Liquidating investments - Strategy?

skycatcher

I need to liquidate some investments I had for the last 20 years or so. They are mostly in ISAs and unit trusts.
Some have done really well and some have done relatively poorly. I was wondering if there is any perceived wisdom in which I should cash in i.e. take the gains from the successful ones or dump the ones that have performed not so well?

Thanks.

benbay001

If you had the total of their value today, in cash, which ones would you buy? With few exceptions, these are the ones you should keep.

Linton

Assuming your objectives have not changed and your portfolio was appropriate for those objectives you should sell sufficient of each of your investments to retain the same allocations.  Whether an investment has performed well or not in the past is irrelevent.

skycatcher

Thanks for the replies guys. My gut reaction is to sell off the ones that have persistently under performed. I take Linton's point but to say I had a strategy 20 years ago is a bit of a stretch.

eskbanker

skycatcher said:

Thanks for the replies guys. My gut reaction is to sell off the ones that have persistently under performed. I take Linton's point but to say I had a strategy 20 years ago is a bit of a stretch.

It's never too late to start

ruperts

You want to be left with a portfolio that makes sense in the context of your current objectives. Selling on the basis of whether the existing investments have done well or not very well is unlikely to achieve that, particularly if there was no strategy to begin with. Maybe consider taking the amount you're left with and starting again with a fresh strategy?

Thrugelmir

If you've held the same investments for 20 years. Perhaps an opportunity to undertake a thorough review. Does the rationale for originally buying a holding still reside today. Very different world in that timeframe with the emergence of new kids on the block.  

steampowered

This is a good opportunity to reconsider your strategy. Perhaps start with a blank sheet of paper.

Imagine your portfolio will be worth £100k after you sell. If someone gave you £100k in cash, what would you invest in?

It may well be that the best strategy is to sell everything, keep some of the cash, and reinvest what is left into something else.