Halifax House Price Index m/m

Halifax House Price Index m/m

why is this report getting postponed daily

is this report so bad that uk needs to postpone the news to protect GBP

and if it comes on an NFP day then god help with the whips

u know u are right
now they postponed it to thursday
in the day of the rate announcement

hmm bad halifax number gbp goes down, no interest rate change and gbp goes up, maybe an attempt to offset the news and provide at least a show of stability.

probably so that they wont have to deal with all problems at once
but this month is expected to be better than last

could the analysts be way off track????

either way i am gonna stay on the fence on both thu and friday

by monday things should settle down for normal trading.

Here is a cynical, and possibly quite accurate assessment; but I have to 'fess-up - it is a guess.
Halifax / Bank of Scotland (HBoS) is launching a rights-issue (raising capital from existing shareholders by issuing new shares) to underpin its capital margin. So I guess they are too busy doing that just now. Their rights issue is finally peeping over the horizon and they have to work quickly before the rest of the UK banking industry squeezes them off the band wagon.

RBS rights issue closed last Friday, with a plausible understanding that maybe they snatched parts of ABN-Amro at just the wrong time. Bradford & Bingley on the other hand have surprised the market with their "we don't need any capital support or credit lines. ...no we are really fine until at least next year. ...oh, seems we better raise a few hundred million while we can!"

The rustle in the press is that they are not alone. Rumours concerning Barclays have quietened lately. Rumours concerning other banks have been non-specific (no change there then). We have trading statements in the coming weeks, well from RBS next mid-week at least, so that will be interesting reading not least to discover whether the rights issue was under or over subscribed.

As for the UK housing scene: latest gloom report speaks of a 20% fall in prices over the current down-trend. As always they will have understated this number, and with nobody seeming to give a rat's-ass about what the economy is actually doing (strangely the price of diesel is a key focus at the moment) I expect that when the employment numbers start to fall there will be a real acceleration in the decline. Elsewhere in FF I read an opinion that the BoE will allow a contracting economy to stabilise inflation. That thought had occured to me also and it might be a pretty shrewd move. When the dust finally settles there will still be plenty of interest rate left to be cut and re-energise the economy.