Current market carnage - anyone selling or buying?

Thrugelmir

vmp wrote: »

FTSE back below 6000, down over 16% from its 52 week highs :eek:

Quick, where's a friendly Canadian central banker to print some more money and pretend everything's A-OK when the euphoria-mongers need him?

Finally share prices are reflecting reality. Rather than being valued on the basis of QE fuelled investors chasing yield.

Procrastinater

bigfreddiel wrote: »

This is just short term noise.

Research has shown by back testing that if you had invested just before any major crash, you would be just as well off as if you had drip fed or timed the market.

Ignore what's going on and stick to your plan.

fj

Hi,

Not picking on this post particulary - it just happened to be the first I came across and means I don't have to read the wholc thread - If you go to any chart site and look at the last 20 years FTSE - you will see that the FTSE has been range trading for 20 years with 3 maximums just under or about 7000 and two minimums (so far ) in the 3,000's) - so "buy and hold at least minimises the commisssions you will pay on your "Investment" - :beer:

But watching for a cheap "bottom" is likely to be a more lucrative proposition. :j

Linton

Procrastinater wrote: »

Hi,

Not picking on this post particulary - it just happened to be the first I came across and means I don't have to read the wholc thread - If you go to any chart site and look at the last 20 years FTSE - you will see that the FTSE has been range trading for 20 years with 3 maximums just under or about 7000 and two minimums (so far ) in the 3,000's) - so "buy and hold at least minimises the commisssions you will pay on your "Investment" - :beer:

But watching for a cheap "bottom" is likely to be a more lucrative proposition. :j

If you can get it right sure, but I think you will find it's so much easier in retrospect. How do you know that what you have seeen is the rise after a cheap bottom or the start of a dead cat bounce? Looking at the FTSE100 for the past 20 years I see at least 10 cheap bottoms which werent and 2 solid real ones. Similarly with selling at a high. The chances are that without a pre-knowledge of the future you will get it wrong, sometimes disastrously wrong. Being out of the market can lead you to missing a major rise until it is nearly over and losing the dividends in the meantime. That is why we say that in practice the lucrative strategy is buy and hold.

Chickereeeee

TheTracker wrote: »

My favourite are the cause and effect headlines even on esteemed news channels: "Dow drops X points over fears of Y", "FTSE buoyed by news of Z". Rubbish.

I "liked" last week where the UK's Q4 figures generated the headlines "FTSE falls on worse growth figures" and "FTSE rises on growth figures better than expected" on the same day!

C

Thrugelmir

Brent crude oil prices historically.

1997 $18.64
1998 $11.91
1999 $16.56

End of an era. Shale has rocked the oil industry and the UK stock market.

Glen_Clark

bowlhead99 wrote: »

Typically an investor will include more larger companies than smaller companies because they're easier/cheaper to invest in and may be perceived as more 'reliable'.

My conjecture is that larger companies are the most researched, also because of the larger sums needed to move the share price it would be harder to manipulate the share price with such tricks as 'pump and dump', so the share price should be close to fair value, making it a relatively safe investment.

jimjames

vmp wrote: »

FTSE back below 6000, down over 16% from its 52 week highs :eek:

A month later and it's back above 6100.

gadgetmind

And the sum of my ISA, pension and unwrapped pots is only 4% behind where I was predicting it would be in March 2016 despite my naive and ambitious "absolute growth of 5% pa" assumption. I notice that my SIPP is above all previous months with the exception of the rather giddy April and May 2015.

I guess I can handle this kind of "carnage".

BananaRepublic

Glen_Clark wrote: »

My conjecture is that larger companies are the most researched, also because of the larger sums needed to move the share price it would be harder to manipulate the share price with such tricks as 'pump and dump', so the share price should be close to fair value, making it a relatively safe investment.

Very small companies tend to have a smaller customer base, making them sensitive to a loss of orders, or delays in payment, meaning that the share price tends to be more volatile. A smaller company needs to pander to customers, and consequently they need to get things done quickly. But being small they also have more room to grow. Large companies tend to have a more established customer base, a successful formula, and a larger cash reserve to invest in long term development, whereby they can take their time developing a product. That at least has been my experience as an engineer in telecoms, defence, and oil and gas companies. Of course we all know what happens when big companies lose their way. I once worked for Hewlett Packard, which is one such example.

TheTracker

gadgetmind wrote: »

And the sum of my ISA, pension and unwrapped pots is only 4% behind where I was predicting it would be in March 2016 despite my naive and ambitious "absolute growth of 5% pa" assumption. I notice that my SIPP is above all previous months with the exception of the rather giddy April and May 2015.

I guess I can handle this kind of "carnage".

Mine is within a percent of my end of April and May 2015 values. So 10 weeks after this thread started we're at or near an all time high.

FoS will return.