RBS brace for a “cataclysmic year”

wotsthat

Generali wrote: »

It's the best way to invest IMHO. If you try to time the market you will inevitably get it wrong and most small investors that take an active approach end up buying high and selling low.

I put $800 into my pension every fortnight (I am paid fortnightly) come rain or shine. The lower the stock market is the more future dividends I can buy with my $800.

I hope it's the best way way to invest because I'm a boring one trick pony. I assume, give or take, every £100 I invest will give me £4/ year income for life. That's it.

The hardest thing I have to do is avoid the noise from people who just 'know' the market will tank, dividends will cease and whatever I've invested in is wrong.

I'm gutted prices have increased by 10% in a week. Stockmarkets have a sale and its doom and gloom; Apple have a sale and an orderly queue forms. Don't get it.

Generali

wotsthat wrote: »

I hope it's the best way way to invest because I'm a boring one trick pony. I assume, give or take, every £100 I invest will give me £4/ year income for life. That's it.

The hardest thing I have to do is avoid the noise from people who just 'know' the market will tank, dividends will cease and whatever I've invested in is wrong.

I'm gutted prices have increased by 10% in a week. Stockmarkets have a sale and its doom and gloom; Apple have a sale and an orderly queue forms. Don't get it.

I get pretty gloomy when shares go down because I earn less money as the company I work for makes less money. For most people you're right though.

mwpt

Generali wrote: »

It's the best way to invest IMHO. If you try to time the market you will inevitably get it wrong and most small investors that take an active approach end up buying high and selling low.

I put $800 into my pension every fortnight (I am paid fortnightly) come rain or shine. The lower the stock market is the more future dividends I can buy with my $800.

It is the safest way to invest. However, my anecdotal story is that I have made good returns over a period of time by buying when I thought it was value rather than trickling in. For a long time I was also not even in tracker funds but in individual names and that also paid off handsomely (overall, I lost a lot of certain sectors).

I've now decreased my risk profile and moved almost everything into ETFs due to change in my work strategy but I will stick to the timing rather than time strategy (against most conventional wisdom). As long as I can get around 3% returns on cash while waiting I believe this is more lucrative for me.

Generali

mwpt wrote: »

It is the safest way to invest. However, my anecdotal story is that I have made good returns over a period of time by buying when I thought it was value rather than trickling in. For a long time I was also not even in tracker funds but in individual names and that also paid off handsomely (overall, I lost a lot of certain sectors).

I've now decreased my risk profile and moved almost everything into ETFs due to change in my work strategy but I will stick to the timing rather than time strategy (against most conventional wisdom). As long as I can get around 3% returns on cash while waiting I believe this is more lucrative for me.

Either you're a lot brighter or a lot luckier than me! Glad to see you making money though.

I'll stick to my 'coffee can' investment technique.

michaels

Generali wrote: »

Either you're a lot brighter or a lot luckier than me! Glad to see you making money though.

I'll stick to my 'coffee can' investment technique.

That's the problem with believing in efficient markets, there is no way you can use past prices to predict future price movements and you need to have extra information that is not generally known to consider a stock to be miss-priced.

Conrad

Generali wrote: »

It's the best way to invest IMHO. If you try to time the market you will inevitably get it wrong and most small investors that take an active approach end up buying high and selling low.

I put $800 into my pension every fortnight (I am paid fortnightly) come rain or shine. The lower the stock market is the more future dividends I can buy with my $800.

I once got an update from my ISA provider which included some blurb on something entitled 'best days'. It said they had found 'best days' to be invested were very rare, perhaps a handful or so of them in a decade and that if you were out of a fund on those days it made a critical negative difference to returns.


Essentially it was making the case for steady drip fed investing as you do, not trying to be a time trader.


You said something once which I've had in my mind ever since; 'Get rich slowly (I think it was you?). I love this sentiment.


I would suggest some people forget they are in effect a business owner, when they own shares / units, and like a business owner should see it through, not try and sell the stall every time they hear a rumour or hear the rumble of guns.


I'm circumspect when it comes to all these folk online that claim to time the market well. Reason being, a heck of a lot of professional full time managers do not make the claims these people do.

Generali

Conrad wrote: »

I once got an update from my ISA provider which included some blurb on something entitled 'best days'. It said they had found 'best days' to be invested were very rare, perhaps a handful or so of them in a decade and that if you were out of a fund on those days it made a critical negative difference to returns.


Essentially it was making the case for steady drip fed investing as you do, not trying to be a time trader.


You said something once which I've had in my mind ever since; 'Get rich slowly (I think it was you?). I love this sentiment.

That is something I say although I can't claim credit for it (actually I can claim credit for it if I lie but I don't want to do that!).

Getting rich slowly is the way forward. I've been trying to give a young adult advice on managing money. Save a bit each week, spend less than you earn and diversify is what I landed on.

mwpt

Generali wrote: »

Either you're a lot brighter or a lot luckier than me! Glad to see you making money though.

I'll stick to my 'coffee can' investment technique.

As is correct for most people.

But I'm willing to take a little more risk with buying into what my lucky dice roll guesses perceive to be the dips, and then just sit and hold. I won't ever hit the bottom of the market but that doesn't matter because I don't try to sell and buy back in, I just buy. It's not that different to trickling in really.

Thrugelmir

michaels wrote: »

you need to have extra information that is not generally known to consider a stock to be miss-priced.

Ideally you need to follow particular sectors or companies very closely. As it's not necessarily "inside" information. But understanding the impact of unrelated external events. That will influence the financial performance.

wotsthat

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Ideally you need to follow particular sectors or companies very closely. As it's not necessarily "inside" information. But understanding the impact of unrelated external events. That will influence the financial performance.

I take the view that investment funds already employ people cleverer than me who have a better insight into the impact of events on businesses.

The low cost trackers I hold have outperformed most of these funds most of the time. The performance of my boring buy and hold dividend shares over the years makes even a dunce like me look like a star performer.