Correction or bear market in stocks this year?

seacaitch

Pincher wrote: »

Once set up, the BTL was a money tree, and took up hardly any time.

Now I keep checking share prices, it's a major waste of time

Sounds like you're maybe going about it wrong.

My portfolio, being ungeared, is probably less of a money tree than your BTL but fruits plenty enough for my needs. And being ungeared and greatly diversified compared to any bunch of buildings it's robust to a broad set of economic outcomes that the future may serve up. There's nothing to 'keep checking' with it either. I could go traipsing around the world for the next few years and it wouldn't even need looking at once a year, and I'd be confident that whatever went on I'd be fine. Forget about calls from irate tenants, dealing with trades, agents, lawyers, accountants; being fully tax wrapped there isn't even any admin. The only time I'd consider doing anything of note would be if, sat on my distant beach, I happened to spot a newspaper lying around signalling to me that either a major shoeshine or capitulation moment was again upon us as happens from time to time, which I could lean against a bit more than the portfolio would likely already be doing. But that'd be optional so no worries if I happened to be distracted that year doing other things and never happened to catch the news.

Works for me.

Pincher

bowlhead99 wrote: »

Whereas, the rental property was only typically tax-efficient on the income side rather than CGT or IHT side. With the restrictions on what costs are deductible, BTL is rather losing its charm for high rate taxpaying investors (aside from the advantages of being easily geared) so there are lots of people doing as you did and not turning down the 'offers they can't refuse'

For one brief shiny moment, there was Camelot.
The golden age of Buytolot was indeed coming to end.

This is the thing about taking the loot and running.
Once you have it, what do you do with it?

The guy who handed it over has some shares, but it's just pocket money, compared to his property portfolio. He knows what makes more money, from 50 years of both. The property is in the next generation's name, so there is a reason for the madness.

Pincher

seacaitch wrote: »

Sounds like you're maybe going about it wrong.

Works for me.

Having been lumbered with a pile of cash in 2016, I am keeping an eye out for opportunities, which is what is taking up the time.

It took me years to find the right BTL property, and eventually switched to the right mortgage (BOE+1.75%), and it's going to take me years to get the right assets. Well, basically I'm waiting for the next crash.

Still, picked up some HSBC at £4.25, which is obviously for keeps.
For diversity's sake, not getting any more HSBC.

grey_gym_sock

darkidoe wrote: »

Everyone has their set of problems right? The rich vs the poor. All humans are equally troubled i reckon.

everyone has problems. but not all the same amount. if in doubt, imagine being a refugee.

money doesn't make all problems go away, but it helps with a lot of them. obviously money can't give you love. but money problems often cause problems in relationships, so even there money is sort-of relevant.

some people just like complaining. which is fair enough. which doesn't stop me complaining about their complaining

[Deleted User]

I have just spent this morning wrapping up profits, sensible as ukx is knocking on another important resistance level. I was 50% in stocks and this time was all defensive. Started off selling the likes of cna and ng. and then decided to sell the rest of my holdings, as they were all in good profit. I had this `out of the blue` dream last night, that ukx dived, I never normally go by gut feeling or had a dream like this but I came down and looked at all my charts. At my age and all in a sipp, it is sensible for me to be defensive too and nothing wrong in securing profits

EdGasket

kittie wrote: »

At my age and all in a sipp, it is sensible for me to be defensive too and nothing wrong in securing profits

Funny how whenever you post you are always making fantastic profits; you must be very clever and know something that the city of London has yet to discover.

Didn't you post something in the middle of last year about selling all your shares up then too?

redux

Keep_pedalling wrote: »

Should his impeachment come to pass it will be President Mike Pence who apart from being a religious nut, we know very little about.

Somewhere there might be a new version of the old joke, that if anything happened to George Bush, Dan Quayle's security team had instructions to shoot him.

bowlhead99

EdGasket wrote: »

Funny how whenever you post you are always making fantastic profits; you must be very clever and know something that the city of London has yet to discover.

Didn't you post something in the middle of last year about selling all your shares up then too?

Actually, this technique is something many in the city of London have discovered too.

It is called, "only do a press release when you have done something that worked out well for you. If you instead make a mistake, don't report it, or gloss over it".


In this way you can always be reporting your activities in a way that makes people think you are clever and that if only they had the benefit of hindsight they should have copied you.

seacaitch

bowlhead99 wrote: »

Actually, this technique is something many in the city of London have discovered too.

It is called, "only do a press release when you have done something that worked out well for you. If you instead make a mistake, don't report it, or gloss over it".

Yes, at this time of the year newspaper money sections are full of adverts for niche funds that happen to have done well in the recent past trumpeting their great performance. Obviously, no mention by these master custodians of capital of their earlier periods of fairly rotten performance. Mustn't weaken those recency bias effects.

seacaitch

Pincher wrote: »

Having been lumbered with a pile of cash in 2016, I am keeping an eye out for opportunities, which is what is taking up the time.

It took me years to find the right BTL property, and eventually switched to the right mortgage (BOE+1.75%), and it's going to take me years to get the right assets. Well, basically I'm waiting for the next crash.

I may be wrong here as I obviously don't have all the facts but it sounds to me like your investment plan may be deficient.

If a few hundred grand landed in my lap tomorrow, say from an unexpected inheritance, my plan would tell me pretty precisely what to do with it and it'd be fairly swiftly allocated. Even more so if the cash arose from an asset sale of mine as I'd have more forewarning of its arrival.

You mention that you're keeping an eye out for opportunities which is taking up time and that you're waiting for the next crash.

If it's lower valuations that you're awaiting, do you have some specific, measurable condition that you're waiting for or are you running on gut feel? Intuition (heuristics and recognizing cues and patterns) can be useful for people operating in a field where they are very experienced but less so for those less experienced where it may be more akin to guesswork.

Or is what's taking the time the actual thinking through of what it is you want to do and how to go about it, ie. back to my initial sentence? If so, and you're working on a plan then that's good.

If it is specific valuations that you're awaiting, then it may be advisable to plan in the possibility that the market does not provide you with those target valuations for a very lengthy time. I'm not saying this will happen but it can, and it can cause a couple of problems:
(i) the benefit of the lower valuations you were seeking, if they take a very long time to occur, can be more than outweighed by the cash flows that you have foregone by holding a lower yielding asset such as cash while waiting; you may achieve your lower price entry but end up worse off than if you'd bought earlier but at higher prices.
(ii) depending on your personality type, the psychological pressures brought to bear by standing aside while markets rise without you being invested to the extent you would like; often this can lead to capitulation buying where the fear of missing completely out overrides the earlier caution that was being exercised; no one thinks this will apply to them but strongly rising markets do very strange things to many people.

Some scenario planning might help anticipate these and other issues, which may prompt a less black-and-white and more shades-of-grey manner of approaching the market.