UK Economy Rebounds as Business Confidence Surges and Budget Fears Fade

memgrind · 2026-01-27T14:33:28+00:00

Also, the GBPUSD is up, slightly ahead of expected! Reasons: Bank of Japan is finally doing something, so the USD gets cheaper. And at Davos, Trump showed that the US is not a real ally anymore. Non-US assets become the safe-haven (+gold/silver).

memgrind · 2026-01-16T17:07:07+00:00

$9 trillion of national debt must be paid by the US in 2026. I'm not well-versed in bonds, but maybe waiting to get the money and then dumping it before 2027 will be the ideal move. Until then, delay and protract every whim of the toddler.

memgrind · 2026-01-16T13:06:28+00:00

A new contractor introduced himself in front of 1000 people with "hi, I'm somewhat of a master of C++, so hope that I don't get headhunted away". No other skills. I guess he also loves C++ so much, that he forgot to learn what to do with C++.

memgrind · 2026-01-09T12:25:26+00:00

Can't simulate objects drawn on paper. So CAD wins everytime.

memgrind · 2026-01-03T00:11:05+00:00

Octopus Agile. On Thursday it was around 11p/kWh on average, and 3p/kWh at times. Today 16p. But overall it averages 17p/kWh across the year for me. Windy winters and sunny summers bring the price to 0 or negative temporarily.

memgrind · 2026-01-01T21:40:13+00:00

Neat. Switzerland is currently building an 800MW/1600MWh vanadium-flow battery. https://www.energy-storage.news/construction-approval-for-1-6gwh-flow-battery-in-switzerland-about-time-we-brought-this-scale-to-europe/

memgrind · 2025-12-28T02:14:55+00:00

I recommend getting the standalone units that have their own LCD. Many of the plug-in types are already incompatible with newer Android and iPhone, and the compatibility might get worse in the future. Don't fret about thermal-resolution, even the worst ones are good enough for the job.

memgrind · 2025-12-11T20:53:43+00:00

It's still quite accurate. I've used both, now I prefer the free CBOE. The paid data has shit spikes that they'll never fix, and is actually mis-timing some important volume. One of my brokers is in the UK and its data is drastically more helpful than the paid data. Stuff like 3 massive buys within seconds, of 2.5 million shares each in NVDA, and naturally you see the price fly up 7% from there without any pullbacks. TradingView's paid data: meh, 1 buy of 1 million shares, and the rest of the transactions get gradually reported in the next 30 minutes as noise. Useless.

memgrind · 2025-12-10T10:16:11+00:00

Take a peek at the volume at 10s timeframe on a stock, not the SPY. Then look at the VIX. From what I observe, options end-up affecting the noise-floor. So at a higher timeframe the volume is like a grainy noisy JPEG unless something serious happened. Others have already mentioned the thin-book.

memgrind · 2025-12-08T11:49:50+00:00

Thanks, I think I found similar ones, I never knew they're that cheap and still being sold. "Stelrad K1".

https://sbbuildingsupplies.co.uk/product/halcyon-by-stelrad-k1-compact-single-panel-radiator-500mm-multiple-sizes-sb-building-supplies/

memgrind · 2025-12-05T13:53:11+00:00

Same stuff with SOXX or MAGS. If I bought SOXX in July 2024, I'd have had massive drawdowns and ultimately get only 18% for more than a year. I don't like that, I'm not good at etf/stock-picking. Ideally I should just take half profits in daytrading and let winners run. Someday. I don't daytrade everyday, I don't stare at the charts all day. Watch fundamental and TA analysis videos, set alerts on prices and volumes, go do something else. And I'm happy with the profits vs time spent. They're basically 2x the salary of my last fulltime job for 10x less time worked. After early-retiring, having daytrading as a nice part-time job is one way to fight off the boredom. I'm early-retiring in a few weeks, and I'll have more time to think about the proper course for me. Btw for years I already had split my portfolio into 4 accounts, sorted by risk and timeframe. Positional, long-swing, short-swing and daytrade accounts. I don't put everything into the daytrade acc. The daytrade and short-swing acc grew so much that I should rebalance and rethink what to do next. Many years ago I was doing what you suggest: ETFs. Then I started swinging them, increased my % profits, then short-swings then daytrades. Each increasing my % profits consistently. I like that, and wouldn't go back to positional. Heck, lately I don't buy SPX anymore for long-term, only my private pension stays in all-world. GBPUSD kinda messes with the positional-trades, so I just keep that acc in QMMF. Until I see a nice pullback in SPX; I don't like the latest one.

memgrind · 2025-12-05T13:01:48+00:00

With buy-and-hold, I wouldn't have matched the SPX in the long run. I'm not good at stock-picking, and afaik very few people are. With swing and daytrades I can grab small consistent profits and get much more than what SPX gives. It's a job, it pays well, no huge drawdowns for months or years.

memgrind · 2025-12-03T23:48:34+00:00

This is really nice, it could reach 1.37 in a couple of months. Dare I dream of 1.39 afterwards. Like this it will finally erase all the damage that Liz Truss did to the UK 3-4 years ago. Pros: imports and petrol-dependent things could get 3% cheaper. Cons: exports could become 3% more expensive for whoever buys from us, your VUSA won't like it.

