Jtc Share Discussion Threads

[mount teide] 20/9/2018 17:05

Jt - scandalous what the likes of the TV/Broadband/Mobile sector in particular get away with.

For the last 7 years as a SKY HD customer the only way i could get a better deal on renewal was by giving notice of leaving. Within 15 minutes of 'leaving' i called their 'new customer' hotline, and on every occasion was offered a deal significantly better than what they claim was the best deal they could offer me on renewal but also better than i was previously paying.

This year was quoted a 30% uplift on renewal for the same HD package. Refused and gave notice of leaving. Called back 15 minutes later and got offered an upgrade to the SKY Q 2TB Box UHD package for 40% less than i was previously paying for HD plus a one-off £30 installation fee(laughingly reduced from £110!).

Took it but told them the way they were treating existing customers who refuse to go the route of leaving was a racket worthy of the mafia - the saleswomen laughed, and said "i could't comment on that", conscious that all her calls were monitored.

[aleman] 20/9/2018 16:48

Yes, let's have more rate hikes. Why are plummeting US house prices not getting much coverage? Down 8% in 6 months:



30-year fixed rate loan increased from 4.54% to 4.60% in the week, while up from 3.78% a year ago.

Falling mortgage applications, rising mortgage rates and a tightening in overall credit availability is a bad combination for the housing sector that is already under pressure as median house prices decline, the median sales price of houses sold in the U.S falling from a 4th quarter 2017 peak $337,900 to a 2nd quarter 2018 $309,800.



And Australia is at it too

[jtcod] 20/9/2018 14:47

3mth Libor is 2.35% against current Fed rate of 2%. Still pointing to further rises.

[jtcod] 20/9/2018 14:11

Aleman sorry I was thinking short rates. You clearly wrote 30yr. A moment of madness. :-)

[aleman] 20/9/2018 13:57

JTC - not really. A rise in the overnight rate tends to push the long end down and vice versa. The duration that guesses at rate rises is the short end while the long end worries about damage to the economy. However, the 2-year yield has risen about 0.12% in the last month, so that does seem to indicate an expected rate rise and a rising long end normally suggests economic growth strong enough to generate higher inflation. The trouble is we don't know how much Fed Treasury sales are distorting the rate at all durations. We can only guess. I can see long rates rising due to Fed sales even as it also starts to push property prices down. Long rates would normally pull back at the first sign of trouble - but maybe not with increasing bond sales to $50bn per month. They might just keep going up.

One well known market punter in the US said he expected 30-years to keep rising to hit 6% next year. Will rates go from being suppressed by the Fed to being inflated? It's all a distorted mess and we don't know if there's a genuine signal there any more. Free markets died a decade ago. Everything is being centrally controlled, in a fashion. It does not usually end well.

[mount teide] 20/9/2018 13:26

SKY and Virgin Cable are experiencing rapidly increasing pressure from Netflix and Amazon.

Both offer excellent 4K and HD TV/Film/Documentary packages that are a fraction of the current SKY/Virgin cost and have one huge attraction - do not require a TV license.

Youngsters can have both packages and free next day delivery on most of their Amazon purchases for barely the price of the annual TV License, never mind the additional cost of a basic SKY/Virgin package. Plus Netflix allow clients to have six devices linked to a single Netflix account, with streaming from two places at the same time (you can upgrade this to four by paying more).

Since youngsters are increasingly getting their 'news' from their mobiles - i expect Netflix and Amazon to make further inroads into SKY and Virgin Cable's growth and profitability. As evidenced by SKY recently slashing the cost of its tv packages, including its premium Q/Ultra HD package which it previously refused to discount in any meaningful way.

[mount teide] 20/9/2018 12:27

EU leaders 'almost unanimous' in support for second UK referendum - Telegraph live blog

The undemocratic, high minded arrogance of the unelected EU Dictatorship is simply breathtaking - completely unimpressed with May's BRINO deal they respond by saying there is "almost unanimous" support among them for the UK to hold a second Brexit referendum!

'Mrs May had insisted the UK's March 29 2019 departure from the European Union would not be delayed and, with time running short, the onus was on the bloc's leaders to find a solution - or face the prospect of a no-deal scenario.

But Mrs May faced calls to hold a second referendum amid warnings about the risk of a no-deal Brexit as leaders gathered to discuss the EU's next move in the negotiations.

Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said: "There is a unanimous, or almost unanimous I would say right now, point of view around the table that we would like the almost impossible to happen, that the UK has another referendum."

And Andrej Babis, the Czech Prime Minister, said he would like to see Britain hold a second referendum on membership of the EU.'

[aleman] 20/9/2018 12:19

US 30 year treasury yield up from 2.962% on 27th of August to 3.225% currently. This will put a little more pressure on the slowing US housing market, not to mention emerging markets. Increased Treasury sales to come from the Fed next month, too, and Trump's increasing deficit to add in, although new/increased tariffs could help offset deficit increases.

