Current market carnage - anyone selling or buying?

Thrugelmir

BrockStoker wrote: »

PS. Just for a little (extra) speculative fun, anyone care to say what their expectation is for the next week? I'm definitely not sure, but suspect indexes will continue to fall when the week starts, although I have a feeling they will recover (at least a little - possibly DCB though) by the end of the week.

Which indexes are you referring to? At the moment events in China are influencing movements in markets globally. Day to day you might as well toss a coin.

BrockStoker

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Which indexes are you referring to? At the moment events in China are influencing movements in markets globally. Day to day you might as well toss a coin.

The Hang Seng mainly I suppose since that is the epicenter of the recent turmoil, but also those that are most relevant to us in the UK - ie FTSE 100/250.

I guess those indexes that are most relevant to us will tend to be less affected as the Hang Seng settles down, although there are so many question marks over the Hang Seng right now that indexes everywhere else will I think likely have muted performance till the Hang Seng is left to find it's own level.

bowlhead99

BrockStoker wrote: »

The Hang Seng mainly I suppose since that is the epicenter of the recent turmoil, but also those that are most relevant to us in the UK - ie FTSE 100/250.

I guess those indexes that are most relevant to us will tend to be less affected as the Hang Seng settles down, although there are so many question marks over the Hang Seng right now that indexes everywhere else will I think likely have muted performance till the Hang Seng is left to find it's own level.

You realise that the epicentre of the recent turmoil is actually the mainland China stock exchanges (Shanghai or Shenzhen)?

By contrast the companies and/or share classes listed on the Taiwan or Hong Kong (Hang Seng index) exchanges make them more sensibly priced mature capital markets with a more institutional rather than retail investor base.

BrockStoker

bowlhead99 wrote: »

You realise that the epicentre of the recent turmoil is actually the mainland China stock exchanges (Shanghai or Shenzhen)?

By contrast the companies and/or share classes listed on the Taiwan or Hong Kong (Hang Seng index) exchanges make them more sensibly priced mature capital markets with a more institutional rather than retail investor base.

Sorry, yes, I may have gotten things a bit mixed up there. Thanks for pointing out my error!

Surreyboy

It's been interesting reading this thread and some very useful points have been made

I've currently got 27% of my portfolio in cash.

I fully appreciate (& agree with) the point that timing the bottom of the market is very difficult (and I wouldn't expect to be able to do it myself). However, what I have been doing over the past 12-18 months is topping up investments on the dips (I've never managed to invest at the complete bottom of any dips, but close enough). As part of this, I topped up by £1,000 in one of my investments on Friday and I topped up in late August as well.

Does that seem like a reasonable approach?

I've read the articles that other people in this thread have posted (for example about how pound cost averaging is not necessarily better than a lump sum). However, with markets being volatile I would rather not risk investing a large lump sum just before a large fall in the market.

As I am with III, one downside I suppose with making lots of smaller top ups is that I incur a £10 fee each time.

Thanks

bowlhead99

You never really know if you will be kicking yourself for investing when the FTSE is at 6000 thinking it's cheap when it is just the start of a slide to 5000 or 4000. All you can really do is think, is it worth paying this much for a company or a bunch of companies with these assets making this much profit with potential to make that much profit.

It doesn't hurt to have some money on the side earning the highest amount of interest you can get for instant access, to buy later at a price you prefer. Unless it never again reaches the price you prefer because you are too greedy and are waiting for it to go unrealistically low so you miss all the potential profits and dividends that you could have had by playing the investing game at higher prices.

I'm sure there will be plenty of opportunities to buy the FTSE index at both 5500 and 6500 again in the future.

By holding 27% of your assets in cash, your returns and your risks are the returns and risks of holding 27% in cash and 73% in investments. Some people might prefer that to the returns and risks of holding 2% in cash and 98% in investments. But it's impossible to say what is best for a person because 'investments' is able to encompass such a wide range of risk and return profiles from a myriad of options, and for some people, staying in cash rather than investments causes them to miss opportunities to use highly beneficial tax wrappers and for others it doesn't.

You're right though, if you invest £2000 into an opportunity by doing 2 separate £1000s and have 2x £10 fees instead of 1x £10 fee, your transaction fees are half a percent higher so you need to be able to buy your second tranche at half a percent lower price to not have it cost you any net money. But you might be happy with it costing you more money if it is buying you flexibility and the ability to not 'overcommit' to something with which you're not entirely comfortable.

EdGasket

Linton wrote: »

There are 1394 funds on trustnet that have been going for 10 years.. 2 are showing a loss equal to or more than yours. About 41 would have given a lesser loss and the rest a profit.

So what did you do to lose all that money? Sell low and buy high?

Had a few companies go bust; lost the lot on them. Lost £20K on POG. Lost on the supermarkets. Lost a lot on resource and oil stocks lately. Basically you name it and I'm in it at the wrong time; someone has to be I guess. Oh yeah and Asian funds before they dropped 20%.

Glen_Clark

EdGasket wrote: »

Lost on the supermarkets. Lost a lot on resource and oil stocks lately..

So have I. Seemed like a good idea at the time
Makes a change to read people posting about losses. We usually only read about winners. We hear when £10m has been won on the lottery, but nothing about the £20m that has been lost on the lottery to fund that £10m win.

Linton

EdGasket wrote: »

Had a few companies go bust; lost the lot on them. Lost £20K on POG. Lost on the supermarkets. Lost a lot on resource and oil stocks lately. Basically you name it and I'm in it at the wrong time; someone has to be I guess. Oh yeah and Asian funds before they dropped 20%.

POG? whats that?

I hope you havent sold your asian funds, resources and oil stocks. As long as you werent invested in the minnows you should be fine in the medium term. Selling on a fall is a good way to lose err half your wealth in 10 years.

Suggest that with your remaining £133K you invest in a broad range of funds covering all geographies, company sizes from small to large, and a balanced set of industries. And then dont sell/buy anything for a year or three.

george4064

Im pretty sure POG is epic code for Petropavlovsk PLC.