Urgent advice needed for Newbie

thistle

Hello

10 days ago our stocks & shares ISA with Standard Life was worth £7,800....checking it today I find its gone down to £6,800.....a loss of £1000 in just 10 days.

Can someone advise me what to do. Should I leave it and pray, or is it best to cash it in ?????

lisyloo

IMO you should leave it.

Stocks and shares do go up and down and you should take a reasonably long term view (5 years plus).
If you can't stand this volatility or don't want the money tied up then you have invested in the wrong thing.

Most likely over the long term it will be fine.

Taking it out at a low point means that you will crystalise a loss.

Perhaps reviews your savings and investments and consider whether this type of invstment fits with your aims, needs and attitude to risk, but it's generally accepted that there may be short term losses in these kind of investments.

dunstonh

You dont say where its invested but the drop seems about right for equities.

This is not the first crash. So far its not as bad as the last one (tech stocks etc that was 6-8 years ago). It wont be the last. An assumption that you would see at least one bad year in 5 is a good way to go.

thistle

thank you so much for your advice. We were advised that this was a pretty safe investment but nobody would think the market would be in crisis like it is. This is not a recent investment, we took it out in 2000, and now find that 8 years down the line, it is practically back to the figure we invested.

Again, thank you, I appreciate it

thistle

ummm........I have no idea where its invested.......we werent given breakdown figures of that kind. We were planning ahead for hubby's retirement and were advised by a Bank of Scotland advisor back in 2000 that this was a fairly safe route to go down, and she set it all up for us with Standard Life.

Hubby retired 2 months ago, and as you can appreciate, with our B & B stocks going practically worthless a fortnight ago, we are now starting to panic.

StevieJ

dunstonh wrote: »

You dont say where its invested but the drop seems about right for equities.

This is not the first crash. So far its not as bad as the last one (tech stocks etc that was 6-8 years ago). It wont be the last. An assumption that you would see at least one bad year in 5 is a good way to go.

That is fine but this feels like 5 bad years all rolled into one.

StevieJ

thistle wrote: »

Hello

10 days ago our stocks & shares ISA with Standard Life was worth £7,800....checking it today I find its gone down to £6,800.....a loss of £1000 in just 10 days.

Can someone advise me what to do. Should I leave it and pray, or is it best to cash it in ?????

If you sell you will not get it back, if you hold you almost certainly will with interest.

dunstonh

We were advised that this was a pretty safe investment but nobody would think the market would be in crisis like it is.

You havent said what the investment is.

However, the market is a bear market. Its not the first, it wont be the last and they occur quite often. You say you invested in 2000. Well the bear market that occured just after that was worse than this.

That is fine but this feels like 5 bad years all rolled into one.

Its not a lot of fun but I am feeling a lot better than I did through the media & tech stocks crash. And we didnt have so much media negativity back then as well. Possibly as media was one of the areas that was suffering so much. This time round its bankers and the media can really have a go at them.

Sterling crisis and double digit interest rates was not a lot of fun and at this time people were suffering far more than they are now.

tweet

Keep investing. 5 years is nothing for long term investments.
I, like many, see this recent slump as a great opportunity to buy into the market *in the long term*