FTSE100 Futures indicating an open below 7000...

username12345678

....for the first time since Dec 2016.

That would make a near 10% fall since the January high so, whilst it's nothing to get too giddy about, there does seem to be something of a sustained downward trend.

I find myself half willing a good hard and fast bear market so my entry points will get triggered and I can start deploying my 50% non-equity/defensive holdings that are in my SIPP.

economic

A classic example of a post showing how a money saving website has turned into a quasi trading site.

takesyourchances

The problem with waiting on the ideal time to get into the market is you may wait too long to do it

username12345678

economic wrote: »

A classic example of a post showing how a money saving website has turned into a quasi trading site.

Trading? I prefer to think of it as re-balancing to keep my portfolio at the risk level appropriate for my own tolerance.

takesyourchances wrote: »

The problem with waiting on the ideal time to get into the market is you may wait too long to do it

This isn't a market timing exercise (although I can see how my post could read that way). If my asset allocations don't shift then i'll be happy. If they do shift then i'm also happy because I have a large chunk of non-equity holdings that allow me to sleep at night but also give me the opportunity to buy on the way down should the opportunity arise.

The actions now are out of my hands in as much as the triggers for staged entry are already set, to the point they are on a word document with a warning not to deviate from the plan.

AnotherJoe

FTSE100? Meh.

Prism

When you say deploy you mean buy more equities? How do you work out what your entry points are when it comes to investing on a downturn - seems like too much guesswork to me?

The FTSE has been doing badly over the last few month whereas the rest of the world seems to have recovered from Februaries correction. I guess only better earnings figures will improve things

username12345678

Prism wrote: »

When you say deploy you mean buy more equities? How do you work out what your entry points are when it comes to investing on a downturn - seems like too much guesswork to me?

The FTSE has been doing badly over the last few month whereas the rest of the world seems to have recovered from Februaries correction. I guess only better earnings figures will improve things

The average bear market (US) is a touch over 30%, but of course we (UK) had 2 inside a decade that nudged 50%.

My initial entry is at 20% off peak and then staged at subsequent 5% falls down to 40% should that arrive.

AnotherJoe

Prism wrote: »

The FTSE has been doing badly over the last few month whereas the rest of the world seems to have recovered from Februaries correction. I guess only better earnings figures will improve things

Maybe or maybe not, since so much of the FTSE100 earnings comes from other currencies, currency changes can sway it as much as economic news. If the pound falls due to bad UK economic figures it could equally rise.

bowlhead99

username12345678 wrote: »

....for the first time since Dec 2016.

FWIW, IG.com's spreadbet market now indicates an open above 7000.

That would make a near 10% fall since the January high so, whilst it's nothing to get too giddy about, there does seem to be something of a sustained downward trend.

You would expect the FTSE100 to have fallen because going into 12 January when it was at its peak, a dollar of revenue was worth 74 pence to its constituent companies, while today a dollar is worth less than 71 pence. Losing 4.5% of the significant value of their dollar assets and revenues of the big companies therein, will take its toll. So the core underlying change in the index brought about by perceptions of changes in profitability etc of the companies or the relative attractiveness of other asset classes, is less than 10%.

Or another way of putting it is that the nine out of ten investors around the world who measure their returns in something other than sterling would not have seen their London Stock Exchange listed assets drop as much as 10% (as GBP prices are up in dollars and Euro).

If you look at the FTSE250 (maybe a better barometer of health of UK companies as it's less international), at 19668 yesterday it's still at 96% of its early Jan peak. And more than that if measured in dollars to compare it with other worldwide investments. So, if you last rebalanced in Jan, doesn't need rebalancing again any time soon.

If you go back eleven months, on 21 Apr 2017 the FTSE100 closed just below 7115. On 21 Mar 2018 it closed just below 7039. So, that's a drop of 1%. The fact that it has dropped by more than 1% from an unsustainable upwards blip in the meantime does not really mean doom and gloom or a 'sustained downward trend'.

I find myself half willing a good hard and fast bear market so my entry points will get triggered and I can start deploying my 50% non-equity/defensive holdings that are in my SIPP.

username12345678 wrote: »

If my asset allocations don't shift then i'll be happy. If they do shift then i'm also happy because I have a large chunk of non-equity holdings that allow me to sleep at night but also give me the opportunity to buy on the way down should the opportunity arise.

So, you are 'half willing' a quick bear market and half not, because if your allocations shift and rebalance you'll be happy, and if your allocations don't shift you'll be happy, so you're a happy investor.

So the point of your thread is that the market is down 1% from eleven months ago and a bit less than 10% off a temporary peak from a couple of months ago and you don't see ups and downs as a problem; you want to keep a mix of higher risk and lower risk assets so if your high risk assets drop 20% off their temporary peak you will start to rebalance to buy more; presumably if they go up substantially from here you will rebalance to sell more.

OK, but that doesn't sound like the most newsworthy thing I've read this week. I imagine a great many investors have a practice of rebalancing, and a great many investors would not see the pullback from a temporary FTSE100 peak as being the sort of sustained downward trend which is a death knell for the the terminal decline of UK equity investing. They would just rebalance and get on with life.

dividendhero

Yet more justification why you should invest globally and not concentrate on a small island beset by political and economic problems

AnotherJoe

Just to add to your post BH, its not even "the market" its the FTSE100, its unclear if the OP is actually investing in the index or just using it as a wider bellweather*, in either case as you've outlined, a poor idea.

* of what though?
The UK? Use the 250.
The world economy - are you crazy?