Jerry_Atrick

Had no idea it existed

That, and money is why I am not buying a new bike. I have ridden my vfr750 in the snow. Would have bought another, but they aren't ULEZ compliant costing me £12.50 a day riding in London

That looks a little like Bells Palsy

Just treated myself to this little beastie: https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/25219301277695614/?referralSurface=messenger_banner&referralCode=2 Yep, it is old, but at £1,500 compared to others, it is a steal.. and is in pretty good condition. I won't pick it up until next week.. I have aleady insured it (£420 fully comp without any no claims bonus as it has been more than 3 years since I have ridden, but includes Europe wide beakdown cover and helmet/clothing insurance). I already ordered a set of Oxford Pro silcone heated grips at a knockdown price on sale. Will get some storm shields (muffs are too daggy), boots, jacket, glives, trousers next week from here: https://jsaccessories.co.uk/ As it needs its MOT by 18 December, will put it straight in for a service/MOT. The headlamps seema bit dim, so will either replace the bulbs or get LED units. The sprockets are a little on the worn side, but the chain looks OK.. .sidearm is still forward and slack looks good. The regulator/rectifier has just been replaced and the stator has been rewound (these are common problems on early CBF1000's). However, I may splurge on an uprated stator. They aren't cheap. The tryes will probably last through winter, which is good... It is a winter hack/commuter for getting me to and from London, without the hassle of waiting 1/2 hour for a train if I just miss one in the morning, and without the 30 minute on average shlep form Waterloo Street to Liverpoos street, whichever way I go, and the timetables where the connectingg service I need seems to pull out just as my service is pulling in (I am talking transport connections - minds out of the gutter, please ;-)) These are well underrated bikes and except for the stator, virtually bulletproof. The valve clearances were done about 5,000 miles ago, but I will get the mechanic to check them, anyway. I can do the rest of the stuff myself. Will have to dig out old tools and the bike stand.. Edit: It doesn't come with a top box, but I happen to have one with a plate just like it. Can't wait!

Until one sells, one can't realise the capital gain as a return. But, what residential investors have been doing in Australia for years is to profit from that + negative gearing. It goes something like this. Buy a run down hovel at next to nothing. Refurb it as cheaply as possible to increase the value of the property. Have the bank value the property, which goes up - often by multiples of 10%. The loan to value ratio decreases. So, say you bought a house for $400K (I know, an impossibiolity in the cities in Australia anymore). Say you borrowed $300K to buy it. You renovate it for $15K and it takes the value to $500K. Where you had a 75% loan to value, you now have a 60% loan to value. You use the additional value as collateral on the next loan. Some banks will proxy this as a deposit on the next house, because they will poolk the houses as collateral under the one loan, and increase that one loan. Therefore, you don't need a new deposit because the icreased value of the first home means allows you to increase your borrowing as your collateral has increased. So, you buy a second home to tip in as collateral on your first loan, and because that house has value, it increases the collateral, which allows you to borrow the cost of buying that second house without having to put in more money yourself (maybe except for legals/converyancing and stamp duty). You refurb that house, and so the cycle goes on. Sadly, I was financially illeterate, like most of us are, for a very long time. By the time, I learned about what was possible, it was too late - at least for the Aussie market, which is a perfect residential investment market - for investors. Over here, the dynamics are totally different and it doesn't pay at all unless you incorporate and make it your full time occupation. Unless you want to get ionto a certain segment which should have been outlawed decades ago. You may be paying back more than the rent pays, in which case you can offset that against your income as negative gearing. Done properly, you don't have to pay any tax on your normal income. Which frees up money to put into the legals and stamp duty of the next property. Rinse, and repeat. @onetrack is correct - with property, it is both income and capital gains that should be taken into account. However, our tax standards don't require it.

