Gnadenburg
Well if you had of taken my advice, bought good Australian property last year and funded it with the USD, you could have currency switched and made a fortune.
For an ex-currency trader, living in Hong Kong, it should have been plain to see. But required street smarts and balls.
Just for your info I do have a very nice property on Sydney’s Northern Beaches which I bought very close to the bottom of the market and I did move a great chunk of my loan to HK late last year when the AUD was near its lowest to the HKD and USD. So yes I have done nicely because of this, but it wasn’t from any advice I got here or street smarts or balls as you put it. It was because of my background and the fact I am constantly researching the markets that allowed me to get the timing roughly right. Do I think my property has or will continue to decline any further? Yes but I haven’t bought it to speculate a capital gain. It is a very long term investment and probably where I will retire when I have finished my stint here in Hong Kong.
But more importantly, cash flow has skyrocketed due halving of interest rates and rental hikes.
Interest rates may be low now but the question you should be asking yourself is how high do you think they will go when they do rise? What makes you think for one moment governments around the world will be able to turn off their stimulus packages before inflation becomes a problem, and it will, or if the stimulus packages will work at all? Stagflation is a very definite possibility and a very ugly economic environment to operate in. Almost all the growth seen so far has been because of government stimulus. If the consumers don’t start spending soon without government handouts, particularly in the US and EU, we are all in for a very rough ride.