The cheapest low cost SIPP (Self Invested Personal Pension)

Two pillars of my Retirement Investing Today strategy are to continually work to minimise expenses and taxes (total costs) while keeping to my required asset classes and investment types within the class.  I work on the principle that I can’t control what happens in the markets but I can control the costs of investing.  Now there is not much that is guaranteed in the investing world however I can’t think of any case where this strategy if done properly does not provide free return. 

UK House Affordability – August 2012 Update

 

The Nationwide today announced that nominally the average UK house now costs £164,389 which month on month is a fall of £1,349 or -0.8%.  Year on year the fall is £4,341 or -2.6%.  Nominally this puts prices back to levels last seen in mid 2006.

Looking at the Nationwide Historical House Price dataset in inflation adjusted terms (Chart 1), to account for the devaluation of sterling, it however tells a very different story.  This tells us that year on year real prices are down £9,006 or 5.2%.  By this measure UK house prices are back to levels last seen in May 2003.

Is the London 2012 Olympics going to drive the UK deeper into recession?

The construction for the 2012 Olympic Games is now over.  The less than £9 billion stumped up by UK taxpayers (£142 for every man, woman and child in the UK) has been spent into the economy and claimed as GDP.  Now it's time to reap the real rewards as the thousands and thousands of visitors from across the globe descend upon London, spend spend spend, put massive pressure on the transport system and generally crowd out the city.  Anyone who lives in the UK and particularly London will have heard the cries to stay away if possible.  If not possible then plan and book journeys well in advance.  With these warnings ringing in my ears it was with much fear and trepidation that I awoke this morning and realised I had to travel into central London.

This is my journey....

 

After a surprisingly easy Tube journey I alight at Tottenham Court Road and wonder if I am really in one of the countries busiest streets on a Sunday.  I never intended this to become a blog post and so apologise as I only had a cheap camera phone with me to record the day.

 

The ASX 200 Cyclically Adjusted PE (aka ASX 200 PE10 or ASX200 CAPE) – July 2012 Update

This is the Retirement Investing Today monthly update for the Australian ASX 200 Cyclically Adjusted PE (ASX 200 CAPE).  Last month’s update can be found here.

Let us firstly look at the key ASX 200 market metrics:
-    The ASX 200 Price at market close on Friday is 4,210 which is 2.8% above last month’s Price of 4,095 and 4.9% down year on year.
-    The ASX 200 Dividend Yield is currently 5.0%.
-    The ASX 200 Earnings are currently 333.
-    The ASX 200 P/E Ratio is currently 12.6 compared with the a dataset (since December 1982) average P/E of 18.3

The FTSE 100 Cyclically Adjusted PE Ratio (FTSE 100 CAPE or PE10) – July 2012 Update

This is the Retirement Investing Today monthly update for the FTSE 100 Cyclically Adjusted PE (FTSE 100 CAPE).  Last month’s update can be found here.

Before we look at the CAPE let us first look at other key FTSE 100 metrics:
-    The FTSE 100 Price is currently 5,608 which is a large 6.6% above the 01 June 2012 Price of 5,260.
-    The FTSE 100 Dividend Yield is currently 3.78% having fallen back from 4.00% on the 01 June 2012.
-    The FTSE 100 Price to Earnings (P/E) Ratio is currently 10.08 which is up 7.7% since the 01 June 2012.
-    The Price and the P/E Ratio allows us to calculate the FTSE 100 As Reported Earnings (which are the last reported year’s earnings and are made up of the sum of the latest two half years earnings) as 556.