Anyone thinking of pulling out of the market due the Ukraine situation?

DaveTheMus

BeatTheSystem wrote: »

Please look up the meaning of hyperbole.

To me the entire thread seems like hyperbole, I just thought you had a flair for exaggeration.

A_Flock_Of_Sheep

What I's like to know is when people panic and sell up and the market falls what are those that have sold off doing with their money? Stuffing it under a mattress or "investing" it in a Santander 123 and numerous Lloyds Vantages?

A_Flock_Of_Sheep

Another bit of bad luck. I saw someone had purchased over £1m of Morissons shares on HL and then about days later the price fell about 20% same with Legal and General.

I bet those folks said "DOH!"

sabretoothtigger

DaveTheMus wrote: »

To me the entire thread seems like hyperbole, I just thought you had a flair for exaggeration.

That is propaganda, we cant say it wont work then

Putin is a moderate in the big scheme of things. You know the worst damage is done by those who mean best

If you sell shares you are buying currency and in one country normally. Considering Russia exports we are too vulnerable for a trade war and holding cash is probably worse risk and they dont want to lose the revenue either

A_Flock_Of_Sheep

OP I expect today the indexes will be dragged lower by something. If it isn't Russia it will be bad news about Chinese growth slowdown. That seems to be an old chestnut that scares the horses. Along with QE tapering threats and a week ahead of some form of data making investors nervous.

See I know the HL spiel off by heart now.

A_Flock_Of_Sheep

In fact as it seems to be the same news on HL that allegedly drags the system down and the same names keep coming up:

QE Tapering meetings,
Non Farm Payrolls
Chinese growth data
UK Jobs

etc etc.... as these seems to happen regularly and cause dips - is there not a way to predict these dips and in effect buy low?

bowlhead99

A_Flock_Of_Sheep wrote: »

In fact as it seems to be the same news on HL that allegedly drags the system down and the same names keep coming up:

QE Tapering meetings,
Non Farm Payrolls
Chinese growth data
UK Jobs

etc etc.... as these seems to happen regularly and cause dips - is there not a way to predict these dips and in effect buy low?

These are all examples of the market receiving and processing new data, i.e. new statistics are published or government/central bank attitudes to the data are published.

Although you'll remember many instances of the market blipping down on these 'new data days', there are also instances of the market blipping up on the new data. So unless you are a gambler you can't really just look at the economic calendar and lie in wait for the market to have a mini crash on the back of one of these events. Because sometimes it has a mini surge instead and you will lose out.

Take non-farm payrolls for example, a measure of US employment. Sometimes they come in within a few thousand workers of what the market was predicting, and therefore the market is not fussed. If they do not, it can move markets.

The level and direction of employment says something about the strength of the economy, the likelihood of future price inflation, the level of interest rates (or stimulus/taper) likely to be introduced etc etc. And it is not really the absolute level of the payrolls or their direction that is important, it is the relative level of the number when compared with the forecast - because the market already knew what was forecast and had mostly moved accordingly.

So, if the figures are not in line with estimates when they come out on the relevant Friday of every month, there will be a movement on GBP/USD fx rates, on bond yields, on stock market prices.

However your problem is you don't know which direction they will go in. You could perhaps take a steer from the ADP private sector payrolls report that comes out a couple of days earlier. Of course everyone else in the market sees that too and within seconds, it in itself will move the market as everyone positions for their new forecast of the non-farms.

So basically to gamble on the non-farms result you need to have assessed every indicator that comes out to form your opinion of whether the announcement will be higher or lower than already forecast by the average person in the market, not to mention whether a higher or lower figure is good or bad news this month in the context of every other economic event:

* high employment - good for markets (more demand coming, and more companies have confidence to hire);
* high employment less stimulus needed or higher interest rates sustainable - bad for markets;
* high interest rates high demand for USD strong dollar - good for US importers bad for US exporters etc etc etc.

So, there are many things you could look at to form a view of when you should dive in with new cash or rebalance old cash, but simply knowing the timetable of the data being available, is only a tiny part of it. Knowing the date in April when the March employment and wages announcement will be made, doesn't tell you whether the market will like the news and it doesn't tell you everyone's attitude to that news in the context of whatever local or global events are happening to the economy that day or week or month.

