Financial Betting Articles

I buy the Sunday Times. I thought I would have said "I like the Sunday Times", but I'm not sure I do. I like the aspirational stuff, they do it better than the competition. I like the InGear section. Bigger toys for bigger boys, my blokey fix of Clarkson babbling on about a pet hate before devoting as many as ten words to the car at hand. Plus the gadgets that I don't need but now feel that I do. I like the Home section. They do it properly, treating it as the corporal pleasure that it is. Good. I like the Travel section. I aspire to have the time to go to those places so they've nailed me there. The Culture section's alright. They bang on about all that state-sponsored stuff - opera and ballet - a bit much for me. They take BritArt seriously. Another cross against them.

...And then there's the Business section. Hmm.

Yesterday's headline was "Economy heads for 'horror movie'". Its main cover story was illustrated by a large Doric-columned building labelled 'Banking System' crumbling amid flames with people running for their lives. I checked and it definitely said "The Sunday Times" on it. Not "Viz Does The Economy".

I looked out of my window. Blue skies. Children laughing. No plumes of smoke.

I called a friend in New York. He had no reports of buildings collapsing to share. He'd bumped his car during the week but I said that didn't count.

I'll concede things are bad out there. I'll concede things are very bad out there. But who's surprised? Foxtons got sold last summer. That was the end of the property boom. And private equity firm Blackstone got floated - floated! - straight after that. That was the end of the bull run. Did people have to write these signals on shovels and whack them round our heads? Are we that dense?

But we had 16 years of growth. They were good years. Plenty of time to save. Plenty of time to invest. Plenty of time to take money off the table.

Oil's going through the roof. Well, we prop these regimes up with illegal wars, bribes and blind eyes. We're just getting what we deserve. And the market will sort it all out - this oil shock will cure us of our dependence on oil. In fact, this oil shock will probably do more to further the green goals than the last quarter century of eco campaigning.

Do we really need the media whipping up hysteria? Can we really trust their commentary when it's so geared towards the man-bites-dog factor when what we need is a measured assessment of the situation and level-headed thinking on the way ahead?

Shall we storm Parliament in a good old fashioned coup (God knows we're due one) and make it mandatory to Put Things In Perspective? On pain of death. (Oh please...)

So I don't like the Sunday Times. But I'll concede that - on a Sunday aptly enough it's my least worst option at the moment. But then that's the point with Western capitalism. Yes, we have these dips, some bigger than others, but it's the least worst option.

And - hey - it's all going to be OK.

(An apology to HBOS shareholders. Perfectly good company. Handled that bear-attack on its shares a few months ago with aplomb. So well, in fact, that I went long of them. Erm, kiss of death I'm afraid. You know where to write for compensation...)

Read something in the papers that rattled your cage? Take a deep breath and vent your frustrations at ChoiceOdds.com

Last Wednesday saw the FTSE hit a low of 5071.1, its lowest level since July 2005

It traded in a daily range of over 100 points every day last week, the first time we've seen a full week of >100 point swings since early March

Despite hitting the low on Wednesday, the FTSE still rallied to close up over 2% on the week.

Although The Times has a smaller circulation than The Telegraph during the week, the Sunday edition sells more copies than the Sunday Telegraph, The Observer and The Independent on Sunday combined.

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