Sorry OME.. I tried to break it down in terms of derivatives. There is a lot to go through to make sense, I suppose. I just don't have the time to write up the real basics, but there is plenty online. If you have the inclination to spend the time, you can do the foundation level of the chartered financial analyst course here: You can skip the quantitative methods and go straight to issuers. It will give you good insight to the markets and basic instruments. Here is his level II stuff: And here is a level II course (the above fella doesn't seem to have one) Note, this is not a trading course. but from a buy side, or asset manager perspective. There doesn't seem too be free video courses of Chartered Institute of Securities and Investments.. which has a trading component.

A derivative is a financial instrument that derives its value from an underlying financial instrument. The most commonly known one is an option - the right - but not the obligation - to buy or sell a financial instrument at some future time for an agreed (strike) price. Depending on whether the option is on the buy or sell side, it will rise and fall with the underlying instrument - typically shares for retail investors. What your describing could be a derivative, but is more likely the credit multiplier effect which exists in any economy that facilitates lending. What is happening is collateral, in the form of future promised cash flows, is being put up as collateral for borrowing money. This is a form of leveraged finance and has leverage risk. It can be a derivative (such as a repurchase agreement, commonly known as a repo), or it could be a bog standard loan sold off in the loan markets. Or it could be an asset backed security (ABS), which package loans into an asset pool and sell cash bonds off the back of them. They are not technically derivatives, but collateralised loans. Although the structures are different, they are all forms of financing lending. A repo, is considered a securities financing transaction as it offers up a financial security (e.g. bond, share, exchange traded commodity derivative) and receives money in return; at the end of the agreement, the security is returned to the borrower, and the cash is returned to the lender. Different structures have different rules and problems associated with them. ABS is the riskiest to the economy, however, Lehmans failed by gaming the repo market in what was called repo105. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repo_105). It used short dated repo agreements to get risky assets off its balance sheet and have case in the bank at reporting times.. was the gist of it, anyway. But that was a fraud as opposed to market operation. The value of USD $610tn in OTC derivatves was a couple of years ago from memory. This oft quoted value, whilst true, is the notional value of the market which bears little semblance to the amount of the actual value of the market, which as I recall was arounf $20tn. And that is because almost all derivatives are a future swap of cash flows based on some financial measure. For example, an FX forward is where two counterparties agree to swap foreign currency at some pre-agreed exchange rate, sometime in the future. For example, I may enter into a forward rate fx contract with you, where I give you $100,000 AUD, at .63 USD. On that future daye, I will give you $100,000USD and you will give me $63,000 USD. The notional in USD is $63,000, but that is not the value of the trade. The reason is that is not the value of the trade is because if I default on the $100,000, you don't give me anything. You keep your $63,000 and have lost nothing. Well, sort of.. We measue the loss in what is called xva and credit risk, as well as the difference in the spot price and the forward price. If the AUD was up a a lot, say it went to .68, that would mean you could have converted yout $100,000 received from me into $68,000 USD; you have lost $5,000 on my default. Of course, it the AUD went down, you are ahead of th curve because it means you don't have to worry about taking less from my $100K then you gave me. The true value of the derivative is calculateed daily with discounted net present valuation calculations well into the future. Some derivatives can go on for 50 or so years.. But we tend to value them on 1 day, 3 day, 5 day, 7 day/2week, month, 3 month, 6 moonth, 12 month, 3 year, 5 year, 7 year, 5 year and 30 year basis - depending on how long they have to run. The maths is complex, and I don't pretend to uinderstand 1/10th of it. The chaining of loans as collateral is an oversimplification of the issue, especially in the credit multiplier sense. Yes, bonds can be reused as collateral. But, a) they have haircuts to their value applied; b) wrong way risk further recudes the value we can take, and c) there is usually some economic value/output added along each link. And, at least in Europe, there are tight controls on this and big fines for not complying (reporting is mandatory). So far, these seem to have acted as a strong deterrent.. I know from experience how seriously we take compliance and only a buy side firm, Aviva has had a breach worth fining - and that was for the breach of reporting rather than collateral reuse (we self-declare breaches of reporting and fix them very quickly).

