UK Elections

Darn it, I wanted the pound to fall---there are still plenty of Linn upgrades I need to consider!

DaveyF said:

Darn it, I wanted the pound to fall---there are still plenty of Linn upgrades I need to consider!

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LOL so did I, was planning on selling some of my US stocks.
Ah well.
Cheers
Orb

Hmm, plenty of considerations for UK voters. I'm sure the affordability of buying audio from abroad wasn't one of them

Orb said:

LOL so did I, was planning on selling some of my US stocks.
Ah well.
Cheers
Orb

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Setting aside the value of your US stocks, from an F/X standpoint the long-term average is 1.65x...even at 1.55 not so bad.

Does anyone know what the popular vote numbers were? I would imagine it not being all that high for the Tories, despite the majority win.

LL21 said:

Setting aside the value of your US stocks, from an F/X standpoint the long-term average is 1.65x...even at 1.55 not so bad.

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True but I thought I could make more by selling and xferring the money from my US broker when Labour came into power as they would cause the pound to slide, moral of the story;
Never assume anything regarding voting trends/polling or markets
Funny enough one of the specialists brought in for the Conservatives mentioned the polling stats were broken and there would be a late swing to Conservatives, everyone thought that was a really bad call.
I do wonder if he had a bet on Conservatives getting a majority, freaking decent odds lol.

Johnny, Conservatives did have the popular vote still, and interestingly if PR was in then the government would had been even more right wing (over double the number voted for UKIP than Lib Dems, and more overall voted for UKIP in comparison to SNP - amazingly Conservatives came 2nd in just under or around 10 Scottish seats).
Cheers
Orb

Their popular vote was was just over 36%, barely one-third of the vote yet they came away with a majority. I truly hope we don't see those same numbers and result in our upcoming election.

Orb said:

True but I thought I could make more by selling and xferring the money from my US broker when Labour came into power as they would cause the pound to slide, moral of the story;
Never assume anything regarding voting trends/polling or markets
Funny enough one of the specialists brought in for the Conservatives mentioned the polling stats were broken and there would be a late swing to Conservatives, everyone thought that was a really bad call.
I do wonder if he had a bet on Conservatives getting a majority, freaking decent odds lol...

...Orb

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Interesting...i took a different approach. I took the approach that uncertainty was depressing the current 'enough for me' given the long-term average and made the trade four weeks ago. i then decided to sit out the election currency fluctuation. 1.49x was historically a good rate for me, and i try to avoid absolute optimization on that kind of stuff. not right not wrong, just different approach. Either way, the currency remains week and with the US in an election year, it will be a funny year on USD-GBP the other direction as well.

In the US we have a two hundred plus year history of gerrymandering that has controlled the results for many of our elections. Also remember the US has President's elected where their opponent won the popular vote.

Another big story of the election is how badly the pollsters did. All of them had it neck and neck between the Conservatives and Labour and none of the media questioned them despite Cameron being well ahead of Milliband on both leadership and the economy which are invariably outcome clinchers. A big systemic failure which they are now trying to figure out and no evidence of any late swing so looks as if they were consistently wrong throughout the campaign.

I'm afraid this is the first UK election where nationalism/tribal sensitivities are now the major consideration, on a par with "it's the economy, stupid". SNP swept in Scotland because decades/centuries of bitterness due to supposed dominance by the English was given vast energy by the recent referendum. Ironically the Scots do VERY well at the expense of the English - free prescriptions, no University tuition fees, greater funding per head of the population than the English. The pro SNP vote was the toxic combination of Labour fostering anti English sentiment for over a decade, and the socialist "jam yesterday, jam today, jam tomorrow" pipe dream.
UKIP, whatever you think of their supposed anti-immigrant stance, speaks to a vast number of people, so much so that they took votes from previously impregnable Labour, in the working class previous industrial heartland in the North. They performed best of all the parties with females under 30, unheard of for UKIP previously. If you combine Conservative and UKIP, you get nigh on 50% of the popular vote.
UKIP will now form a central role w/the Conservatives in pushing for full English autonomy in the UK, and this will mean proportional representation, a referendum on EEC membership, and a full English Parliament.
The genie on nationalism is well and truly out of the bottle, and will never be put back in.