A Random Person’s Random Investments

Really the news says it all.. I’m GLAD I never heard of these guys when I was choosing my margin loan.

I haven’t been able to find any definitive word on what protection banks offer to peoples savings in Australia - now it looks like not much:

Link: Is your bank deposit safe? No - but it could be

For a long while I presumed they were, mainly from reading US and UK info on banking, where bank deposits are protected, at least up to $100K in the US, or 35K pounds in the UK. But now it seems clear there is no despit insurance for Australian banks.

Though I have a buy and hold policy time to stop buying parcels of shares every so often and just put some cash into the margin loan to keep the LVR on an even keel until it settles down a bit while I focus on boring house hunty stuff.

myRPdata map property search - neato closeup satellite viewer better than google maps, but you have to pay for extra info: http://www.myrp.com.au/search.do

Victorian Government interactive map.. awkward javaish interface but very handy as well: http://services.land.vic.gov.au/landchannel/jsp/map/InteractiveMapIntro.jsp

How Subprime Really Works - found via MeFi

yes a bit of a lazy blog link to a comic but funny.

Well the Usenet group aus.invest is completely dead, downed in a wave of spam and crossposted garbage.
But a new google group has been created at http://groups.google.com/group/aus_invest that needs a google account to post to, hopefully the good content from the old aus.invest will appear there without the crap. Looks like spam and crossposting has finally killed NNTP?

This google Australia link has excised results, but does have a link to chillingeffects.org so what was censored can be viewed: http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=Castran+Gilbert

The same search from the main(?)/USA Google has the original results, linking to the Jenman article that expounds on Castran Gilberts practices.

Jenman has invited Castran Gilbert to sue him directly. So far they have not. This speaks volumes for the validity of their claims.

‘So sue me’ taunt to agents over ‘defamatory’ web articles - The Age article on the matter.

Article in the Australian Real Estate Blog

And on BoingBoing

update: reading further, Mark Forytarz, one of the principle characters in this sorry story has some kind of involvement with the Liberal party.

Interestingly a google search on Mark Forytarz on the international google shows up the full story, while a search on the local google shows the censored version of the results.

Well the portfolio has dropped in value by 8% due to the current market uncertainty. This is no big deal with the long term picture (provided they keep coughing up dividends) but I am not increasing the margin loan amount at the moment to keep it on an even keel and to stabilise the gearing ratio. I have picked up a bunch more SLF as the price dropped, partly to get more at the new cheaper price, and partly to help stabilize the gearing ratio. A few other good shares seem to be cheap now, will make a few more purchases at regular intervals to use dollar cost averaging to keep things stable.

addendum: a week late I snarfed some TGG and AEZ, which are down 24 and 33 per cent respectively.

Well it is time to recommence house hunting.. interest rates are up several times since the last attempt went FUBAR, but we have more deposit saved. The good part is driving around with wonderful wife looking at houses. The bad part will be having to interact with those that work in real estate. Hopefully things havent changed so much that we can’t re-use some of the mortgage prep work we have already done.

Well at last it looks like Hunter Hall have provided some online access for clients to check out their investments.. a big step up as Australian Ethical has had this feature for some time.

On other Hunter Hall related news they have also launched a new Global Deep Green Trust - quoting from their web site:
“The Hunter Hall Global Deep Green Trust will focus investment in enterprises which are deemed to make a positive impact on the well being of humans, animals and the environment.
The Hunter Hall Global Deep Green Trust should be regarded as a speculative investment.”