I think Australia fits that bill somewhat

They all have a loo in 'em I am a bit buggered today. Problem with long office hours and age is the old body ain't (sooory @old man emu about the Amahericaaamism) what it used to be. and I have used muscles a) I haven't used for years; and b) didn't realise I still had. The skip is alomst full.. One pile is gone to the chagrin of worms and spiders, though the robins loved the pile going. The big pile of trash (sorry again, OME) is about 1/2 way done. I will fill the skip tomorrow - and yes, if there was more than one person, we may have got a little more in than I have.. though there isn't too much air in the skip). Tomorrow morning, walk the dog for his weekly 6 miler; finish filling the skip, then off to Cheltenham to look at a Honda CBF1000 which is on for next to nix to replace the car for the commute to London (which will mean no more missing the trains and waiting 1/2 hour). Yeah, I know the stator is an issue with them, but I have a cunning plan to make it last a little longer. Proper servicing! Photos on Monday (your time) to show the difference. Oh forgot.. need to do the gutters, too.. F! that is a pain of a job.. 11 or so metres of carbon fibre tubing to suck the leaves from the gutters and blast the downpipes.. I think my next house will be in Cooper Pedy... no gutters to clean!

Thanks, @red750 Let me assure you, it was a momentarily lapse 😉 Not too much aluminum in that pile, thankfully.

The sad fact is, investors will pay for people who make them money. And the more money they make the investors, the more the will pay the people that make them the money. The only exception are those that will preserve their life a bit more. And, capitalism's major flaw is that there is no such thing as a perfect - or fully competitive market. Left to its down devices, the market will become skewed to those who own more assets than others. So, if you control some of the larger amoutns skewed amount of resources, you will pay big for those who preserve and increase it more than would otherwise happen. Why do you think lawyers and accountants are some of the best paid professionals in the western world? The other sad fact about life is most of will work for money, regardless of what that industry does. Why do I work in banking? Not that I have a love for finance and financial services; it pays a hell of a lot more for much the same cerebral work as I was doing in power station. Banking is full of really clever people (sometimes I am genuinely embarressed interviewing some people given what they have achieved outside banking). And we get them doing very mundane things. And they do it because we pay them 100% plus miore than they get doing what they love. Banking can do this because they have traditionally been money making machines. When I joined banking from nuclear, I was excited because it was so hard to get into as an experienced candidate, but not experienced in banking. I thought the technoloigy and methodology must be out of this world. The reality was they were so very far behind at the time, because if there were porblems, they could just chuck more money and people at it, and preserve the chaos rather than take the cerebral time to think about the most optimal way of doing things. The reason - imagine you're a fast moving consumer goods company where volumes are high and margins are low; or a power generator where it is much the same thing (except for their trading arms, of course). Every penny you can add to the bottom line is massive as they work on net margins often less than 10%. When I entered banking, their net risk adjusted margins (i.e. taking a charge to cover risks that may or may not materialise) was over 60%! No incentive to be really innovative. Since the crash, things have changed. Actually, as banking now realises how climate change is affecting the world, and more importantly, the risk posed to its business model, I am now beginning to feel some pride in working in banking - or at aleast who I am working for - as we are starting to aggressively move away from some of our exposures to high polluting and high-emitting industries and fund climate and earth improving industries.

Actually, it is atypical of major politicians from the major parties; it is typical of the ones who make the news, and sadly for a a few that reach the top. There is no popular interest in those that work tirelessly with high ethics and morals - people don't get excited by that; so there's not much news on it - if any. We all like to complain about something and the press to their darndest to feed our wants. I don't see too many ALP high flyers (at least in federal politics) embroiled in contraversy... Much to my surprise, Albo seems to be doing a good job of balancing the needs of the coutnry against powerful corporate and foreign political interests... with ethics and morality. And he is the top pollie in the coutnry.

Well, I didn't get as much done last weekend as I hoped as my back was out before I even started, but here are some photos: 12 yard skip - biggest you can get. Got a bit of junk in. Heap of junk to go.. Hidden under it is a bunch of rubble Another junk pile to go. Will probably need a second skip :-( Gotta fill the skip this weekend!

I'm a tiny teapot short and stout

ohm my! this is degenerating