Should I sell my shares

Poppy15

I have some shares with Standard Life that I must have had as part of a private pension I used to pay into a number of years ago. I am quite keen to sell these shares but am wondering if now is a good time to sell or whether I should hold onto them. I have never bought or sold shares before so know very little about this. It wouldn't be a huge amount but the money would be very useful at the moment with some expenses I have - any advice would be appreciated.

BLB53

It is very risky holding just shares in a single company. The share price has gained ~ 20% in the past few months and as the UK markets are close to their all-time high point, now would be a good time to cash in your investment imo.

AnotherJoe

If you are keen to sell them because the money would be useful now, and assuming you wouldn't normally gamble with significant sums of money, then sellling now would seem to be a no-brainer.

Poppy15

Thanks for your replies.

Plus

Are they shares of Standard Life or shares held with Standard Life (as a broker)? Big difference.

Ray_Singh-Blue

I have come to the conclusion that there is never a good time to buy shares, or a bad time to buy shares... except in retrospect. Or maybe at the IPO.

The market price is simply the meeting point of people who think it is a good idea to buy, and an equal number of people who think it is a good idea to sell.

You can take a view, or as I prefer to call it, a punt. But IMHO a better reason to sell would be, because you want the money. And a better reason to hold would be, because you don't.

EachPenny

You didn't ask about it in the question, but one thing to bear in mind is that the costs of selling shares, especially as a one-off can be high.

It is worth doing some research (or ask for advice on here) about the best method of selling. Whatever you do, don't just ask your bank to sell them for you without doing that research

The [STRIKE]first[/STRIKE] second question you'll be asked is what format do you hold them in - i.e. paper or electronic? (Plus got in there with the first question!)

Pincher

Poppy15 wrote: »

I have some shares with Standard Life that I must have had as part of a private pension I used to pay into a number of years ago.

So, you have a pension plan, managed by Standard Life.

The shares are of companies on the stock market, and not units in funds?

I suspect you have a pension account, containing units in unit trusts, with names like Far East Growth, UK High Income, FTSE Allshare etc.

So, you are talking about draw down from a pension pot.

Are you 55 years old?

If you are 55 or over, then you can take out 25% of the pension pot tax free. The rest is taxed like income.

So, if you take out too much, you can pay 40% tax on some of it.

You are now going to ask, are there any tax dodging schemes you can use? Next, you will get a call from a pension liberation scam artist, who will tell you YES. They will remove the money from Standard Life, who reports this to HMRC. The scam artist disappears with the money, but the HMRC rings you up, demanding tax due. You tell them you were scammed, but the HMRC still wants their money back.

The pension tax rebate is just the HMRC pretending to give you money to make you save money. They have no intention of letting you actually have it.

Poppy15

I emailed Standard Life Shareholder Services and they advised me they are the registrars and asked me to check the shareprice online at standardlife.com. They advised that the price of the Standard Life plc shares was 384 pence per share as of today.
They advised me to contact Capita Asset Services if I want to sell the shares at capitadeal.com. I haven't yet looked at how much it would cost to sell the shares.
I'm 39 but stopped paying into the pension a number of years ago, I paid into it when I was self employed.

BLB53

They advised me to contact Capita Asset Services if I want to sell the shares at capitadeal.com. I haven't yet looked at how much it would cost to sell the shares

It looks to be fairly straight forward depending on whether you have the shares certificate or hold in a nominee format - the online charges are £39.50 or £22.50 respectively
http://www.capitadeal.com/services/our-share-dealing-service.aspx

Glen_Clark

Cheaper way would be to open an account with www.x-o.co.uk (recommended as a best buy on this website) transfer the shares in and sell them for £5.95
A simpler way, and still cheaper than Capita, would be to use http://www.sellmysharecertificates.com/ for £22.50 (owned by the same company as x-o who also run the sharedealing service for Yorkshire Building Society)