shares-what shall I do?!

dbs

http://www.fool.co.uk/news/investing/2008/10/08/the-market-signal-that-keeps-flashing-buy.aspx

Saucepot

"Bull markets are born on pessimism, grow on skepticism, mature on optimism and die on euphoria. The time of maximum pessimism is the best time to buy, and the time of maximum optimism is the best time to sell."

-Sir John Templeton

wagdog

One of the richest men in the world, Warren Buffet, is starting to buy American stocks.

greenface

paul5046 wrote: »

Nearly at the bottom. Mystic Meg are we. The myth about shares is that "its a long term investment". The only secure thing in the long term is death. It took 22 years after 1929 for people to return to a level where they got their money back. I've read this recession could see shares stay under 3500 until 2013.

Said who Mystic Meg :cool:

tweet

Buy low sell high.
Currently, stocks are low, and in all likelyhood will be higher in 5 - 10 years (stocks are long term investments.) Almost certainly in 20 years time.

I don't get why people are panicy about this.
If you're young it's a great opportunity to buy and invest for the future (which you should be doing.)
If you're a pensioner you should have transferred out of stocks and locked in your money to secure your income stream by now.
If you're approaching retirement you should only have limited exposure to the markets having rebalanced with age - hopefully you've enough out of stocks to allow what's left there to ride out the storm.

Thus the only people who really should be worried are those approaching (but not in) retirement as they're the ones who would be locking in gains and transferring out of stocks to less volatile havens like cash.