Liquidate entire portfolio until virus is over?

AlanP_2

jacquelinestar said:

I guess I hate locking in the losses, especially given that on the Moneyfarm account I had made a decent profit (well, about £1k), but in the grand scheme of things, perhaps this is a small price to pay for a feeling of security (I understand cash doesn't necessarily equal security). What would you do?

Have you actually "lost" money or just made less than you had last month / year?

Investing is ideally looking at a 10+ year horizon, minmum of 5 years I'd say so if you wnat "cash" in less than 5 years it wouldn't be invested if it was me.

masonic

EdGasketTheSecond said:

I bet you all wished you had liquidated your portfolio, even a week after the market started dropping. I wish too; I did liquidate some but by no means all. Have started rebuying but keeping some fire power. Still down hugely overall so I'm not being smug but if I had lived up to the thread title I would have been in a much better place now.

There was never any chance I would have liquidated my entire portfolio, because I don't have perfect knowledge of the future. I had been gradually de-risking over a number of years and am beginning to rebalance back into equities. Most likely I will 'over-rebalance', but it is early days and as others have stated we are nowhere near the worst case loss scenarios.
You might recall I set up 3 virtual portfolios up thread. I'll post an update on these tomorrow, but one portfolio was due to be liquidated on the "next rally" so far this has not come and that portfolio is doing worse than the immediately liquidated portfolio. So if you are wishing you liquidated a week ago, you might, in a few weeks, regret not liquidating today.

keyboardworrier

I'm holding, investing is a long term game. I imagine things are going to get quite a bit worse but if you can't stomach the volatility you shouldn't be any where near the stock market...

jacquelinestar

AlanP_2 said:

jacquelinestar said:

I guess I hate locking in the losses, especially given that on the Moneyfarm account I had made a decent profit (well, about £1k), but in the grand scheme of things, perhaps this is a small price to pay for a feeling of security (I understand cash doesn't necessarily equal security). What would you do?

Have you actually "lost" money or just made less than you had last month / year?

Investing is ideally looking at a 10+ year horizon, minmum of 5 years I'd say so if you wnat "cash" in less than 5 years it wouldn't be invested if it was me.

I have lost about £800, yes.

jacquelinestar

Maybe it's best to just give up the flat buying idea for the time being, and keep everything invested - seems like over time, investments do better than property anyway?

A_Flock_Of_Sheep

If you follow Hargreaves Landsdown's advice they always advocate investing now.

But of course it's inevitable further losses will occur causing the value of share portfolios to drop like tumbling boulders.

quirkydeptless

Will they be calling this Brown (Trouser) Thursday  ?

A_Flock_Of_Sheep

It will soon time for a bit of a buy up. With just the 100 index at over 9% down alrwady today.

Shankers

Unless you need the cash desperately, why would anyone sell now? You'd be selling at a loss. Nevertheless, it isn't necessarily the time to buy as things could still get a lot worse...

adonis10

Why are traders dumping everything? Are they all in it for the short term? I am a novice and so trying to learn about the stock market but cannot understand why it is tanking so much. Surely unless all the constituents of the FTSE100, for example, go bust it is only a paper loss. Is it largely due to investment bankers chasing short term gains for bonus reasons? That I could understand. But the investor in it for the next 30 years, why would they need to dump everything at the first sight of a crash?
Genuine questions for a newbie.