Whereas at one point in time, private regions dipping below the 20,000 mark looked inevitable, when it actually came to private regions dipping below the 20,000 mark, boy did they make a fight of it.
Last week’s loss of 20 private regions left them teetering on the brink at 20,006, but signs of a fight were on the cards then and this week, they fought like mad, by Thursday they had increased by 2, standing at 20,008, a day later on Friday another 5 had been added and private regions stood at 20,013. They had a bit of a swagger about them at this stage and were ready to collect on bets made that they would sink below thr 20k mark this week.
However they were dealt a body blow yesterday when they dropped to 20K, they were against the ropes, wobbling around the ring, the referee took a good long hard look to ensure they weren’t taking too much damage and then, today, they were hit with an uppercut as the scores on the doors from Tyche Shepherd revealed a weekly net loss of 9 private regions, meaning they now stand at 19,997.
This means they stand at their lowest level since June 28th 2008. However are there any positives from this, well there might be.
Over the last three weeks the grid has made a net loss of private regions of 7, 20 and 9, making a total of 36 regions lost over a three week period. The only three week periods that are lower this number of losses came near the end of March and were skewed due to a rise of 13 regions one week (the only rise of the year). The largest number of losses over this three week period stands at -20, that has not happened all year, even when the rise of 13 regions appeared, the week before had seen a loss of 23 sims.
However a couple of weeks after the rise of 13 sims, we saw a loss of 73 sims, the second largest drop of the year, so we’ll soon see whether the rate of sim losses is really slowing down or whether this is a small blip in losses.
The net loss of private regions this year stands at 995, 4.7% down on the start of the year, this is slower than last year’s loss but still too high for comfort. Hopefully losses will slow down, time will tell where things are heading.