HSBC World Selection Dynamic Portfolio

slickric1234

Linton wrote: »

You havent lost anything yet as you havent sold.

In my view the worst thing you could do is to sell. In that way you would turn a recoverable fall into a guaranteed loss.

absolute nonsense
he has lost 20% £4000

i can see how people fall for share portfolios and unit trusts as i fell for it as a child
could see how many % my dad had made and thought what a great idea it would be to stick my post office money in one... turned 5k into 2k

completely my own fault as i was an uninformed eejit taken in by percentages and graphs what could possibly go wrong...9/11 for me

seriously what adult invests cash in something they dont understand

i still have a very limited knowledge of the stock market despite now having a degree in economics and finance

and as a result would never buy shares of any sort as anything other than a gamble recommended to me by someone in the know who i play golf with and gave me a tip and even then only for relatively small stakes

people need to make a very important distinction between saving and gambling

stocks and shares are gambling
and for most amatures its gambling for the stupid as you are completely uninformed and unable to make an intelligent decision on whether a particular portfolio is possibly worth gambling on
id prefer to gamble on something i know such as sport, man city to win premiership looks a good bet


money in the highest rate savings account you can find is saving and is what you do with money you need and dont want to lose

dunstonh

absolute nonsense
he has lost 20% £4000

Tax man wont agree with you. he has a paper loss. Not a realised loss.

people need to make a very important distinction between saving and gambling

..and investing. You missed that off as you seem to be focusing on two extremes and not those that fall in between.

stocks and shares are gambling

No its not. Gamblaing is when you put your whole stake on something and can lose it all.

In another thread, you said you use buy to let. Well that is a gamble if we go by your interpretation. yet it is asset backed just like shares. It is income generating just like shares. It is higher risk than shares as typically you are looking at gearing (which can be done by shares but typically isnt by the average consumer). A mortgaged buy to let can lose you your own house. Shares cannot.

money in the highest rate savings account you can find is saving and is what you do with money you need and dont want to lose

Correct. No point using investments for short term. Otherwise you will get worried about short term paper losses (or get carried away with short term gains in good growth periods). Timescale is key. Using cash for long term is daft. Using investments for short term is daft.

Credit-Crunched

slickric1234 wrote: »

absolute nonsense
he has lost 20% £4000

i can see how people fall for share portfolios and unit trusts as i fell for it as a child
could see how many % my dad had made and thought what a great idea it would be to stick my post office money in one... turned 5k into 2k

completely my own fault as i was an uninformed eejit taken in by percentages and graphs what could possibly go wrong...9/11 for me

seriously what adult invests cash in something they dont understand

i still have a very limited knowledge of the stock market despite now having a degree in economics and finance

and as a result would never buy shares of any sort as anything other than a gamble recommended to me by someone in the know who i play golf with and gave me a tip and even then only for relatively small stakes

people need to make a very important distinction between saving and gambling

stocks and shares are gambling
and for most amatures its gambling for the stupid as you are completely uninformed and unable to make an intelligent decision on whether a particular portfolio is possibly worth gambling on
id prefer to gamble on something i know such as sport, man city to win premiership looks a good bet


money in the highest rate savings account you can find is saving and is what you do with money you need and dont want to lose

Wow with that naive and massively ill informed view of the financial sector, markets and diversification principles I am amazed you could obtain a GCSE in Economics!

qpop

slickric1234 - what happens when, in twenty years, your savings account has made a negative real return, after inflation?

Credit-Crunched

qpop wrote: »

slickric1234 - what happens when, in twenty years, your savings account has made a negative real return, after inflation?

I am sure with his degree in Economics he can give you a detailed response about the impact of inflation upon cash based deposits and the effect on your money in real terms. He will probably through in some extra info on portfolio balancing and his views on the benefits of stochastic modelling...

Jegersmart

I will try to keep my reply simple, and not get into the arguments that others have started for their own reasons.

I do not know this fund and I am not invested in it. It is fairly expensive at just over 2% per year management charges, I think my overall average on over 20 funds is in the order of 1.7% or so.

