Experiencing my first mini dip as a new(ish) investor

cjv

Linton wrote: »

Consider the lowest point of the 2008/2009 crash when people were afraid the world banking system would collapse. Would you have had the nerve to put all your cash into shares? And of course you wouldnt have known that it was the lowest point until well after the event.

Since that time there hasnt been a reallyserious crash. Would you be prepared to wait with your money earning zilch in a deposit account for 10 years whilst everyone else's investments have doubled or trebled in value? When the crash eventually comes the lowest point may be higher than current prices.

All the time you are out of the market you are missing out on dividends which on their own represent a higher return than many bank accounts.

So no, it's not a good idea. Better to buy when you have the money and ride the roller coaster.

That makes sense, thanks for the advice

I will stick to throwing £100 a month into my Vanguard LS60 for the next 10 years and ride the roller coaster!

Glen_Clark

This is why wiser heads than mine only check their portfolio value once a year when they do their tax return and annual rebalance.
Checking share prices more frequently is likely to cause to elation and depression at best, bad decisions and consequent heavy losses at worst.

cjv

Glen_Clark wrote: »

This is why wiser heads than mine only check their portfolio value once a year when they do their tax return and annual rebalance.
Checking share prices more frequently is likely to cause to elation and depression at best, bad decisions and consequent heavy losses at worst.

I am hoping I can get myself out of the habit of checking my investments almost daily, one of the traits of a new investor I guess?:D

Alexland

No some of have been checking daily for tens of years.

I was lucky to learn about behavioural investment mistakes early and from examples but I tend to move a bit to cash when I sense the stocks or bonds might be frothy (when fundamentals are being pushed and others stop factoring in risk correctly) and have no reserve in investing as much as I can when markets are falling or I can see good value (when others are fearful).

However mostly I stay invested and make regular contributions. Following this week I have just moved 2% from cash to shares.

Fatbritabroad

cjv wrote: »

I am hoping I can get myself out of the habit of checking my investments almost daily, one of the traits of a new investor I guess?:D

Its OK to check as long as you don't react badly to what you see. I've also have online access to my work pension (useful as I found our new owners had omitted to pay pensions for two months and was able to notify hr!) and I have found it's helped to view my ISA as merely an extension to my pension. You dont suddenly panic and stop paying into a work pension generally as most people dont even look at this from one year to the next except maybe to scan the statement. When I first started my s and s isas I made lots of the usual mistakes. Buying Individual shares and panic selling when it went up or down 10%. Taking money out then putting it back in. During that time I've consistently put in 15% of my income Into a pension through two major crashes and never even considered doing anything else. With the result that I've paid probably 60k In payments and have 130000 in it. This helped me massively when investing in a s and s isa. If I would do this in a pension why would I do anything else in an isa? A very simple and obvious thing but This was very much a light bulb moment for me! And I work in finance!

captainreckless

Fatbritabroad wrote: »

Its OK to check as long as you don't react badly to what you see.

I agree. I check almost daily but the only thing that ever happens in my portfolio is regular monthly buying into funds. Frequent checking helps implant into my head the idea that prices going down is a natural part of long term investing. I've set myself a rule that the only decision I'm going to make for the next ten years is which fund I'm going to add money to next month.

aroominyork

Jeems wrote: »

Experiencing my first mini dip as a new(ish) investor

For me too, since starting to DIY a couple of months ago (and made worse by Friday’s paper loss being more than the annual value of the pay rise I took my wife out to celebrate tonight!).

The most conflicting issue for me is being on 10 year retirement investment strategy when the markets seem unsustainably high. Part of me wants the markets to suffer a correction – as painful as it will feel at the time – sooner rather than later, so that the equities have enough time to recover and then grow before I start moving them into safer investments.

chiang_mai

Two months ago I took over the management of my drawdown portfolio following two or more years of absolute neglect by the IFA who never once even looked at it! I made some changes and swapped out 40% of my funds because my risk appetite had changed, plus, market conditions were no longer such that I should have been holding certain funds.

I made a conscious decision to watch the performance of my portfolio daily for two months, the purpose being to understand fund behaviour under a number of conditions. By end August I was ahead 2% but the first two weeks of September saw 60% of that gain evaporate. I then pulled up some historic valuation reports from my trading platform and saw that over the past two years the value of my portfolio had varied by 10%, peak to trough......I now no longer look at it daily, instead, I'll visit once a month or so, not more often than that and I'm much more relaxed about things.

A_T

I think when you first start investing it's good to check regularly - that way you can measure your tolerance to volatility and also desensitize yourself to losses.

Fatbritabroad

A_T wrote: »

I think when you first start investing it's good to check regularly - that way you can measure your tolerance to volatility and also desensitize yourself to losses.

Soon get desensitised when you see 700 go out of easyjet shares when I bought high and sold out near the bottom. Also taught me if I am going to buy individual shares I should believe in the purchase and ignore volatility and buy and hold as I'd have been way up including dividends by now. Typical