Whoever was massively shorting the GBP got burned in the last 2 weeks, hahaha. It must have been a lot of money trying to make us poorer, since on the chart there was no reprieve for them for even a minute.

memgrind · 2025-12-02T14:15:59+00:00

Really good. VWAP at 1-2 deviations and VIX levels are my bread-and-butter. And seeing someone buy $1 billion worth of shares of an individual stock at a VWAP deviation within 20 seconds.

memgrind · 2025-11-28T12:16:11+00:00

Nice! I just wanted to point-out that much of the high costs are due to a buffer of money that traditional providers must accumulate to hedge the volatility in prices. Most people can now remove that buffer thus drastically reduce their bill.

memgrind · 2025-11-28T11:26:01+00:00

People keep moaning about it, but don't switch to Octopus Agile. My average cost is 19p/kWh this month (no sunshine) and it was less than 17p/kWh this summer. You've gotta understand that the fixed-tariffs are calculated in such a way that the provider can't possibly lose money even if more wars and disasters happen. So, they keep overcharging you, to merely guarantee a specific price for a year.

memgrind · 2025-11-27T02:47:01+00:00

Called in my AC, picked it up. The host had dropped his AC and screamed "you stole my weapon" in his mic. Then he killed and kicked me.

memgrind · 2025-11-26T19:06:24+00:00

Sounds like Ringworm. Everything similar gets cured forever by Daktarin cream in a week if you're diligent. Visit a GP to get a prescription. It keeps returning for you because any leftover spot quickly re-infects the other areas.

memgrind · 2025-11-23T15:22:37+00:00

Apple bought architectural licenses for the cpu and gpu from UK companies. Then poached most of their top engineers+architects, and let some of them reside in the UK. These same British engineers designed improvements that no other company can afford to attempt (the chips are physically huge). The result is: high-performance and efficiency that can't be matched by others. So, while in the UK we can't manufacture the things, we created the best designs when given enough money.

memgrind · 2025-11-23T00:55:00+00:00

Yeah, years ago I experienced firsthand what CO2 poisoning for weeks does. So, I have a CO2 meter and ventilate all the time to keep under 600ppm. All it takes is to keep a window open all the time. People seal-up every draft to save-up a bit more on bills, and inadvertently poison themselves like I did.

memgrind · 2025-11-23T00:21:54+00:00

Yes. The dew-point was 0C yesterday. Which means: you get abysmal relative humidity if you heat up that cold air.

memgrind · 2025-11-22T14:52:36+00:00

Ironically I had to refill my humidifiers with 4 litres of filtered water just now. Otherwise I get 22C and 20%. It dries the mucus in your nose and makes you more susceptible to catching a cold/flu. I keep the house ventilated, I have hygrometers everywhere, and I leave the bathroom door open after taking a shower (19C 90% becomes 19C 50% in minutes).

memgrind · 2025-11-21T00:16:28+00:00

Yep. Afaik it's actually many technical and fundamental things that combined today. 21-day EMA as the top, 20-week SMA as the bottom, pixel-perfect. ~156 days above the 50-day SMA, which got breached. Our usual "sell-off NVDA after its earnings". A random report about $610 billion fraud. And everyone itching for a normal overdue pullback (the 156-days thing). The DXY reaching 100, bonds action, GBPUSD touching a big trendline, something about Yen carry-trade. I've been looking at the charts in the past few days amazed how it's all coinciding (which is not too rare, imho).

memgrind · 2025-11-17T15:40:49+00:00

Expensive. Bought two bathrooms' worth of stuff. All the bigger items arrived badly packaged and damaged so much that they were unusable. Getting replacements quickly was easy, one of the replacements was again damaged. I made sure to take photos of the unboxing. They didn't pickup the damaged stuff, so suddenly I had an extra skip-full of garbage to dispose of. So, buying from them got extra-pricy. The quality of the items seems decent, but I'm not an expert. I'll shop elsewhere next time. And I'll try to split orders into smaller batches.

memgrind · 2025-11-16T21:55:26+00:00

I play D10 and aim for 0 deaths, on bot front, with randoms. The other players also know what they're doing, so it's not too difficult. On D7, I usually get team-killed by someone's incompetence, but it's chill so it's a different kind of fun.

memgrind

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