Having said that, looking at the performance from Jan 09 to present, it looks like it has performed adequately in a bull market. Not the best, but certainly not the worst. Like a lot of funds that do well in bull markets, it also performs poorly in falling markets - this is nothing unusual. The main problem you have was that you invested in April when the FTSE and other indices were near their highs for this year, and as such you now have had to swallow a fairly energetic sell-off since August. I am sure I have osme fuinds that are in the same position, but I manage mine fairly actively so am only down overall around 3-6% from depending on the portfolio in question.

Looking forward, how do you manage this holding? How would you switch your holding to something else if you wanted to?

J

Imnoexpert_2

What the poster describes (assuming that the money he invested is an amount he could afford to tuck away for a few years) is one that many of us are in (in some funds) since the recent price falls.

The crux of the issue for us all is: When do you sell an investment at a loss, and when do you hang on?

What are the factors one should use to make that decision?

I'm trying to maintain a particular asset allocation, and looking closely at funds which drop into 3rd or 4th quartile in their sector.

What do others do?

Linton

Imnoexpert wrote: »

What the poster describes (assuming that the money he invested is an amount he could afford to tuck away for a few years) is one that many of us are in (in some funds) since the recent price falls.

The crux of the issue for us all is: When do you sell an investment at a loss, and when do you hang on?

What are the factors one should use to make that decision?

I'm trying to maintain a particular asset allocation, and looking closely at funds which drop into 3rd or 4th quartile in their sector.

What do others do?

My approach to this:

Before creating your portfolio you need an objective and a strategy for achieving that objective. With those in mind the decision to sell at a loss is relatively straightforward and is exactly the same as the decision to sell at a profit:

a) When the amount invested or the investment itself cease to be appropriate for the strategy. For example, if you have a dividend based income strategy you may well sell if a share ceases to pay the required dividend.
b) when a sale/buy is explicitly dictated by your strategy. For example if your strategy is based on trading rather than long term investing you are likely to use a predefined stop-loss level.
c) When your objectives and strategy changes

What you dont do is sell in an ad hoc way purely because the investment is making a loss, possibly a large one. What may well happen is that you sell, start looking at investments which are currently cheap, and then find the best investment to buy is the one you have just sold.

slickric1234

welshbabe2 wrote: »

Thank-you for your advice, I have only ever invested in fixed rate savings accounts before but as the rates are so low, I was persuaded that this was the account for me, 15% compared with 2-3% seemed a no brainer!
I feel like I’ve been duped by a second hand car sales man, leaving the show room with what I thought was a Porsche but was actually a clapped out Lada.
The portfolio was presented as a really safe bet due to the world diversity and being managed by the industries experts, hence the expensive fees. Bizarrely, before I invested I was asked to fill in a questionnaire which showed I was a “risk taker” and bingo this was the account for me!
Obviously I won’t sell as I can’t afford the losses, so I will sit tight and hope things improve, I just feel annoyed that I trusted a large institute that sold me a poor quality portfolio on the back of their size and reputation.

credit crunched i have no intention of dusting off the textbooks and writing you pages of stuff you probably wouldnt understand


dunston i purposely avoided the investments as i wasnt in the mood for writing a long winded post for people to try and pick holes in as to me it appeared that the op had taken his savings and gambled them in some "investment" hsbc offered him. it wasnt part of a broader investment strategy and had been gone into with the blinkers on

paper loss or realised loss isnt that important its still a loss
you could buy the exact same thing now for 20% less, even if you factor in being slightly better off if it goes back up as you have a free 20% band before any gains start being made and you have to start even thinking about tax you are still massively at a loss


my personal strategy at the moment is cash and a buy to let property. im avoiding shares and various government bonds as i dont have confidence and dont know what else is hidden on their balance sheets, at the same time with the current best one year cash interest rate being approx 3.6% many may want to look at investing and gambling elsewhere, these investments and gambles all depend on the individuals circumstances

op if you have indepth knowledge of the stock market and believe in these shares i apologise and wish you the best, if you bought them uninformed, then surely by the same graphs you bought them on, look at the graph since youve bought them down 20%, better sell them quick before they go down another 20%