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

bowlhead99

pawlala wrote: »

How recent is recent?

Every day since HL launched at the start of the great 80s bull run, has been a good time to invest, from their perspective.If markets are going up, you'd be foolish not to join them and invest, because you're missing out on gains. If markets are going down, you'd be foolish not to join them and invest because you're missing out on opportunities to buy shares cheaper than they have been for a while.

Undoubtedly it is true that if you'd invested £x pm since 1981 or pretty much any date since, you would be sitting on a nice return, which is why many of us are investors and posting messages about investing on an investing forum. It's generally a good thing to do for the long term. Of course, if you'd signed up as a customer to HL when they launched, you would also have given them a nice return, perhaps even half a percent to a percent of all your capital every single year for 33 years. And not just a percentage of what you put in, but of what it grew to. So they are very happy that people have taken their "advice" and joined them, because now they have £45-50 billion on platform.

So, I wouldn't expect them to change their "come and invest, it'll be great!" mantra any time soon. That doesn't mean investing on Monday will get you a better result than investing on Tuesday or on Monday a year from now instead. Only probability and statistics say that Monday is the best of those three dates to invest, because investments generally go upwards over time so you might as well invest as soon as you have the cash available.

Your heart or your head might suggest differently of course and with a large standard deviation in the historic returns of investments, it's not something you should just trust to basic maths without actually considering how much you might lose for how long of you do invest on Monday instead of sitting in "safe" cash for another day or another year.

Ryan_Futuristics

DesG wrote: »

As to why not trade actively, because I don't like to gamble, and even the professionals have trouble beating a passive tracker, so an amateur has similar if not less chance.

Statistically, I am sure there are some amateur traders making a fortune out there. Lets compare score cards in 20 years

Well ... just on this ... I do feel we've been slightly mis-sold on the virtues of passive investing

- Investing via a tracker is a gamble (while Vanguard may look at the success of trackers during a period when everyone's made money, most indexes have experienced 20-30 year downturns where you would've been waiting a long time to break even if you'd just been investing in the index)

- As the graph showed, the "average" investor is a dabbler (think 'hot tip' at the golf course, then out the market £20k down)

- Managers of open funds may struggle to beat the index, but managing a large open fund has all sorts of unhelpful constraints that a private investor doesn't have, and that the industry is slowly responding to

I'd also add technology, the free flow of information, and research in valuation means investing is a constantly evolving science

So don't be totally put off active investing!

We now also have stock screeners that allow you to backtest investing strategies

https://www.portfolio123.com/app/r2g/summary/1045869

(^ btw, anyone tempted by 1,000% returns, do a LOT of research and testing before jumping into something like that - the US index could be a very different story there over the next 10 years - different strategies may prove successful ... I'd include index investing in that warning)

There are some good UK stock screeners too
http://www.stockopedia.com/screens/?sort=1year


Re: gambling ... In my opinion, investing in anything without knowledge of valuation is always a gamble ... We could easily be in store for a 100 year market downturn (ageing demographics, problems with global resources, a major shift in global power), but I'd still put my money on value principles working

PenguinJim

A_Flock_Of_Sheep wrote: »

Well I do. Is that OK?

And so far Ive made enough to buy a brand new motorhome.

Coincidentally, I saw a lottery winner the other day advocating the lottery as a great way to get rich.

And one of my chums made a reasonable amount of money from a pyramid scheme.

Personally, I think both are ridiculous. Instead I split my savings equally between long-term, reasonable-dividend equities and Vegas.

Mistermeaner

Dont think there is such a thing as an average invester - either way if the average investor turns a profit and assuming a normal distribution it means more than half of us wont make a loss and you have a 50/50 chance of doing better than average.

Ill take that

guymo

beancurd wrote: »

Care to explain the relevance? The DALBAR average investor study is usually used to show the virtues of passive investment, not the reverse. The study shows this 'average investor' whittles away money on fees, tax exposure, and out of market time. Passive investment shouldn't be confused with an investor who passively sits in expensive funds for years.

I think RF's point is that it is easy to avoid behaving like the Dalbar "average investor" without being the "passive investor" that Vanguard champions. I would guess he is right: with anything like a sensible asset allocation and a reasonable holding period, it wouldn't surprise me to find that a funds investor is highly likely to outperform the "average investor" in that chart.

El_Selb

Ryan_Futuristics wrote: »

Anyone who's read a few good books on stock picking

any suggestions of books that fall into this category RF?

I've only read Tim Hale's Smarter Investing which I'm guessing you're not a huge fan of. And I haven't done a great job of sticking to either!

partssifu

My Portfolio has taken a bit of a dip in the last weeks, but not overly concerned.

I don't hold any individual stocks - just ETFs (mostly through US) , will carry on topping up as normal

Thrugelmir

El_Selb wrote: »

any suggestions of books that fall into this category RF?

I've only read Tim Hale's Smarter Investing which I'm guessing you're not a huge fan of. And I haven't done a great job of sticking to either!

Start reading the Investors Chronicle, FT etc.

doe808

What did everyone do at the end of the week then? Added some more BP. and BKG for the long term, myself.

Ryan_Futuristics

El_Selb wrote: »

any suggestions of books that fall into this category RF?

I've only read Tim Hale's Smarter Investing which I'm guessing you're not a huge fan of. And I haven't done a great job of sticking to either!

I've not read that one - does it just tell you to buy an index tracker? (I have to admit part of my crusade against that is just my personality)

I'm a big fan of value investing, and looking further afield for opportunities, and so Meb Faber's new book, Global Value, for me is what I'd consider highly relevant for the changing times we're probably heading into (where developed economies are likely to be slowing down)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00J351PXE/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00J351PXE&linkCode=as2&!!!!!worbet-20