Shall I sell my M&S shares ????????

aa60

Hello everyone....I am a 65 year old pensioner who has quite a few shares in Marks & Spencer.......I know NOTHING about shares, I do not need the money at the moment but they have gone up to such a high amount I am tempted to sell.......I buy extra shares with the interest, a few years ago the shares were worth roughly £2500 but at the moment they have risen to over £5000.........I would really appreciate some guidance........Im new to the group so I hope I have posted in the correct place......Thanks!....Ann

ReportInvestor

Hi aa60 and welcome to the site .

Yes you have posted in the right place.

My partner, who has no interest in finance whatsoever, advised me to buy M&S shares near the bottom of this current rise and I didn't listen.

So I know nothing .

How did you come by the shares?

Do you own other shares in different sectors that might start to constitute a more balanced portfolio (to help reduce risk)? What is your attitude to risk?

What is the purpose of this investment? If you sold would you reinvest the money in a collective equity investment like a unit trust or just pop it into a savings account or spend it? If income from shares is your aim, then M&S is less useful than it was - the yield has fallen because of the large hike in its capital value .

amcluesent

The former M&S 'management' were doing such astoundingly stupid things I would gladly have taken £4 from Green for my shares.

How could anyone in their right mind run a shop that didn't take credit cards, couldn't keep a decent level of stock and used wobble-bottom women for their ads!

So Rose has at least done the obvious things, moving production off-shore and using radio-tags on some lines to monitor stock levels etc.

Whether he can now create sustained sales growth and margin we await to see. However, I've recently spent ££ hundreds in their Oxford Street store, after years of going in but leaving empty handed in despair.

That said, macro effects like the coming crash in the economy due to Gordon's tax'n'blunder policies and massive fiscal black-hole in the public accounts could well destroy the value of retailers, both good and bad, for a generation.

ReportInvestor

Yes. What a joke.

Uberretailer Green has just had such a disastrous set of results that he has been busy recruiting the icons of the age to help him turn things around: Namely the chef who says f*** more than anyone else on TV and that model who snorts coke.

M&S was well rid of him amcluesent.

Will Gordon Ramsay help turn around BHS restaurants?

He's just headed a poll of the UK's "bosses from hell"

SteveFTO

Hi AA60,

The key questions I think you should consider are:

- Which scenario would have a greater impact on you? The shares falling back to their previous value of £2500 or continuing to rise to be worth £7500 in say for arguements sake 2 years time?
- What level of risk are do you find acceptable?
- What sort of timeframe are you looking at.

Looking at M&S shares they have had a good run in the last year moving from approx £3.50 mid September 05 to £6.50 as at now. If you look at a chart you can see that whilst they are rising in a trending fashion for the short term they are starting to look slightly overbought.

Depending on your attitude to risk and how you would feel if they did fall in value perhapes you should consider taking a view on a stop loss i.e saying if they fall a certain percentage from the price they are today then I will sell and if they continue to rise then I will rise my stop loss in line with the price.

e.g. If they are £6.50 today you could take a view of saying a 10 % stop loss is fair.

So if the share price falls to £5.85 then you sell to ensure you protect at least the vast proportion of your gain.

If the share price continues to rise say to £7.00 then you would move your stop loss up with it still at 10% so now you would sell if the price fell back to £6.30. Does that make sense?

si1503

Are we allowed to ask for advice on buying/selling shares like this? I thought these sorts of questions were strictly prohibited on this forum. :S

Paul_Herring

si1503 wrote:

Are we allowed to ask for advice on buying/selling shares like this? I thought these sorts of questions were strictly prohibited on this forum. :S

There's nothing in the rules against asking. It's when people start giving specific advice that it starts straying into forbidden areas. In this particular case for example, someone replying "yes, sell now" or "no, sell in 6 months" would get pulled up. Answers along the lines of "well if you're happy with <situation> then <do something> but bear in mind <something else>" are usually less controvertial(sp).