What would you do with 250k ?

bendix

mike88 wrote: »

You might not of course but you must accept that investing in shares is a lottery. .

Utter, utter nonsense. As a statement it's meaningless.

it's this sort of hairbrained ill-informed and trite comment that makes MSE not only useless, but actually relatively dangerous.

mike88

bendix wrote: »

Utter, utter nonsense. As a statement it's meaningless.

it's this sort of hairbrained ill-informed and trite comment that makes MSE not only useless, but actually relatively dangerous.

Please explain. My dictionary definition of lottery:

any happening or process that is or appears to be determined by chance:

Some shares and investments perform better than others; and some perform extremely badly such as the AIM shares I bought a few years back. If you choose the right shares yow will be happy; if you choose the wrong ones you will lose out. Share dealing is unpredictable and to my mind is as the definition a "happening or process that is or appears to be determined by chance"

You might not agree with the dictionary definition but to say this is illinformed or trite is just that.

And if you think MSE is so useless why have you bothered to post nearly 4000 comments? If they all lack the content of your latest post I really must wonder why you bother.

Jonbvn

mike88 wrote: »

Please explain. My dictionary definition of lottery:

any happening or process that is or appears to be determined by chance:

Some shares and investments perform better than others; and some perform extremely badly such as the AIM shares I bought a few years back. If you choose the right shares yow will be happy; if you choose the wrong ones you will lose out. Share dealing is unpredictable and to my mind is as the definition a "happening or process that is or appears to be determined by chance"

You might not agree with the dictionary definition but to say this is illinformed or trite is just that.

And if you think MSE is so useless why have you bothered to post nearly 4000 comments? If they all lack the content of your latest post I really must wonder why you bother.

Personally, I would say that investing in property now is a higher risk than investing in some high yield blue chip shares.

Linton

mike88 wrote: »

Please explain. My dictionary definition of lottery:

any happening or process that is or appears to be determined by chance:

Some shares and investments perform better than others; and some perform extremely badly such as the AIM shares I bought a few years back. If you choose the right shares yow will be happy; if you choose the wrong ones you will lose out. Share dealing is unpredictable and to my mind is as the definition a "happening or process that is or appears to be determined by chance"

You might not agree with the dictionary definition but to say this is illinformed or trite is just that.

And if you think MSE is so useless why have you bothered to post nearly 4000 comments? If they all lack the content of your latest post I really must wonder why you bother.

If your definition of investing is gambling on a few probably ramped AIM shares, yes its pure chance and the odds are against you.

However if you invest sensibly with a reasonably diversified portfolio the odds are very much in your favour of getting a return considerably better than anything you could get from the banks.

jimjames

Maybe it needs a bit more clarity. Perhaps buying an individual share on AIM could be considered a lottery; even some shares on the main market and in the FTSE 100 could be too when you consider what happened with BP, RBS etc.

However if you consider a fund such as a tracker then to suggest that investing in that is a lottery is very wide of the mark. Yes there is some risk unlike a savings account but in a lottery you could get something or nothing. If that happened to a FTSE100 fund then I think we would all be in a pretty dire situation.

In terms of Investment trusts, I'd suggest you look at ones like Temple Bar, City of London, Murry International, Murray Income. For the tech one Polar Technology has done me well in the past.

mike88

jimjames wrote: »

However if you consider a fund such as a tracker then to suggest that investing in that is a lottery is very wide of the mark. Yes there is some risk unlike a savings account but in a lottery you could get something or nothing. If that happened to a FTSE100 fund then I think we would all be in a pretty dire situation.

In a lottery you can get something and nothing ........and a bit in between.

So you think a tracker is OK. Surely it depends when you invest and your time horizon. The FTSE 100 reached its peak of 6930 in December 1999. Eleven years and a bit later the FTSE 100 index stands at around 5950. So in the last 11 and a bit years even a solid tracker would have lost 15+% of your money which on £250k is around £37500.

I am not advising anybody against investing in shares as I have a reasonably robust portfolio of my own. My advice was merely to suggest to the original poster who lives in the Housing Association sector that caution should be exercised. Given an apparent lack of investment experience, spending an inheritance on shares might not be the best of solutions.

Put another way if posters on here lived in a Housing Association property would they invest £250k on shares?

I mentioned property purely because that is a way of getting out of the rented sector; if you live in a property you buy yourself that is not an investment.

purch

Any suggestion for a Balanced two year portfolio of that can be liquidated at a moments notice ?

50% Gold and 50% Silver

bendix

Linton wrote: »

If your definition of investing is gambling on a few probably ramped AIM shares, yes its pure chance and the odds are against you.

However if you invest sensibly with a reasonably diversified portfolio the odds are very much in your favour of getting a return considerably better than anything you could get from the banks.

What.

He.

Said.

It's pretty simple, and it goes to the heart of the definition of investing. The guy said investing in shares is akin to the lottery. It isn't.

mike88

bendix wrote: »

What.

He.

Said.

It's pretty simple, and it goes to the heart of the definition of investing. The guy said investing in shares is akin to the lottery. It isn't.

That is an incrediblty shallow response with no facts to back your statements up. If you read my post above you will see that I have at least tried to justify what I have said.

For somebody who has posted nearly 4000 times in less that two and a half years you clearly have a lot to say for yourself but seem remarkably lacking on this occasion when you are asked for an explanation to justify your statement.

What do you mean by this:

"....it's this sort of hairbrained ill-informed and trite comment that makes MSE not only useless, but actually relatively dangerous"

You also refer to ......"the heart of the definition of investing". What is that exactly

You might disagree with me -that's fine - but could you please explain if you can how my view is relatively dangerous.

What is surely more dangerous is for a novice investor to invest all of a £250k windfall in shares.

At the end of the day I have tried to justify my comments but clearly you cannot be bothered or cannot justify yours which seem nothing more than a couple of shallow soundbites.

I do hope that the rest of your many thousands of comments are rather more constructive than your attempts on this thread because if they are not we can at least agree that MSE would serve no useful purpose.

Jonbvn

mike88 wrote: »

So you think a tracker is OK. Surely it depends when you invest and your time horizon. The FTSE 100 reached its peak of 6930 in December 1999. Eleven years and a bit later the FTSE 100 index stands at around 5950. So in the last 11 and a bit years even a solid tracker would have lost 15+% of your money which on £250k is around £37500.

Not true if dividends are reinvested.

If you bought a house in a selected part of the UK in 2007, you would be down about 15-20% (depending on various factors).

Based on your argument, investing is therefore better than property purchase. Clearly, using selected dates to substantiate a point is completely meaningless.