What's happened to my portfolio in the last 2 weeks?!

Mistermeaner

Financial_Saddler wrote: »

If your risk and volatility appetite cannot stomach a market shakeout, then you did the right thing.
However, you have now given yourself the not insignificant problem of timing when, if ever, you get back into the market.If you are a typical investor, you will invariably miss a good chunk of any upswing.

Stuff in other post but basically sold 50% of my 60k pension pot equities in exchange for gilts and property, but will continue purchasing equities with monthly contribution.

Thrugelmir

Glen_Clark wrote: »

Took another battering today. And yet when you look at a graph of the FTSE these swings seem pretty normal. And I can see no reason for a major fall?

Been too quiet for the past couple of years. Equity markets should be volatile. Reacting to news rather than being pumped up by liquidity injected by the Central Banks that's chasing yield. While overlooking the risks that investing in living breathing companies carry.

Financial_Saddler

The oddity that always strikes me when there is a bout of volatility is that the UK market tends to exaggerate any US market movements on the downside, and then tends to undershoot US market movements on the upside.
It makes me wonder whether, exchange exposure notwithstanding, I should actually be investing more in the S&P and less in the FTSE.
Perhaps someone has some empirical evidence?

Ryan_Futuristics

Now obviously you can't judge a fund by short-term returns, but this performance seems to be going against gravity itself

The problem is valuations on all of Neil's stocks are getting high (by virtue of every UK fund manager and amateur investor following his lead) ... But I invested in July when I realised that a) the FTSE 100 would that anyway, and b) better to be with the shepherd than the sheep

Ryan_Futuristics

Financial_Saddler wrote: »

The oddity that always strikes me when there is a bout of volatility is that the UK market tends to exaggerate any US market movements on the downside, and then tends to undershoot US market movements on the upside.
It makes me wonder whether, exchange exposure notwithstanding, I should actually be investing more in the S&P and less in the FTSE.
Perhaps someone has some empirical evidence?

Probably not

At recent valuations (a CAPE ratio above 25) the US market's only returned on average 0.5% annualised over the following 10 years ... (that's since about 1927)

I've got a total allocation of about 3% in US markets now (I'm trying to lower it ... although it could still have a good run in the short-term with further stimulus, it's not good value)

The big question is whether the FTSE 100 will continue to track US markets so closely when valuations are really quite different

No one can answer that one - so I'm taking the opportunity to buy in Europe and Emerging markets (where things are at least looking cheap ... Some would say best opportunity in a decade cheap)

Ryan_Futuristics

Financial_Saddler wrote: »

The oddity that always strikes me when there is a bout of volatility is that the UK market tends to exaggerate any US market movements on the downside, and then tends to undershoot US market movements on the upside.
It makes me wonder whether, exchange exposure notwithstanding, I should actually be investing more in the S&P and less in the FTSE.
Perhaps someone has some empirical evidence?

Probably not

At recent valuations (a CAPE ratio above 25) the US market's only returned on average 0.5% annualised over the following 10 years ... (that's since about 1927)

I've got a total allocation of about 3% in US markets now (I'm trying to lower it ... although it could still have a good run in the short-term with further stimulus, it's not good value)

The big question is whether the FTSE 100 will continue to track US markets so closely when valuations are really quite different

No one can answer that one - so I'm taking the opportunity to buy in Europe and Emerging markets (where things are at least looking cheap ... Some would say best opportunity in a decade cheap)

When it comes down to it, I've got more faith in valuation than in markets behaving as they may have in the past

Glen_Clark

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Been too quiet for the past couple of years. Equity markets should be volatile. Reacting to news rather than being pumped up by liquidity injected by the Central Banks that's chasing yield. While overlooking the risks that investing in living breathing companies carry.

Well I see no sign of that liquidity being removed?
Only the US pausing the printing presses, but the QE cash they and Britain have created will still be flying round in circles chasing yield, unless they sell £xxxxxx billion of bonds and burn the cash to get back to where they started - can't see any sign of that happening?.

Linton

Ryan_Futuristics wrote: »

Probably not

At recent valuations (a CAPE ratio above 25) the US market's only returned on average 0.5% annualised over the following 10 years ... (that's since about 1927)

I've got a total allocation of about 3% in US markets now (I'm trying to lower it ... although it could still have a good run in the short-term with further stimulus, it's not good value)

The big question is whether the FTSE 100 will continue to track US markets so closely when valuations are really quite different

No one can answer that one - so I'm taking the opportunity to buy in Europe and Emerging markets (where things are at least looking cheap ... Some would say best opportunity in a decade cheap)

When it comes down to it, I've got more faith in valuation than in markets behaving as they may have in the past

One significant difference between the USA and the UK is that the US indices have a high % of very new, very large tech companies which are priced according to possible future earnings rather than current earnings. If these were ignored would you consider the US market grossly overpriced? Presumably the major companies which are quoted on both the US and UK markets are priced at pretty much the same level.

Perhaps it would be useful to consider not treating the US as a single homogenous market.

A_Flock_Of_Sheep

With further steep losses to come people would be daft buying into equities for a while

JohnRo

Glen_Clark wrote: »

Well I see no sign of that liquidity being removed?
Only the US pausing the printing presses, but the QE cash they and Britain have created will still be flying round in circles chasing yield, unless they sell £xxxxxx billion of bonds and burn the cash to get back to where they started - can't see any sign of that happening?.

Ah yes, the "gilts"

They won't ever sell them, if they even exist, because they can't, central banks are little more than proxies run by and for private banks, dishonest brokers.

The blatant lie is that the "gilts" they bought on "our" behalf aren't gilts and will turn out to be toxic junk just like all the other bailout junk and worth pennies in the pound if that. Effectively it was just another cash handout for them to speculate themselves out of insolvency and keep the bonus train rolling a few years longer. I stand to be proved wrong.

It'll just not be officially discussed for a very, very long time until the public paying for it in ways beyond just financial, start to forget it ever happened, which doesn't seem to take very long at all.