Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Finance and fiction

Financial programmes abound at the moment. I heard Mark Dampier, a financial expert, saying something I’ve been saying for ages – that is, don’t borrow in order to invest. What he actually said was, ‘If you said you wanted to borrow £200,000 to buy shares, people would think you were mad. So why do people do that in order to invest in property?’ I think we both make the distinction that it doesn’t apply to buying the house you want to live in, but to people buying into something they think is rising and causing it to rise more, artificially – that is, until it comes crashing down.


Watching some sad stories on the TV last night, though, illustrated the fact that problems with the property market don’t just occur when people use property as an investment vehicle. These stories were about people who borrowed more on their mortgages in order to carry out repairs to their houses; people who thought they were in the perfect house for them, but when a job loss or loss of commission occurred, they could no longer afford it. It still illustrates the same problem though. Unfortunately, people strained themselves to buy at the top of the market, and were then left high and dry when property found its truer level.


Mark Dampier also seemed to be suggesting that this was the time to start looking for bargains in the Stock Market, and this is in accord with Warren Buffet’s quoted comment

“We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.”


I liked this quote too:

“Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked.”


My current reading is The Catcher in the Rye. I think this is a bit of a sacred cow, but I’m not that keen on it. I know it’s supposed to be the thoughts of a troubled teenage boy, but I find it rather self-conscious and a bit self-indulgent. It is a stream of consciousness type book, but like PD James, whom I heard speaking on Women’s Hour recently, I really prefer books with a beginning, middle and end – a bit like the ones I like writing.

Talking of which, if you want to support me or my books, please vote for me at the Preditors and Editors site. There are no prizes – it’s just a profile raising exercise for books published in 2008. Tainted Tree is there under Novels (general or something like that) and Have Wine Will Travel is under Novels - Romance and also Short Stories.


People are showing interest. The one copy of Tainted Tree at Surrey Libraries (they still haven’t got in the additional four that were ordered by the Friends of E. Horsley Library) was out on loan before Christmas, and also reserved, and since then, it’s been out and back again, and is once more out and reserved. So hopefully, I’m building up a fan club.

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