You might think that the Fed's periodic announcements on stimulus is something that is perhaps more likely to result in a market blip downwards because we know they have several $10bn chunks of stimulus to taper away and they have indicated they're going to do this, but the market hasn't moved all the way to reflect that as it will believe it when it sees it, so as each one is announced the market will dip a little, and we do generally know they intend to drop it all away over time. However, the market has already formed a view that this will probably happen, so when you get to an announcement day and they say they will not taper this month after all, or they are rescheduling the target, then the market may surge.

Similarly if they pass comment in the meeting that they are very happy to continue the taper because their economic forecasts are so strong that the US economy doesn't need stimulus, the announcement of $10bn taper might not have the effect you expect on S&P500 prices. Of course if the US economy is strong and taper reduces, it might not be great for other parts of the world who stand to benefit from the Fed's bond-buying more than they benefit from some of the more local factors specific to the US which drove the Fed's decision.

So - not sure if it was just a tongue-in-cheek rhetorical question or a serious one, but my answer is, IMHO, you can't really time this stuff.

A_Flock_Of_Sheep

Thanks bowlhead99 I must confess to not actually knowing about non farm payrolls. I might have a read about it with my coffee and bun later this morning. I assume from the title that it's anyone not working in farming? Does the UK split it's data like that?

Thanks again

Aside from market chatter.... What beautiful morning so I am going to take the dogs out.

Have a good day everyone xx

bowlhead99

Yes it's basically the number of jobs added or lost in the economy in the month - not including farming because although that hires a lot of people it has massive seasonality with workers taken on for harvesting and let go in other months; those effects would distort the figures heavily.

When NFP shows increase in jobs, economy is doing well - companies are growing, and newly hired workers will have more money to spend on goods and services. A decrease is the opposite. This type of info is key to setting monetary policy and drives confidence in the markets. The report includes the unemployment rate, what sectors have increased or decreased their workforce, what the average hourly earnings are, and any revisions that need to be made to prior reports. What you might see in the snapshot is "economy added 120k jobs". But there is more in the report if you're a big reader.

In the UK we get similar reports. For the headlines, you can see http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lms/labour-market-statistics/march-2014/index.html . There's just 3 bullet points on that page for the March headlines before you find the correct link for the supporting wealth of detail.

For example You could check out this report via ONS for an example of what is available. Some of the data in the 66 pages is seasonally adjusted, some is not. Some (e.g. total vacancies, vacancies by industry ) excludes 'agriculture, forestry and fishing' which might broadly equate to 'non-farm' in US parlance.

Of course when looking at the headlines, or even the detail, different people read it different ways.

A pessimist will look at a massive rise in UK employment (as we have seen recently), perhaps without it fully translating to a commensurate increase in GDP, and mention the words "falling productivity". What we really need for growth is more people in work and more things being produced and sold. Not just more people in work. And they will say the stats are fiddled all the time through government spin, and say that the country is going down the pan and it's the fault of zero day contracts etc etc. The optimists will say the solid increase in employment is a healthy result of monetary easing and fiscal consolidation...

Of course, if I lose my job because a computer can do it, the company is more productive per head than it was when it employed me, and for that company it is the right thing to do. Shareholders would be happy. I no longer have an income to buy its products or any other type of products, so it is not necessarily better in the big picture. But if by contrast a company is adding headcount and taking on more people despite technology getting better all the time, it must have some confidence in its market, and more people have incomes as a result, and the stock markets will be happy so long as the Bank doesn't put up the interest rates too high in fear of inflation.

So the reports will be read by different people in different ways and knowing the publication date of an employment report does not tell you whether it will boost inflation, exchange rate, stock markets, bond markets in the direction you wish. But yes, long story short the US non-farm payrolls is people who aren't employed in farming, and yes, the UK does have the same sort of data available.

System

BeatTheSystem wrote: »

Quite worried, I am full invested and see a big drop around the corner. Anyone else fear this?


This is like 1938 all over again.

I'm fully invested and will continue to be so. Like another poster I am more worried that won't have enough cash available to buy more if there is a market correction!