[mount teide] 20/9/2018 11:47

Taurus - I agree, exercising due vigilance is the key when travelling abroad - particularly in Africa, South America and now sadly much of the Caribbean.

The increasingly brazen behaviour of armed criminals in many of South Africa's cities is a major problem for the Nation, since its Police Force has a reputation for being corrupt, lazy and largely inept by Western standards.

Last year a coach transfer carrying 38 Dutch pensioners from Jo'berg Airport did't even reach their local hotel before being subjected to a horrifying coach-jacking and violent mugging by a gang of heavily armed criminals who punched them and held weapons to their heads, as the team spent 20 minutes robbing the petrified pensioners of their carried and in-baggage valuables which they rifled through after removing from the cargo holds.



Not content with hijacking vehicles and carrying out attacks using automatic rifles and high explosives on armoured vans carrying cash, the Jo'berg criminals have branched out into hijacking entire buildings as Louis Theroux found out;



Likewise his short, on the street interview with two extremely violent Jo'berg criminals, one a career criminal not long out of prison after serving a 10 year sentence for murdering TWO police officers was almost surreal:




South Africa's epidemic of broad daylight attacks by heavily armed robbers on armoured cash in-transit vehicles - equipped with high explosives and assault rifles robbers carry out the third such attack in three days in Jo'berg, stealing hundreds of millions of rand.



While the murder rate was higher pre and immediately following the end of apartheid, the overwhelming bulk occurred in/around the black townships - that is increasingly no longer the case.

[aleman] 20/9/2018 11:47

Very interesting, JTC. New IFRS rules on such as contract revenue recognition (IFRS 15?) are already hitting reported profits on early adopters but some worse hit companies have not yet reported under them. (I believe it contributed to Carillion's financing troubles.) It hits reported profit and EPS but seems to have little effect on cashflow. Reductions in banks' calculated asset base will make a big difference, though, I expect. There's been so many technical changes this year already, and there's still plenty coming for 2019. I'm finding it hard to foresee likely earnings growth next year where such changes are applied. I suspect the effects are underestimated in forecasts.

At least these changes strike in a period of (slowing?) growth, unlike the ECB tightening up on bank balance sheets in the last recession, making it deeper than necessary. We had similar here which led to personal and corporate overdrafts and revolving credit facilities suddently getting axed. Regulators gave banks buffers against hard times and then did not let them use them but asked them to be increased when the hard times arrived!

[jtcod] 20/9/2018 11:13

......a better example of Billy Gibbons guitar sound

[jtcod] 20/9/2018 10:07

Between 2018 and 2020 certain accounting changes for banks are likely to impare lending capacity. Traditionally, reduced lending capacity results in upward pressure on bank margins.

2018 IFRS9 - new International rules requiring banks to make provisions on their balance sheets for expected losses in the future, rather than losses they have already had. I have seen estimates of between 18% and 30% for increased provisions in banks across UK and Europe.

2019 IFRS16 - new lease rules affecting bank capital. On the face of it this represents fractional changes but as this review concluded:
"Based on a study I completed, I predict the worldwide availability of bank lending will shrink by $2.6 trillion dollars in 2019 when banks transition to the new lease accounting rules (Topic 842 in the U.S. and IFRS 16 for the rest of the world)."


2020 CECL rules - Current Expected Credit Loss (a US version of IRFS9) delayed till 2020

"I also expect the recent accounting changes to loss recognition in a troubled debt restructuring and the transition in 2020 to the current expected credit loss (CECL) model to negatively affect capital and add to the cutbacks in available bank lending"

[jtcod] 20/9/2018 09:01

Check out chart 5 on UK’s banking exposure to China and Hong Kong

[taurusthebear] 20/9/2018 05:57

I'd still go to South Africa, but not to a war zone.

Statistics can be frightening. Look up the number of people who die from rabies in India, for example (so don't go near stray dogs etc.).

Similarly, the fact is that most murders, whilst tragic, are not directed at people who exercise due vigilance about when and where they go. I wonder how many tourists landing at Cape Town International Airport realise that the most dangerous township in the country, Nyanga, lies just down the road...

The murder rate in South Africa was higher still before and after Apartheid ended.

I found the people and atmosphere in Lesotho to be a lot less threatening, not having been through the same racial strife as surrounding South Africa.

hxxps://www.thesouthafrican.com/crime-stats-south-africa-murder-rate-2018/

[mount teide] 20/9/2018 00:21

South Africa - a friend who lives in Jo'berg emailed an astonishing statistic - such is the level of crime, there are three times more private security personnel now employed in the Country than there are Police and Army personnel combined.

487,000 - Private Security Officers
130,000 - Police and active Army Personnel

This week saw South Africa's police minister Bheki Cele say a surge in murders has turned the country into a place that "borders on a war zone."

Crime statistics released this week by the SA government show there were more than 20,000 murders in 2017, a 7% increase over the previous year - the minister highlighted that this was 57 murders every day.

