stockmarkets -are we nearing the bottom or is there further to go ??

Glen_Clark

ChiefGrasscutter wrote: »

You could look at the Japanese stock market
Peaked at 40000 in 1990
That's 26 years ago......
and has been on a long term down hill trend since then
It is now standing at 15000.
.

You need to adjust for inflation. Average House price in UK (according to Nationwide) in 1990 was £54919, now £195,733. How does that compare with Japan?

Thrugelmir

BananaRepublic wrote: »

Incidentally, reinvesting dividends means that when the market has crashed, dividends can buy more shares, with more potential for growth, another reason why a crash is not all negative.

In principle I agree. As reinvesting dividends is key to any investment strategy. However many dividends of the major payers have been cut or cancelled or are under review. The net result is that individual shares will be rerated and market value rebased.

bowlhead99

BananaRepublic wrote: »

I'm not sure it is reasonable to expect someone to read all posts in this thread. I certainly haven't.

Threads on a forum are a bit like conversations in a busy venue, except every conversation has its own stenographer so if you join a conversation late you can catch up with all the key points by reading the transcript.

If you want to ask a question, you can put it in a new thread and have people answer it from scratch, or you can find a thread which is already covering related themes and have a read of what has been said, before making enquiries.

If you take the former tack of starting your own conversation from scratch, you will probably have people try to give you a comprehensive response, as far as they are interested in your plight and can be bothered.

If you take the latter approach of joining a thread that has been going for a week (156 previous posts over 4 pages), then you have to expect that the new posts that appear in the thread after you join it will be additive to that existing pile of conversation which they have already participated in. Rather than each new post having to deliver a comprehensive summation of all previous posts plus a couple of lines of incremental new information.

So, while you might choose to skim over some of the previous thread content as 'squabbles' because you already understand the investment principles which are being discussed within them and they don't hold much interest for you, you can't then criticise Masonic's response to a new poster as being inadequate because "of course what does not seem to have been mentioned is that a lot of growth from stocks and shares comes from dividends".

The longest and (to you) most boring of the squabbles was perhaps Procrastinator's naive (or perhaps trolling) comment that if you were invested in a particular index fund you would have lost X% of your life savings and my explanation that the dividends, being a large component of the overall return whether reinvested or not, would have actually resulted in growth of your life savings instead; so clearly a lot of the growth from stocks and shares comes from dividends.

I appreciate that a "well argued, intricate but dull response" is not what you were seeking.

My view as ever is that although a forum such as this can answer some questions, someone in Alan's position would be well advised to read proper books and articles relevent to him, and perhaps get advice from a pension advisor. That said there has been some good advice here IMO.

Can't argue with that. It should probably be a 'sticky' - perhaps with the tweak of inserting the word 'independent' before pension advisor.

The reality of course is that people don't necessarily want to educate themselves from scratch on financial matters by reading proper books, as this can take decades as it probably has for you and me. And left to their own devices to find 'articles relevant to them' they would perhaps accidentally pick up a random Moneyweek magazine and either pile into stocks or pile into gold as being the best way to secure their future depending on which page of the magazine they turned to in picking the article. So, it is not surprising they look to conversations with real humans (albeit anonymous humans who might just be trolling them) to try to get some free pointers.

This board (together with the Pensions & Retirement board) on this forum is better than many, for that.

Glen_Clark

BananaRepublic wrote: »

Evidently you are on the extreme Left. I can't say I care for extremists, be they on the right or the left.

Ad Hominem?
But what is left and right wing now? Bailing out Bankers with Taxpayer's cash, or taxing the other Banks and Building Societies to fund a bailout for their competitors, or restricting the housing supply with (allegedly the world's most onerous) planning constraints whilst throwing taxpayer's cash at the supply to push up house prices, is certainly not 'Free Market' or 'Capitalism'. More like Socialism for Bankers and Landlords - who in a Right Wing Free Market Capitalist system would have been allowed to go bust.

bowlhead99

BananaRepublic wrote: »

Evidently you are on the extreme Left. I can't say I care for extremists, be they on the right or the left.

I think if you stick around long enough you'll notice that Glen seems to be cynical of all governments. He'll criticise whichever one gives him the best opportunity to turn a conversation about savings or investment into a political rant

Glen_Clark wrote: »

You need to adjust for inflation. Average House price in UK (according to Nationwide) in 1990 was £54919, now £195,733. How does that compare with Japan?

Yes, the negative inflation and currency effects relative to other places do substantially change the story of the 'lost decades' for Japanese investments. I think the stat was along the lines of, at the end of the 80s the cost of property in Tokyo was 4x the price of London, now it is the opposite.

And various other Japanese economic stats (e.g. their high levels of government borrowing) can only be understood in comparison to other countries when taken in context with the very different makeup of the debtholders. Due to the poor performance of the Nikkei and the headaches brought on by trying to get one's head around the economics and demographics of a place a long way away that few of us have ever visited, it's not surprising that some people don't allocate a lot of space in their portfolios to Japan, though this has perhaps changed a bit post Abenomics etc.

As the Japanese and Chinese indexes have flipped up and down by several percent a day in recent weeks, it is certainly easier to decide to leave well alone and come back when it is 'settled down', whatever that means for your potential wealth.

BananaRepublic

Glen_Clark wrote: »

Ad Hominem?

Hypocrite?

Thrugelmir

bowlhead99 wrote: »

I think if you stick around long enough you'll notice that Glen seems to be cynical of all governments. He'll criticise whichever one gives him the best opportunity to turn a conversation about savings or investment into a political rant

A true socialist. Complains when it's not of benefit to his own pocket.

Glen_Clark

bowlhead99 wrote: »

I think if you stick around long enough you'll notice that Glen seems to be cynical of all governments. He'll criticise whichever one gives him the best opportunity to turn a conversation about savings or investment into a political rant


Yes, the negative inflation and currency effects relative to other places do substantially change the story of the 'lost decades' for Japanese investments. I think the stat was along the lines of, at the end of the 80s the cost of property in Tokyo was 4x the price of London, now it is the opposite.

And various other Japanese economic stats (e.g. their high levels of government borrowing) can only be understood in comparison to other countries when taken in context with the very different makeup of the debtholders. Due to the poor performance of the Nikkei and the headaches brought on by trying to get one's head around the economics and demographics of a place a long way away that few of us have ever visited, it's not surprising that some people don't allocate a lot of space in their portfolios to Japan, though this has perhaps changed a bit post Abenomics etc.

As the Japanese and Chinese indexes have flipped up and down by several percent a day in recent weeks, it is certainly easier to decide to leave well alone and come back when it is 'settled down', whatever that means for your potential wealth.

I don't consider myself left wing nor right wing, but I think politics is relevant to Savings and Investments because it makes a huge difference where the politicians throw our money.
Thanks for the Japanese Data, I thought it was something like that but its good to see it confirmed.:)

Glen_Clark

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Complains when it's not of benefit to his own pocket.

I thought that makes me a true Capitalist. But then I don't know who is 'Socialist' and who is 'Capitalist' with supposedly Right Wing Capitalist Governments throwing public subsidies at Bankers and Landlords

Glen_Clark

BananaRepublic wrote: »

Hypocrite?

Yes, name calling is Ad hominem. (link) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem