Gold Priced in British Pounds (GBP) – July 2010 Update

In real (inflation adjusted) terms gold has stopped, at least temporarily, its steep climb by falling in value by 6.1% month on month (£837.28 to £786.14). Year on year though gold is still up by 30.8%.

Gold when priced in British Pounds (GBP) is however still yet to reach new real highs. Since 1979 we have seen two month average higher real (inflation adjusted) peaks. The first was £867.22 in 1983 and the second was £1,076.06 back in 1980. These peaks are still 9.4% and 26.9% higher respectively than today’s price.

Gold Priced in US Dollars (USD) – July 2010 Update

Within my Retirement Investing Strategy I currently hold 5.4% (down from 5.5% at the last USD gold update) of my portfolio in gold with a targeted holding of 5%. This is a variation from target of only 7% which is relatively small meaning I will not rebalance. Remember also that Gold is the only portion of my portfolio that does not provide a yield (dividends, interest etc). Even though it doesn’t provide a yield and some would even call it a ‘barbarous relic’ I choose to hold it because of its negative correlation with stocks. While one is zigging hopefully the other is zagging meaning I am selling one high while buying the other low. Only time will tell if this strategy will work.

UK FTSE 100 CAPE or FTSE PE10 based on the Shiller cyclically adjusted price earnings ratio model

Update 13 July 2010: Chart 3 added following UKVI's comment below.

For many months now I have been showing the PE10 for the ASX200 and the S&P500 however what I have always been looking for is a cyclically adjusted PE ratio dataset for the UK FTSE100. In shorthand a FTSE100 CAPE or FTSE100 PE10 depending on your preference for acronyms. Unfortunately a complete dataset has been impossible to find. I have therefore spent many hours constructing one from pieces of data taken from Motley Fool Discussion Boards, the Financial Times marketdata and Yahoo Finance. I therefore can for the first time present a chart of the FTSE100 PE10 and for good measure I’ll throw in the Real (inflation adjusted) FTSE100.

UK Mortgage Rates and Mortgage Approvals – July 2010 Update

Today I present two regular charts that could provide an indication of what is happening in the housing market. The first shows the monthly interest rate of UK resident banks and building societies sterling standard variable rate mortgage to households (not seasonally adjusted) and highlights that for this data set rates remain at near record lows at 3.92% for May 2010 (actual low was 3.82% in April 2009). Compare this with the retail price index (RPI) of 5.1% and the average mortgage is better than free money with a negative real interest rate. Month on month the rate has fallen by 1.8% and year on year the rate has risen by only 2.4%. I’d call both of these changes flat which is obvious by looking at the chart.

The Non Event - Bank of England holds the UK Bank Rate at 0.5% - July 2010 Update

Today’s announcement that the Bank of England had held interest rates at 0.5% for the 16th month in a row plus decided to do no more quantitative easing (QE) was so predictable and such a non event that I nearly didn’t bother posting. I did however discover some interesting data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS), which I’ll cover in a minute, which made a post worthwhile. Firstly let me get the data out of the way.