Was he right to compare South Africa to a war zone?

Yes according to UN research - South Africa now has the 5th highest murder rate in the world, equivalent to that of war torn Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq; only Syria and the Yemen is higher.

Unsurprisingly, South Africa is currently on track to break its all-time emigration record this year - with New Zealand, Australia and the UK the favoured destinations.



Edwards9 - yes, mismanagement at firms like Carillion must of been off the charts - considering they made well over £500m in revenue from selling off PFI projects.

[jtcod] 19/9/2018 20:04

Mr Roper
Billy F Gibbons releases a solo album in a couple of days - The Big Bad Blues

Gotta say he has one of the best guitar sounds I’ve heard for a few years. It sounds like he’s using a Mesa Boogie amp, though I could be wrong.

[mattjos] 19/9/2018 18:01

Freddie .. for many people, such jobs are the limit of their productive worth. Unlikely you can re-train a strawberry picker, car washer, taxi driver to be an AI programmer! But, the society we have created will pay them to be 100% unproductive and still be free to breed.

[freddie ferret] 19/9/2018 17:40

Do not have the time to go into this in detail however the British disease is its lack of productivity growth.
We actually need labor shortages to drive employers to mechanise and introduce new technology.

6.5m legal immigrants since 2001 is bad news.

If you want the living standards of a third world country then things need to continue the way they are. In the future no one should be doing jobs like strawberry picking, taxi driver, pizza delivery, car wash etc. Those jobs should be mechanized out of existence.

[edwards9] 19/9/2018 17:35

Hi MT.PFI quandary. Govt reportedly massively over pays yet many of the PFI contracts firms seem unable to make a profit or have written down profits.A total clusterf@$k of incompetence.

[alphorn] 19/9/2018 17:18

ff - I think to be fair one could argue that the lack of working people with a trade has been a problem following the focus on degrees per se. It was a mistake when the apprenticeship routes were curtailed. Where I live the apprenticeship based learning is still common place.

[freddie ferret] 19/9/2018 17:14

Nigel can read and on LBC last night stated something rather interesting. The govts new post Brexit world of immigration controls is of course going to be toughened up (only to be expected from May :)) and only those qualified would be tier 2 entrants.
It seems that for tier 2 at the moment you need a degree to get into the UK. Post Brexit for EU citizens all you will require to qualify for tier 2 entrance is the equivalent of one "A" level or a vocational qualification equivalent. This according to Nigel was buried in the small print.

[alphorn] 19/9/2018 16:29

The negotiations could have been outsourced as with the Greeks. Cook the books with its consequences.

[mount teide] 19/9/2018 16:11

That's how the taxpayers ended up getting hit with the PFI disaster - it was 'negotiated' by totally inept Treasury and Whitehall officials and as a result the UK now owes more than £300 billion to banks and businesses.

To put it more simply: this debt would cover the entire NHS budget for approximately two years.

The NHS has more than 100 PFI hospitals. The original cost of these 100 institutions was around £11.5bn. In the end, they will cost the public purse nearly £80bn. The total UK PFI debt is over £300bn for projects worth only £55bn. This means that nearly £250bn will be spent swelling the coffers of PFI groups. Incredibly in some cases the taxpayer will be left with nothing to show for it, because many of the PFI contracts are effectively leasing agreements.

Every man, woman and child in Britain is more than £4,400 in debt – without knowing it and without borrowing a single penny – thanks to the proliferation of these disastrous deals by New Labour - used to pay for infrastructure such as schools and hospitals.

The startling figure – described by private sector experts as a “financial disaster” – has been calculated as part of an analysis of Treasury data on more than 720 PFIs, which has been verified by the National Audit Office.

The headline debt is based on “unitary charges” and will continue for up to 50 years . They include fees for services rendered, such as maintenance and cleaning, as well as the repayment of loans underwritten by banks and investment companies.

The scale of the appalling mismanagement of the PFI deals is probably best highlighted by Britain’s biggest health trust, Barts Health NHS Trust, which was placed in special measures last year. It is £93m in debt – struggling under the weight of a 43-year PFI contract under which it will pay back more than £7bn on contracts valued at a tiny fraction of that sum (£1.1bn).

Some £88bn has already been spent, and even if the projected cost between now and 2049/50 does not change, the total PFI bill will be in excess of £310bn. This is more than four times the budget deficit used to justify austerity cuts to government budgets and local services.

Have many Civil Servants have been fired for their involvement in 'negotiating' these disastrous PFI contracts? As usual in these situations, none i would guess.

The left predictably blames greedy fat cat private sector company's ripping off the taxpayer - when the fault lies four square with New Labour giving responsibility to incompetent civil servants totally out of their depth at negotiating commercial contracts with battle hardened, hard nosed private sector businessmen who do it for a living.

And the same state departments are currently 'negotiating' Brexit with entirely predictable results.