everyone has abandoned the market and is running away. Look closely to see what's good, (because sometimes they are running away for a reason) and then buy up big.
In my opinion, now is NOT the time to be buying gold or silver.
It might go up more but at this point, it is just as likely to go down.
Same with property at the moment.
I don't think it will flop but it's priced more towards the top of the range.
If interest rates take off the prices will drop significantly.



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Forums > General Discussion   Shooting the breeze...


"Is arrogance the key to wealth?" started by CMC