Now is not the time?

sebthered

With the markets being high and many experts predicting a market crash, add in forthcoming elections in the UK, France & Germany (not forgetting Brexit) Would new investors be wise to hold off?

Whilst I understand that nobody can accurately second-guess stock markets a recent article by Harvey Jones published by The Motley Fool on Hargreaves Lansdown's web site quotes 'This may not be the best time to rush into the stock market, but it would be an even worse time to rush out.'

What are your thoughts - 'stick or twist' ?

lonewolf123

If anything I say now is a good time.

A slight dip in the market right now with the snap election and that. Benefit from it. Who knows what happens next week.

ColdIron

Hard to tell but anyone who held off until after the EU referendum missed out on some significant gains

Perhaps new investors might like to look at phased investments over the rest of the year?

AnotherJoe

sebthered wrote: »

With the markets being high and many experts predicting a market crash, add in forthcoming elections in the UK, France & Germany (not forgetting Brexit) Would new investors be wise to hold off?

Whilst I understand that nobody can accurately second-guess stock markets a recent article by Harvey Jones published by The Motley Fool on Hargreaves Lansdown's web site quotes 'This may not be the best time to rush into the stock market, but it would be an even worse time to rush out.'

What are your thoughts - 'stick or twist' ?

Where and in what would those new investors be investing?

US stocks wont be affected by Brexit, other than possibly exchange rate variations. UK stocks might be positively or negatively affected, depends which ones.

Canadian stocks wont be affected by the German elections, neither will China or India, etc etc.

How long should new investors hold off? Suppose markets meander and are at current levels in a years time? Should they still hold off? Two years time?

If they drop 10% should they jump in, or does that merely presage a further 20% fall so they should wait??

etc.

If new investors are merely investing as they go, starting with so much a month, they should start "now" at any time value of "now".

If there's a new investor with a big lump sum to invest then probably they shouldn't on psychological grounds, because if they didnt invest several years ago at a low, then that perhaps indicates someone who will tend to invest at highs (waiting for the reassurance of a high market) and sell at lows (in a panic) so they should stay out altogether.

Marine_life

I think trying to guess what might happen is a mugs game.

Remember its not just the ups and down in the market but there are also nice juicy dividends to be had.

If you believe that fundamentally investing in the market is the right thing to do then you would be better off just setting up some regular savings plans and then drip your money in.

sebthered

Hello playmates!
3 Months on and I have just opened an account with iweb and requested the transfer of my maturing cash isa of £ 50k . The plan is to invest it all in VLS 60 - has the consensus changed at all? invest now or wait? and if now, lump sum or drip feed?
I thank you

AnotherJoe

sebthered wrote: »

Hello playmates!
3 Months on and I have just opened an account with iweb and requested the transfer of my maturing cash isa of £ 50k . The plan is to invest it all in VLS 60 - has the consensus changed at all? invest now or wait? and if now, lump sum or drip feed?
I thank you

Statistically you are better off investing it all asap.
However, chance may be that this time you weren't.

However, if you invest over a time period, that only helps you during that time period. Suppose you spread it out over 12 months and there is a crash/correction in month 13? You are no better off and maybe worse off if its been rising until that point since you started.

As long as you are confident you will stay in whatever happens, and this is long term, dump it all in now. If you aren't, trickle it in but realise that any reassurance you feel is psychological not mathematical, and possible it may even be worse, if it starts falling and keeps falling and you decide its too risky and pull out? Will you keep investing ? (you should as that's the best thing that could happen if you did trickle feed

Easy for me to say as I've already been through a lot of crashes and lost a lot of money as a result (but overall made much more than i lost, or else maybe I wouldn't be so sanguine about it :cool: )

In which case, given your obvious history of nervousness above investments ( or you would have invested years back) I'm tempted to suggest you feed in over 18 months even though say 7 times out of 10 that would not be optimum.

bostonerimus

I avoid all such articles because they are worse than useless....they are actually bad for your investing health. If you have a long enough time horizon it's never a bad time to invest. FYI the article was published in Jan 24th 2017 and something like VLS80 is up 5%.....of course that is pretty meaningless as it could have been down as well

ian-d

I've been drip feeding mine for the past few months. The result being that my position is almost identical to when I started, so overall, the markets seem quite stable. Don't just consider the general ups and downs though, also factor in dividends and ensuring you have enough exposure to them to soften any blow from market drops.

Elijah_Bailey

sebthered wrote: »

Hello playmates!
3 Months on and I have just opened an account with iweb and requested the transfer of my maturing cash isa of £ 50k . The plan is to invest it all in VLS 60 - has the consensus changed at all? invest now or wait? and if now, lump sum or drip feed?
I thank you

Just remember, Iweb charge per fund purchase (five pounds) so it would be cheaper to go ahead with a single purchase rather than several purchases (lots of fivers).

No one can prove drip feeding works better than a single purchase anyway but if you do want to drip feed it may be better in an platform with no fund purchase fee.

I have VLS80 in an Iweb ISA account and I make one bulk purchase per year. I pay no attention to talk of the economy when I invest as timing the market is a fantasy when you are talking about decades.

Glen_Clark

sebthered wrote: »

The Motley Fool

Its an education to look at some of the old articles on there.
Like those recommending Carillon's safe dividend etc before it crashed.