Liquidate entire portfolio until virus is over?

bowlhead99

Username999 said:

A sector to watch IMHO.

Many of the sectors are going to be interesting to watch

Remains to be seen what the long term fallout will be for house prices, even once the marketing engine is back up and running and the builders have got something to sell.
Perhaps one of the outcomes of the crisis after a long period of lockdown or intermittent lockdown, will be that remote office working might be seen as so much more successful than people had feared (especially once the kids are back at school and not interrupting the 'office from my living room' crowd) - and businesses will have built better processes and practices to accommodate it, that the dynamics of the property market could change considerably as people no longer need to be looking for a property in easy range of a daily public transport commute, or a major city centre etc. 

If there is reduced immigration levels (Brexit etc) combined with reduced need to commute to a fixed workplace, the argument that 'people are not insane to buy a flat in London at 10x salary funded by cheap debt, because there will always be way more people that want them than the number of properties available' starts to fray. Similarly for office builders, perhaps the city firms only need space for 600 desks instead of 1000 when their lease comes up for renewal, and the next time around, it's 300. And the knock-on effects of coffee shops and restaurants and retailers in the cities having lower passing trade will feed into the cycle of fewer people needing to be employed in the cities, even if they are not one of the people who was an office worker that now works from home.

From a housebuilder perspective it may seem superficially fine if people want to start moving out of city centres to a new estate further outside of town, because they were not going to be building a new estate of houses in citycentre locations or next to train stations because those places were already saturated with existing properties. But if people can no longer sell their London 2-bed flat for £4-500k, they no longer have £4-500k of sales proceeds to flip into a new build house further out with a new garden.  Land values in some areas could face some 'interesting times'.

Thrugelmir

Malthusian said:

Without contrarian views there'd be no market. 

Not actually true. 

Somebody needs to buy in order for someone to sell. When buyers walk away. Lofty valuations soon disappear........

Sailtheworld

Thrugelmir said:

Sailtheworld said:

Thrugelmir said:

Prism said:

It seems to me that over the course of these last few months you have moved from long term investing to short term gambling. I recognise that I don't know the direction or markets over the coming months (I could never have predicted I would be up 16% in the last month) but you seem so certain.

Gambling, or repositioning your portfolio?  I've made huge changes to holdings. Though with a longer term emphasis in mind. Some individual holdings purchased have risen over 30% within a matter of weeks. There does seem to be a lot of misguided optimism still out there. As the company fundamentals haven't changed one iota in that timeframe. The tracker buying of the FTSE 100 does suggest that there's many people that view current prices as being cheap. 

My personal view is you're gambling.

Horses, dogs etc have never held any appeal. I'm a 50p each way on the tote person. Nor BTL for that matter, as profitable as it has proved to be. No art, fine wine or ceramic collection either. You can hold whatever you wish. Without contrarian views there'd be no market. 

Equities can be a vehicle for gambling just as much as horses.

EdGasketTheSecond

Other people seem to think the market might go down:

https://www.ccn.com/3-reasons-why-the-dow-will-crash-below-20000-in-2-weeks/

port_of_spain

EdGasketTheSecond said:

Other people seem to think the market might go down:

Yes, me for instance. I think it might go down. And that it might go up. Because (wait for it) I don't know what it will do.

And there are certainly many people who are like me, in the sense that they know that there are some things they don't know. Perhaps you've found some of them; let's see ...

........3-reasons-why-the-dow-will-crash-below-20000-in-2-weeks

Ah, no, it's quite the opposite. You've found somebody who overconfidently predicts things they don't know. Or perhaps, who writes clickbait headlines which they know perfectly well are rubbish.

So someone like you. (Which raises the question: is this entire thread, now approaching 1000 posts, just very effective clickbait?)

MK62

EdGasketTheSecond said:

Other people seem to think the market might go down:

https://www.ccn.com/3-reasons-why-the-dow-will-crash-below-20000-in-2-weeks/

Though this, from the very same site, says pretty much the opposite.....

https://www.ccn.com/the-stock-market-is-flashing-a-financial-crisis-signal-and-its-insanely-bullish/

.....which just goes to show that you should take what individual online market commentators/websites are saying with a pinch of salt.........

EdGasketTheSecond

MK62 said:

EdGasketTheSecond said:

Other people seem to think the market might go down:

https://www.ccn.com/3-reasons-why-the-dow-will-crash-below-20000-in-2-weeks/

Though this, from the very same site, says pretty much the opposite.....

https://www.ccn.com/the-stock-market-is-flashing-a-financial-crisis-signal-and-its-insanely-bullish/

Ha ha, I guess they can later claim to be 'right' whatever happens then or else claim to be unbiased. In reality they are just a reporting channel and its good to hear both sides of the argument.

EdGasketTheSecond

Interview with Siam Kidd

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obMp0c_s3dY

Thrugelmir

MK62 said:

EdGasketTheSecond said:

Other people seem to think the market might go down:

https://www.ccn.com/3-reasons-why-the-dow-will-crash-below-20000-in-2-weeks/

Though this, from the very same site, says pretty much the opposite.....

https://www.ccn.com/the-stock-market-is-flashing-a-financial-crisis-signal-and-its-insanely-bullish/

.....which just goes to show that you should take what individual online market commentators/websites are saying with a pinch of salt.........

One thing that became very apparent when looking back on the events of the GFC, was that US investment banks internally were taking a very different stance to what they were recommending to their clients to do. In a capitalist dog eats dog world. There's little sentiment. A sad reflection of US corporate culture. 

Thrugelmir

Sailtheworld said:

Thrugelmir said:

Sailtheworld said:

Thrugelmir said:

Prism said:

It seems to me that over the course of these last few months you have moved from long term investing to short term gambling. I recognise that I don't know the direction or markets over the coming months (I could never have predicted I would be up 16% in the last month) but you seem so certain.

Gambling, or repositioning your portfolio?  I've made huge changes to holdings. Though with a longer term emphasis in mind. Some individual holdings purchased have risen over 30% within a matter of weeks. There does seem to be a lot of misguided optimism still out there. As the company fundamentals haven't changed one iota in that timeframe. The tracker buying of the FTSE 100 does suggest that there's many people that view current prices as being cheap. 

My personal view is you're gambling.

Horses, dogs etc have never held any appeal. I'm a 50p each way on the tote person. Nor BTL for that matter, as profitable as it has proved to be. No art, fine wine or ceramic collection either. You can hold whatever you wish. Without contrarian views there'd be no market. 

Equities can be a vehicle for gambling just as much as horses

When betting on the horses only one wins. With shares you just need to identify the ones that stand a better chance of finishing the entire course. Though not all will. That's life.